CSD Matrix: Framework and Template for Shared Understanding

When starting new projects or initiatives, teams often begin with varying levels of knowledge about the challenges, problems to solve, and opportunities to explore. Even when groups seem to align on what a UX project entails, it's typical for common ground to waver as work progresses. Fortunately, there’s a simple tool that can help mitigate this challenge: the CSD matrix. This article shows how to use a CSD matrix and provides templates to get started. The CSD matrix and technique were originally created by Tennyson Pinheiro, Luis Alt, and the team at Livework São Paulo. It is also published in the book, Design Thinking Brasil. 

CSD Matrix

The acronym CSD stands for Certainties, Suppositions, and Doubts, which are the 3 columns in a CSD matrix and correspond to the different types of information that each column contains. Information can be outlined using digital or physical sticky notes or bullet points.

Definition: A CSD matrix is a framework for outlining and visualizing what everyone involved in a project knows (Certainties), hypothesizes (Suppositions), and doesn't know yet (Doubts). The CSD matrix encompasses various types of knowledge, including user needs and behaviors, as well as organizational factors such as goals, processes, technology, and constraints. 

Certainties

The Certainties column holds statements about what's already known and confirmed from trusted research and cited evidence. Teams can confidently design and develop ideas based on information in the Certainties column, as this information is the most relevant for decision making and moving forward in product development. Certainties should be monitored over time; even if you're sure about something at one point, its status may change later on as context evolves.

The format for outlining certainties begins with We know or We understand.

For example, say you’re redesigning a platform for dog trainers to manage their clients, training sessions, and training plans. Goals for the platform include:

• Helping dog trainers easily manage their clients and training programs
• Increasing reach by getting more dog owners to book sessions
• Getting more dogs trained

Before filling out the CSD matrix, outline the current issues faced by trainers and dog owners; for example:

• High dropoff rates in booking training sessions
• Low rate of booking repeat sessions
• Low payment-completion rates
• Problems with training-management tools (from trainers and dog owners)

After interviewing stakeholders and dog trainers about how they currently manage their dog-training practices, reviewing current tools and analytics, and speaking to dog owners, your UX team learned the following facts, which can be listed under Certainties:

Certainties: We know and understand that:

• Existing dog-training apps are expensive, confusing, and low-quality. (Sources: tool review, stakeholder and trainer interviews)
• Dog trainers don’t have big technology or UX budgets. (Sources: stakeholder and trainer interviews)
• Trainers need to provide photos, video, and audio recaps of training sessions. (Sources: trainer interviews and analytics)
• Trainers need to link to content in training plans. (Source: trainer interviews)
• Trainers need to store owners’ information. (Source: trainer interviews)
• Trainers need to offer secure payment methods integrated with QuickBooks. (Source: trainer interviews)
• Owners expect the flexibility to schedule their own training sessions. (Source: dog owner interviews)
• Booking training sessions has a 60% dropoff rate. (Source: analytics)
• 20% of owners book repeat training sessions within 2 weeks. (Source: analytics)
• 40% of owners pay invoices for training sessions within 24 hours. (Source: analytics)

With this information in mind, you can begin redesigning the platform. Keep certainties visible in the CSD matrix to recap what’s known and what’s already being addressed in the design.

Suppositions

The Suppositions column contains plausible, testable hypotheses. In our example project, early suppositions after initial discovery activities could be:

• The booking website is confusing and contains bugs. (Source: design review)
• Dog owners lack helpful information to prepare for training sessions. (Source: owner interviews)
• Owners don’t go back to check post-session training plans. (Source: owner interviews)
• Owners forget to schedule and pay for subsequent sessions. (Source: owner interviews)
• Owners forget when they’ve scheduled sessions. (Source: owner interviews)
• The backend training-plan tool is difficult to use. (Source: trainer interviews)
• There is little-to-no follow-up communication currently. (Source: trainer and owner interviews)

Unlike assumptions, which are made without any proof or evidence, suppositions are informed by sources such as desk research, stakeholder interviews, and past research. They could also be inklings from initial qualitative user research. Quantitative user-research methods, such as A/B testing, surveys, and usability testing, along with more interviews, diary studies, qualitative usability testing, and field studies can invalidate suppositions or validate them as certainties. The additional research aims to provide more information about the issues or opportunities outlined in the suppositions to determine if they are certainties or doubts.

When listing suppositions in the CSD matrix, some teams state the source on which the supposition is based, as well as what kind of data might validate or refute the supposition — like in the following format:

We believe that [action] will result in [outcome or behavior]. This is because of [source for the supposition]. We will know this to be true when we see [data that verifies the supposition].

We believe that allowing dog owners to schedule their own training sessions will result in more training sessions booked. This is because we learned owners expect flexible scheduling in our discovery research. We will know this to be true when we see a significant increase in overall bookings for training sessions.

Doubts

The Doubts column is where the team outlines open questions that need further exploration. Qualitative user-research methods such as interviews, ethnographic methods, and usability testing can confirm doubts or move them to suppositions. In our example scenario, doubts posed as questions could be:

• Are owners comfortable with tracking their training programs online?
• Will owners work with their dogs after sessions?
• Will owners remember to have treats ready for sessions?
• Do owners think their pet will be fully trained after 4 sessions?
• Will owners know to work with their dogs during and after the training sessions?
• Do owners know how to navigate current training plans?
• Are trainers using tablets, computers, or phones?
• Are owners using tablets, computers, or phones?

