Discovery Sessions: The Secret to Every Successful Brand and Website Launch

Introduction

Before a single pixel is pushed or a line of code is written, every successful project at ONBOX starts with one thing: a Discovery.

Discovery sessions are where strategy meets intuition. It’s how we align with our clients, uncover hidden insights, and chart a path forward that isn’t just good looking, it’s good for business. Whether we’re designing a brand from scratch or overhauling a legacy website, Discovery is where clarity begins.

This article is the first in a series exploring the ONBOX approach to design and strategy. You can think of it as a behind-the-scenes look at how we bring bold ideas to life, starting with Discovery.

Why Discovery Matters

Your project doesn’t start on a sales call. Sure, we’ll gather some initial context, but a few quick conversations are never enough to build a brand, design a website, or launch a product with impact. That’s why we begin every engagement with our dedicated Discovery process.

We approach Discovery as a true collaboration. You’re the expert in your field, we’re here to extract your knowledge, challenge assumptions, and uncover what truly matters. This isn’t a questionnaire you fill out and forget. It’s an active, guided process where we listen closely, ask the right questions, and shape the foundation together.

What Happens Before the Session

Before the actual discovery session we send over a short Pre-Discovery Questionnaire. It covers your background, market, audience, and goals, but more importantly, it helps us identify the right questions to ask during our session together.

Discovery can be done remotely or in person. Both are great, but there’s something special about meeting face to face. Some sessions are fast-paced and focused over a few hours. Others stretch across days (or even a week), especially if the project or company is complex. Either way, the format is shaped around you.

Step-by-Step: The ONBOX Discovery Process

1. Setting the Stage: Context and Background

We begin by immersing ourselves in your world. We want to know your history, your team, your mission, and your product. Every insight you give us at this stage helps guide the rest of the process.

2. Defining the Project Goal

Next, we work together to define a clear, actionable goal for the project, something we return to constantly. This becomes our north star. It guides creative decisions, prioritization, and helps us know when something’s veering off course.

3. Reframing Obstacles Into Opportunities

We don’t just ask what success looks like, we ask what failure might look like too.

One of our favorite prompts is:

“If we were to travel into the future and the project was a failure, what might have caused it to fail?”

From here, we turn problems into possibilities by framing them as “How Might We” questions. These aren’t just creative thought experiments, they’re springboards for our strategy and design work.

For example:

• "The brand might isolate our current audience" becomes → “How might we ensure our current audience feels included and recognized?”
• "We want strong design, but it needs to function" becomes → “How might we balance functionality with immersive design?”

This approach is inspired by A More Beautiful Question by Warren Berger, a book that reframes the power of inquiry. Instead of jumping to solutions, we use questions to transform uncertainties and challenges into creative opportunities. This is how tension becomes traction.

4. Finding the Why: Simon Sinek’s Golden Circle

Using Sinek’s Golden Circle framework, we identify:

• Why you exist
• How you operate
• What you offer

Most companies can answer the "what" easily. Some can explain the "how." But the "why", that’s where things often go quiet. And that’s exactly where the real work begins.

At ONBOX, we help you get clear on your why, because it's what your audience connects to emotionally. It's what aligns your internal team. It’s what makes you different in a sea of sameness. When we understand your why, we can make every decision, from messaging to design to user flow — resonate with more meaning.

Working through this together helps you articulate not just what you do, but why people should care. When your brand speaks from the inside out - why → how → what - it doesn’t just inform. It inspires. And that’s where brand loyalty begins.

5. Designing the Roadmap: From Today to 10 Years Out

Great brands aren’t built for today, they’re built for what’s next. That’s why every ONBOX Discovery includes a strategic roadmap. It helps us understand where your brand or product is now, where it needs to go, and what’s standing in the way.

The roadmap is more than a timeline, it’s a living document that guides decisions, prioritizes features, and ensures our work sets you up to scale.

Here’s how we structure it:

Now: Where You Are

We start by grounding ourselves in the present:

• What do you have in place?
• What’s working? What’s broken?
• What are the constraints we need to navigate (budget, resources, timeline)?
• What immediate wins are available?

This gives us a clear baseline and helps avoid reinventing the wheel unnecessarily.

1 Year From Now: Early Momentum

We then move into the near-term future:

• What does success look like 12 months from today?
• What growth, reach, or impact are you aiming for?
• What will you need to support that (tools, team, infrastructure)?

