I look at UX exploration as a formatted strategy for growing knowledge for defining business landscape and positioning a product (technological or physical) .
Formatted strategy in general investigates along these broad lines of inquiry:
business landscape:
who is there, what they are up to, what need are they fulfilling, and hoping to fulfill, as well as what they are really offering;
same goes for us: where we are, what need we want to service, what we are really offering and boils down to what service and product should we provide to outsmart competition and help fulfill the need that we identified.
some people like to call this structure as analytic and content audit, competitor analysis and value proposition.
user landscape:
zooming in to who our uses really are, how they find us and how they currently solve the problem that they have; as well as what their fears are and what their hopes are.
personalizing inquiry and envisioning all the steps that
tools landscape:
Natasha Bajc 