(2017-09-26) Martin Should You Bother With Design Sprints

Dave Martin: Should you bother with Design Sprints? A skeptic’s experience

At the end of the day, the team including the CEO, was in full agreement. We had learned lots. We had clear patterns that gave us answers to our questions. We understood our users around this problem domain with far more depth. A number of previous perceptions were changed. The week as a great success and the product manager knew exactly what to do next. The problem was a big one, it was still a huge challenge but our odds at tackling the right bite sized chunk and winning had improved dramatically from the start of the week.

Day one rocked, but I am already exhausted

The second half of the sprint question session opened up to a wider area producing really great questions. The questions were interesting but their purpose was not clear

we kicked off the mapping. This really was tough going. We created lots of moments, we were fearful the map was incomplete and overly granular which felt negative to a few team members?

I made a mistake taking too long over grouping the HMW notes - on reflection due to volume I should have de-duped them first, then grouped around big ideas and not worried about everything being in a group.

A pressure pot doomed for failure? Design sprint day two.

It's day two of our first design sprint at Tes, I was unconvinced of today's schedule, two and a half hours of putting people on the spot to give ad hoc lightening talks and capture the “big idea”. Is it fair to do this with no preparation?

The session started by prompting people to suggest products we could look at. To my surprise we very quickly listed out over 30 different products from many sectors that we might learn from.

Together we captured 40 ideas and used the full 2 and half hours.

The crazy 8s exercise pushed peoples creativity and forced faster thinking

At the end of the day we had 7 solution sketches all focused on our goal and sprint questions.

Decisions, Decisions. Day three of design sprint.

We kicked off the "art museum" task, where everyone reviews each solution sketch in silence.

time for the heat map excise

We moved swiftly on to the speed critique session

4 minutes per solution sketch

Straw poll was next

we rearranged the solutions sketches into "maybe later" and "winners". We discussed the option of a "rumble" or "all in one" prototype, i.e competing prototypes or all ideas in one prototype. The ideas were complimentary and fitted in one

I was worried the decision makers could theoretically choose 6 out of 7 solutions, thankfully 3 solutions were picked to prototype

Having an experienced UX researcher in the room helped shape the way forwards

One of the team raised a concern that around what happens to the ideas that did not win, or even the ideas from yesterday which were good but did not get sketched. It felt a waste to let these end up in the trash. The product manager in the room offered to capture these add them to the ideas pipeline. I might of missed it, but I don't remember this being mentioned in Jake Knapp's book "Sprint".

Building a prototype in one day

The sprint book suggests 90% of the time Keynote is a suitable tool

our testers were remote via video chat software. Keynote presented a few challenges, we couldn't just share a URL and have the tester share their screen via zoom

By 12 noon I realised we were not so efficient. We had no screens complete

We paused, disused a stitching the components together in Marval but the makers felt that was more work and they could go quicker doing it. They were confident they could do it. This approach wad in retrospect a mistake

I had not followed some processes I would have naturally used in such a situation. Instead I was so focused on design sprint process I forgot to do what I am good at

Day of reckoning, design sprint day 5

The test went incredibly well, it really helped that our interviewer was a ux researcher with a lot of experience running such tests. The rest of the sprint team created a lot of post it notes. Our observation board was split into 4 key questions and a misc area.

By the 3pm we had tested with a few more teachers, created a lot of observations and were ready to discuss our findings. We had unfortunately not managed to test with 5 teachers, but the patterns of learnings were conclusive

The team was in agreement. The patterns were very clear. Out of 4 key assumptions one was all red (negative), one was all green (positive), one was 50/50 and one was more red than green.

The product manager could prioritise high level focus towards our big goal, which previously was based on survey data that could have been interpreted to support the first assumption that was all red.

I started the design sprint journey as a nay sayer, because I misunderstood the process, now I am an advocate.