After completing the Unknown Knowns exercise, take down the sticky notes with questions on them and place them in their groups on another Knowledge Map under relevant Knowledge Area headings (problem, context, and past and current efforts).

Give each participant three sticky dots and ask them to use these to ‘vote’ for the most important questions that remain by sticking a dot on the relevant note. This will provide you with the priority questions to answer (choose a manageable number from the top-ranked questions).

As a group, propose and discuss how you might answer each question based on the types of research – desk review, interview, or observation – and write their suggestions down on coloured sticky notes, or using different coloured pens (eg, orange for desk review, green for interview or focus group discussion (FGD) and red for observation).

Remember that it is unlikely that any one type of research will provide you with information about all three Knowledge Areas. But through a combination of desk research, interviews and direct observations (and various activities), you should be able to uncover relevant information pertaining to all three areas.

Next, come together as a group and go through each sticky note, getting specific on the what and the how.

• Desk review: try to identify the website, portal, repository, publication, author, research institute, etc, that you would consult to acquire relevant materials. Note that a desk review can be comprised of publicly available materials published online, as well as the review of internal materials, such as strategy documents or internal audits.
• Interviews and focus group discussion: try to make note of who you would like to interview or engage in an FDG (eg, users of a product or service, crisis-affected populations, humanitarian practitioners or managers, thematic experts) and why you would like to speak with them.
• Observation tour: try to make note of where you might like to undertake a site visit (eg, a particular office environment, or a distribution point) and what you expect to learn.

Finally, map it out! Take the coloured sticky notes and lay them out on your Knowledge Map.

• What does it look like?
• Are any colours overly represented in some areas?
• Why do you think that is?
• Do some activities generate knowledge in more than one area? Do some areas look bare?
• What will you do about that?

You should now have two Knowledge Maps, one with your known knowns and the other with your known unknowns, along with the research questions that you will answer by carrying out interviews and focus group discussions, desk research or observational activities.