LESSON 6 Design Sprint PDF

Republic of the Philippines POLYTECHNIC UNIVERSITY OF THE PHILIPPINES OFFICE OF THE VICE PRESIDENT FOR BRANCHES AND EXTENSIONS MARAGONDON BRANCH LESSON 6 Design Sprint (De...

Republic of the Philippines POLYTECHNIC UNIVERSITY OF THE PHILIPPINES OFFICE OF THE VICE PRESIDENT FOR BRANCHES AND EXTENSIONS MARAGONDON BRANCH LESSON 6 Design Sprint (Design Thinking v.2.0) Learning Objectives At the end of this lesson, you should be able to: 1. Define Design Sprint; 2. Discuss the pitfalls and cautions in design sprint; 3. Determine the weeklong design strategy; 4. Identify when should a design sprint be used Discussion Design sprints are an intense 5-day process where user-centered teams tackle design problems. Working with expert insights, teams ideate, prototype and test solutions on selected users. Google’s design sprint is the framework to map out challenges, explore solutions, pick the best ones, create a prototype and test it. “To accomplish great things, we must not only act, but also dream; not only plan, but also believe.” — Anatole France, Poet, journalist & novelist Google Design Sprint: https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/topics/design-sprints Former Google Ventures design partner Jake Knapp devised the design sprint process for Google in 2010. He drew inspiration from areas such as Google's product development culture and IDEO’s design thinking workshops. In design sprints, teams work on problems and goals differently than they do when confined to their departments in the traditional waterfall process. A carefully selected team from across an organization collaborates and will go from defining a user problem to testing a potential solution within 5 days. They use a systematic approach and efficient time management. Sprints are also integral to agile development, where self-organized, cross-functional teams work to produce short-term deliverables and improve quality while keeping a careful watch over current user needs and any changing circumstances. The main value of sprints is the speed at which design teams can concentrate on one or more user needs and sharply defined goals. Under time-boxed conditions, team members work first to understand these and then progressively ideate, critique, and fine-tune their way towards a testable prototype. Eliminating distractions is key to this process, and the intense focus on specific user needs and goals calls for dedicated time away from everyday business. Since the design sprint process is streamlined and enables teams to produce deliverables and confirm or discard assumptions about users quickly, it helps to keep costs down. Therefore, cash-strapped startups can especially benefit from using design sprints. Prepared by: Ms. Eloisa Mae Lipio  Republic of the Philippines POLYTECHNIC UNIVERSITY OF THE PHILIPPINES OFFICE OF THE VICE PRESIDENT FOR BRANCHES AND EXTENSIONS MARAGONDON BRANCH Whatever the size of your organization, you should approach a design sprint like this: 1. Before a sprint, it’s vital to: a. Select the right members for your small team—e.g., a facilitator to track the team’s progress, a financial expert, etc. b. Reserve an entire workweek for the team to dedicate to the sprint so members can conveniently work undisturbed. c. Stock up on Post-It notes, whiteboards and markers to use in the chosen location. 2. When ready, your team should approach the sprint this way: a. Monday: Work with experts across the organization to map out the problem and determine the sprint’s overall goal. You should proceed to understand your users and their problems via customer journey maps and empathy maps. b. Tuesday: Explore potential solutions through ideation. Your team should examine sources of inspiration by seeing which existing ideas they can improve and freely sketching possible solutions. c. Wednesday: Critique the team’s solutions to determine which are most likely to succeed. Adapt these ideas/sketches into storyboards. d. Thursday: Construct a working prototype from the storyboards. e. Friday: Conduct user testing of the prototype on a sample of at least five users. 3. At the end of the sprint, you can expect one of these outcomes: a. A successful failure—where you learned valuable information from your prototype, and thus avoided sinking months into creating the wrong product. You should run a follow-up sprint to explore new angles. b. A flawed win—where you clearly identified what works, what doesn’t and why. You should iterate to fine-tune adjustments and test again. c. A resounding victory—where your prototype enabled users to solve their problems and met (if not exceeded) their expectations. You now have a clear path towards your end product. Prepared by: Ms. Eloisa Mae Lipio  Republic of the Philippines POLYTECHNIC UNIVERSITY OF THE PHILIPPINES OFFICE OF THE VICE PRESIDENT FOR BRANCHES AND EXTENSIONS MARAGONDON BRANCH What Are the Design Sprint Principles? 