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CORE Discovery Framework

The CORE Discovery Framework

Jose Caballer · The Futur · 2019

Introduction
Strategy Work Sessions Led by Designers

Jose Caballer, a designer and strategist who is associated with starting The Skool, which became The Futur, created CORE Discovery to align creative projects with business objectives (Caballer, 2024). The CORE Discovery Kit, launched with The Futur in November 2019, updated his earlier CORE Strategy kit; besides new exercises and a brief template, its main addition is a conceptual framework "to masterfully translate Strategy into Design" (Caballer, 2019). Its manifesto, modelled on the Agile Manifesto, opens with "The Designer as Strategic Leader": the designer facilitates collaboration and co-creates with the client instead of only delivering what the brief asked for (Caballer, 2019). The core of the kit is eight exercises that a team works through in facilitated work sessions, from aligning the participants to a signed design brief (Caballer, 2019). Version 3.0 of 2024 divides the exercises into primary and secondary ones and adds a CORE Brief that summarises the findings; Caballer names web design, brand identity and packaging projects as fields of use (Caballer, 2024).

The Model

CORE Discovery Framework: contents of the CORE Discovery Kit in 18 numbered sections, with the eight core exercises highlighted, from Team Alignment to The Brief
Source: Caballer (2019, figure "The core of CORE."); the eight core exercises are highlighted in green in the original and in grey in the redrawing. Below it, the same figure redrawn in the Atlas style.

Elements

Definitions follow Caballer (2019), who describes each exercise by its need, goal and outcomes. Element names are those of the figure; where the text uses another name, it is given in italics.

The Core of CORE

  • 01

    Team Alignment

    The opening exercise (Alignment Exercise) starts from the observation that "people love it when they are included". Using the same process as the brand attributes exercise, each participant names the top three things they want to get out of the work session; common wishes are "to get clarity" and for the team to be "on the same page". In the end each person's "only one thing" is prioritised, and the facilitator makes sure to deliver it by the end of the session (Caballer, 2019).

  • 02

    Brand Attributes

    For Caballer, the first and most important driver of strategy is an organisation's understanding of who it is: what it does, for whom, how it does it, how it feels and how it affects the world. In this exercise (Brand Exercise), the team writes a brand statement together, whether it is called a mission statement or a brand statement. The statement gives the key attributes that guide the design process that follows; its aim is alignment and a clear vision, and it serves "as the blueprint to create the right solution" (Caballer, 2019).

    A manufacturer in Southern California: the CMO of a 100-million-dollar manufacturing company told Caballer that the firm had just paid 300,000 dollars for its mission statement, and that the exercise with the team had produced a better one in 60 minutes (Caballer, 2019).

  • 03

    Customer Profiles

    Delivering value with any product or service rests on understanding customer needs, yet whole teams are seldom clear, aligned and prioritised around them. The exercise defines three to four customer profiles and prioritises their needs and goals, drawing on the customer knowledge in the room and on the company's own research data. Its outcome is agreement: three profiles with three top needs and solutions each. Skipping it creates "chaos, mis-alignment, wasted effort" (Caballer, 2019).

  • 04

    Goals Prioritization

    People need to know what to focus on and do not want to waste effort on work that will be changed or thrown away later. The exercise defines the business priorities for revenue (monetisation), awareness (marketing) and efficiency (operations), simply by asking the right questions and listening. The outcome is a top three in each category and a stack-ranked list of to-dos for the whole team, set by the people who will carry them out (Caballer, 2019).

  • 05

    Attribute Clustering

    Because no design can serve every brand attribute, this exercise turns the attributes into tangible design in a clearer, systematic way. For each planned design direction, one main and three supporting attributes are selected. The system behind it is story structure: how a character shows up in the story, how it makes people feel and what impact it has on them. The result is three sets of attributes that can guide whole experiences, "a living brand" (Caballer, 2019).

  • 06

    Data Matching

    This exercise looks for solutions to the client's business problems beyond the requested deliverable, such as a website, a video or an identity. It matches the top three needs of the customers with the priorities of the business, which Caballer calls "The Weave", and brainstorms solutions that are a win for both. Because the ideas come from the intersection of customer needs and company goals, they are more plausible as effective options (Caballer, 2019).

  • 07

    Impact Narrative

    The brainstormed solutions are put into the context of time as customer journeys. The journeys of three to four customers are mapped in parallel, so that the links between the solutions become visible, as well as how customers relate to one another and can add value to each other in a community. The result is a clear narrative of the experience being created, "a view from above" and a roadmap (Caballer, 2019).

  • 08

    The Brief

    The brief translates the strategy into instructions for design. It informs the two to three design directions presented to the client and is where the designer "plans the design" with a conceptual framework of five questions, starting with "What is the highest impact, lowest effort solution that I have to create to move the business goals of this company or idea?" The brief sets out the directions, based on the selected attributes, ideas from data matching and the impact narrative. The client signs it, which opens the design phase, starting with stylescapes (Caballer, 2019).

Source

  1. Caballer, J. (2019, August 2). The CORE Discovery Framework [Blog post]. Medium. https://josecaballer.medium.com/the-core-discovery-process-79f3f116d849 (archived copy retrieved October 7, 2026, from https://web.archive.org/web/20240530002722/https://josecaballer.medium.com/the-core-discovery-process-79f3f116d849)
  2. Caballer, J. (2024, April 16). The CORE Discovery 3.0 Framework: A Short Overview [Blog post]. Medium. https://josecaballer.medium.com/the-core-discovery-3-0-framework-7aaa29fa763f (archived copy retrieved October 7, 2026, from https://web.archive.org/web/20250126162536/https://josecaballer.medium.com/the-core-discovery-3-0-framework-7aaa29fa763f)