How to Use a CSD Matrix

Before jumping straight into research or solutions:

1. Use a CSD matrix to outline and align on where everyone is coming from — both on the project team and at the leadership and stakeholder levels.
2. When the team disagrees with a statement or piece of information, pose it as a question and add it to the Doubts column.
3. Refer to the CSD matrix to discuss, prioritize, and plan activities, track research progress, and surface remaining doubts using specific prompts for each information category. For example:

Certainties:

• What do we know?
• How do we know that we know this?
• Where did this information come from?
• How reliable is the data or information?
• What do we do next with this information?

Suppositions:

• What hypotheses do we have?
• Why are these plausible?
• How confident are we in these suppositions?
• From where or when did we learn this information?
• Can we test this supposition to get certainty? How?
• What's the priority of testing this supposition?

Doubts:

• What don't we know?
• What do we need to learn?
• Who do we need to talk to?
• What are the risks?

Refrain from scrutinizing the level of detail when outlining the certainties, suppositions, and doubts; aim for clarity and quality over communicating every detail.

While one person can fill out a CSD matrix alone, doing it in a collaborative workshop enables you to get many different viewpoints, hypotheses, and open questions. The goal of the activity is not to reach consensus but to gather and organize information from diverse perspectives.

In addition to the three information types, include rows in the CSD matrix to organize the information and to show relationships. Grouping similar information into rows helps you to plan your research so you can address doubts or suppositions with the same methods or sessions.

Adding rows can also help with prioritizing research topics, selecting methods, and surfacing crossfunctional individuals to involve in activities. Rows can group items that relate to one of the following:

• User(s) (groups, segments, needs, wants, pain points)
• Business (goals, objectives, KPIs, metrics, and key results)
• Technology (tools and systems)
• People (internal teams, resourcing)
• Process (workflows, dependencies)
• Status (in-progress doubts and suppositions)
• Priority (high, medium, low)

How Information Evolves in the Matrix

Doubts and suppositions shouldn’t remain static in the CSD matrix. The goal is to move as many suppositions and doubts to certainty as possible.

For example, say we have a supposition in the matrix that says:

We believe that by providing a reusable training-plan structure, trainers will have a better experience using the backend tool and dog owners will access training plans more after sessions. We will know this to be true when we see an increase in usage from both groups and an increase in satisfaction.

To test this plausible hypothesis with an experiment, we could launch an MVP version of the structured-training plan. If we hear the feedback and see the metrics we expect, our supposition would be confirmed. We could then move this information from the Suppositions column to the Certainties column, ideally linking to lightweight documentation about the experiment, results, and next steps.

We can take a similar approach with doubts: once we have the answers to questions in the Doubts column, the new information may be added to the Suppositions or Certainties columns, or the doubt may disappear altogether.

For example, let’s take the doubt Do owners remember to practice with their dogs after sessions? To get initial answers, your team interviews a few dog owners who have taken training before. The conversations suggest that some owners don’t practice after training sessions, which may lead to low rebooking rates. We could then add this supposition to the CSD matrix:

We believe that providing step-by-step practice recaps will help owners feel more confident in booking subsequent training sessions. This is because in our initial interviews, we learned that owners don’t always remember how to practice after sessions. We will know this to be true when we see an increased rate of booking repeat training sessions.

Goals with the CSD Matrix

Though the first column in the CSD matrix is labeled Certainties, there is no such thing as 100% certainty in UX: people are nuanced, and their needs, expectations, and emotions change and evolve. Keep an open mind about undiscovered doubts or implausible suppositions. The goals are to reduce doubts and increase certainties to get as clear of an idea as possible of what everyone knows or doesn’t yet know so that you can decide what to do next.

Use a CSD matrix to organize and facilitate ongoing discovery research. It can define open questions and strategies to confirm or clarify details. It is also a helpful scoping tool, bringing transparency to what’s known or unknown and allowing teams to shape and timebox subsequent activities.

Conduct research and update the matrix to reflect areas where initial questions are resolved by moving them from Doubts to Certainties or by removing them from the matrix. Link to your research repository for additional information and evidence so other teams can understand the origins of the conclusions and decisions.

The CSD matrix is highly adaptable and valuable throughout various product-development phases:

• Visioning and strategy: Outline what’s known and unknown about the current state of your experience to inform the direction for the future state.
• Early discovery and exploratory research: Outline what’s known from early discovery activities or desk research and where additional research is needed to answer specific questions.
• Service design and internal processes: Outline what you know about how people, processes, tools, and technology support the user experience and what’s left to learn or observe with your internal teams and workflows.
• Content strategy and design: Outline what works well for driving user and business goals with content, where to experiment, and where you have doubts about current approaches or processes.
• UI and visual design: Outline what works well for driving user and business goals with design, where to experiment, and where you have doubts about current patterns or components.
• Where to iterate next, features to explore, or prioritize: Outline what to preserve in the experience, what to iterate on, or retire from the experience.

In your next discovery or UX project, experiment with using a CSD matrix to outline what you know and still need to learn. Use our Excel and Miro templates below to start.

For more practice using structured frameworks to organize discovery, take our training course, Discoveries: Building the Right Thing.

References

The CSD matrix and technique were originally created by Tennyson Pinheiro, Luis Alt, and the team at Livework São Paulo. It is also published in the book, Design Thinking Brasil.