1. Together alone Design Sprints rediscovered the power of silence. Three to ten minutes of silent thinking are very beneficial for introverts, allowing them to gather their thoughts and contribute more actively. At the same time, it helps the team mitigate the “group think” or go for the “quick win.” 2. Tangible discussion In a Design Sprint, everything is captured. Hundreds of color-coded sticky notes on the walls or on digital whiteboards replace the team’s short-time memory and help focus the attention on the things that matter the most. 3. Everyone has a voice Nobody is left behind in a Design Sprint. A Design Sprint Facilitator manages the group dynamics and the conversations, ensuring everyone gets the chance to share their opinion and make decisions. 4. Strict time boundaries Design Sprints follow a strict schedule. All team activities are time-boxed and focused, ensuring the team moves fast through the week. Advantages of a Design Sprint The Design Sprint process is a short, time-boxed series of activities that stakeholders are often more willing to try because of the relatively small investment of time, attention, and money. The process produces relatively small, incremental improvements by focusing on priority problems and opportunities. This makes it a good complement to agile ways of working due to its potential to create value through continuous improvement and iteration. Because the Design Sprint is a well-structured process that’s easy to follow, it can be applied with limited experience which makes it easy for non-designers to start using. This has also led to the criticism that it devalues the role of the product designer and dilutes specialist skills into a less effective toolkit. Here are the advantages of the Design Sprint: It’s only 5 days long It can be applied with limited experience The process can be repeated often and quickly Well suited to the Agile methodology It’s good for incremental improvements It’s solution focused Good for stakeholder alignment It complements Design Thinking nicely Disadvantages of a Design Sprint Design Sprints are effective when applied to projects that have a knowledge base of user research in place and the scope of the project is fairly well defined. Without these elements in place, Sprints won’t be focused or evidence-based and are unlikely to produce good results. Prepared by: Ms. Eloisa Mae Lipio  Republic of the Philippines POLYTECHNIC UNIVERSITY OF THE PHILIPPINES OFFICE OF THE VICE PRESIDENT FOR BRANCHES AND EXTENSIONS MARAGONDON BRANCH A Design Sprint is unlikely to produce radical innovations but rather small incremental improvements. Solutions are often based on the knowledge of participants and SMEs, this leads to a lack of fresh insights feeding into the project and constrains potential solutions to what is already known. Due to the fast-paced nature, there isn’t much time for deep thought or customer involvement. This means that decisions are often based on assumptions made by people from within the business. The validation stage towards the end can, of course, validate this thinking and with each iteration, the knowledge base can grow. However, Design Sprints are often selected as a methodology because they are short. Here are the disadvantages of the Design Sprint: It’s unlikely to produce radical innovations Solutions are based on what is already known Not much time for deep thought and research They can become business rather than customer driven It’s simplicity disguises it’s need for expert facilitation What do you need to run a Design Sprint? A decider. They call the shots. Whether that’s the CEO or senior executive, they should be involved in the discussions early on since their decision will influence the sprint goal and the final product. Facilitator. The time keeper. They keep track of the team’s progress during the Design Sprint and ensure that everyone is playing their part. They need to remain unbiased in their opinion when it comes to decision time. Marketing expert. The person who is skilled at crafting your company’s messaging to your customers. Customer service. They interact with your customers on a regular basis and truly understand who your users are. Design expert. They design the product and help to realise the vision of the goal. Tech expert. They are in the best position to understand what your company can build and deliver. Financial expert. They can explain how much the project will cost and how much the company can expect to get from it in return. Preparation: Block out the entire week in you and your team’s calendar. No devices are allowed in the room. This is so that the entire team is focussed one hundred percent of the time. Stock up on post-it notes. You’ll need