Understanding of the real needs of the users and the business is critical to development of a successful and inclusive product. The project team should now have documented answers to the questions

• Who are the users and other stakeholders?
• What tasks will the product be used to achieve?
• Why does the business / user want this product?
• When will the product be delivered?
• Where will the product be used?

The project team must also

• Understand what makes the product functional, desirable, profitable and usable
• Understand how these needs may contradict each other
• Prioritise the needs
• Manage and resolve the conflicts between needs

The project team’s understanding of the real needs will have significantly improved since the start of the design process and should continue to improve throughout the remaining stages. Subsequent outputs from the design process should be corroborated against this understanding to ensure that any incongruencies are identified and resolved.