This informs the scope and focus of the work we’re doing together. We prioritize what delivers value now while laying groundwork for what’s next.

5 Years From Now: Scaling the Vision

At the five-year mark, things start to get interesting:

• Where do you want to be in the market?
• What new products, audiences, or verticals are you targeting?
• What kind of perception do you want to own?

This helps us make smart foundational decisions, from your brand architecture to how we structure your site navigation. We think about flexibility, scalability, and the ability to grow without needing to start over.

10 Years From Now: Your BHAG

Finally, we ask you to dream big. What’s your BHAG - your Big Hairy Audacious Goal?

This isn’t just about revenue or reach. It’s about what kind of impact you want to have.

• Do you want to be the category leader?
• Do you want to shift culture?
• Do you want to change how people live, think, or feel?

This helps us connect design to mission. It’s not about where you are, it’s about where you’re going.

Why It Matters

The roadmap ensures that the work we do today doesn't box you in tomorrow. It keeps us future-proof. And it gives you something incredibly tangible, a framework you can share internally, build your business plan around, or even use with investors.

6. Defining the Audience

We start by mapping out every potential audience connected to your brand, your customers, users, partners, internal teams, even future segments you haven’t reached yet.

Then we prioritize. Together, we identify the top three audiences that matter most right now and go deep into each one. For each, we outline:

• Who they are
• What they care about
• The problem they’re facing
• What they need from your brand or product

We translate these into clear problem statements that shape messaging, design, and functionality. This focused approach helps us avoid designing for everyone and ensures we’re building something that connects with the people who matter most.

7. Nailing the Brand Foundations

With the audience defined, we turn inward and start building the foundation of the brand itself. This part of the Discovery focuses on defining what your brand stands for, how it should feel, and how it should show up in the world.

We explore three core components:

Top 3 Values

These are the beliefs that guide how your brand operates. They influence everything from internal culture to external messaging. We keep it focused by narrowing to three, so they’re actionable and memorable.

Top 3 Attributes

These describe how your brand should feel to others. Think of them as your brand’s personality traits — are you bold or refined, playful or serious?

Brand Sliders

We plot your brand across visual and tonal spectrums. For example: traditional vs. modern, minimal vs. expressive, premium vs. accessible. This helps us visualize your position and build creative work that aligns with your intent.

This shared language becomes a reference point for everything to come, making sure your visual identity, tone of voice, and user experience all feel cohesive and true to who you are.

8. Competitor Audit and Brand Affinities

To position your brand effectively, we need to understand the landscape you’re operating in.

We begin with a competitor audit - a focused look at other brands in your space. This isn’t about copying or benchmarking. It’s about identifying what’s already out there, what’s working (or not), and where there’s room to stand out. We analyze tone, visual style, messaging, structure, and user experience.

Then we shift to brand affinities - the brands you admire or aspire to be like, regardless of industry. This helps us understand your taste, ambitions, and the kind of emotional response you want your audience to have. Sometimes your competitor isn’t the brand next door, it’s the one setting the bar in an entirely different category.

Together, these two lenses help us define where you fit in, where you don’t, and how we can position you to lead rather than follow.

9. Establishing a Shared Visual Language

Words like “modern,” “elegant,” or “bold” can mean very different things to different people. That’s why one of the final steps in Discovery is aligning visually so we’re all speaking the same design language before the creative work begins.

We look at any visual references you’ve brought to the table, whether that’s brands you love, styles that resonate, or inspiration from outside your category. We also bring curated references of our own to spark discussion and explore directions you may not have considered.

Together, we review and discuss these visuals to understand not just what you like, but why you like it. This allows us to identify themes, aesthetics, and tonal cues that feel right for your brand.

This step is key to avoiding misalignment later. It creates clarity and gives us a shared foundation to build from, so when we present creative, it already feels like a natural evolution of the conversation.

The Impact of a Great Discovery

A strong Discovery doesn’t just set the tone for the project, it sets the entire trajectory of your brand.

It aligns your team. It clarifies your purpose. It identifies your audience, your edge, and your opportunity. It connects strategy to execution, and vision to reality.

When done well, Discovery becomes the most valuable part of the entire process. It’s where the groundwork is laid, the insight is uncovered, and the future starts to take shape.

This is how brands are built to last. This is where momentum begins.