these to jot down ideas and map them on a wall. Whiteboards and plenty of markers. Weeklong Design Strategy Prepared by: Ms. Eloisa Mae Lipio  Republic of the Philippines POLYTECHNIC UNIVERSITY OF THE PHILIPPINES OFFICE OF THE VICE PRESIDENT FOR BRANCHES AND EXTENSIONS MARAGONDON BRANCH Monday: Understand the problem What is the long-term goal? “Why are we doing this project? Where do we want to be six months, a year or even five years from now?” At the start of the sprint, you need to set a long term goal. This should serve as your beacon of light to keep everyone moving in the same direction. Once established, it’s important to turn the goal into actionable items by rephrasing your assumptions and obstacles into sprint questions. For example, if your long term goal is to “build an army of loyalists through products that deliver reasons to return”; then a sprint question could be “will customers feel motivated to recommend us?”. What are your users’ pain points? After you’ve defined your long term goal and sprint questions, start by mapping out your customer journey. It’s important to understand who your customers are, so conducting user research in advance is vital. Empathy mapping. The Empathy map is a visual way to better understand your users and prioritise their needs. The map helps to identify any key themes and problems affecting your users based on their quotes, actions, behaviours, pains and feelings captured throughout the user research and expert interviews. Our Empathy map based on our users. Customer Journey. The Customer Journey map helps to visualise a customer’s end to end experience with your product or service. This allows the team to narrow down a broad challenge to a specific target for the sprint. Swim lane diagram. Combining the Empathy map with the Customer Journey map will create a Swim Lane diagram. This diagram serves to create a heat map of the problems that exist within each step of the customer journey. How Might We turn this problem into an opportunity? The How Might We method is used to turn existing problems into opportunities. For example, if the problem is that “users struggle to know what to buy for their friend as a gift”, then the How Might We could be “how might we help the user better understand what they know about their friend?”. Use the dot voting system to prioritise the How Might We notes and decide on which focus area to target for your sprint. Which problem do we target? “Who is the most important customer, and what’s the critical moment of that customer’s experience?” At the end of the day, the decider needs to select one target customer and one target event on the Customer Journey map to focus on. This will become the focus problem for the rest of the sprint. Tuesday: Ideate the solutions Remix and improve with Lightning Demos Lightning demos encourage your team to research competitors and find examples of existing products that could serve as inspiration for your solution. Each person should give a 3 minute demo of their findings. Sketch in four steps Prepared by: Ms. Eloisa Mae Lipio  Republic of the Philippines POLYTECHNIC UNIVERSITY OF THE PHILIPPINES OFFICE OF THE VICE PRESIDENT FOR BRANCHES AND EXTENSIONS MARAGONDON BRANCH The Four-Step Sketch The four-step sketch method forces you to create solutions in an effective manner whilst iterating on each variation along the way. 1. Notes. Start with twenty minutes to take notes of the goal, opportunities and inspiration you’ve collected earlier on. 2. Ideas. Spend another twenty minutes drawing out rough ideas to form your thoughts. 3. Crazy 8s. Take your strongest solution and sketch out eight different variations of it in eight minutes, known as the ‘Crazy 8s’ exercise. 4. Solution sketch. Draw a detailed end to end solution for the problem in the next thirty minutes or more. Wednesday: Make a decision Decide on the best solution to prototype The process to reaching consensus on the best solution can be carried out in five steps: 1. Art museum. Put all the sketches on a wall to create an art gallery. Ideally, the sketches should be anonymous, so the facilitator should assist with hanging them up. 2. Heat map. Each team member is given three dot stickers to assign to the sketches or parts of the sketches that they find interesting. This is to be done in silence. 3. Speed critique. Each member selects a drawing that is not their own and quickly walks through the solution, using sticky notes to capture the big ideas. 4. Dot voting. Each team member is given one vote (one dot sticker) to choose the best solution and justify their decision. 5. Supervote. The decider makes the final call with three votes (three dot stickers). Create a story board Prepared by: Ms. Eloisa Mae Lipio  Republic of the Philippines POLYTECHNIC UNIVERSITY OF THE PHILIPPINES OFFICE OF THE VICE PRESIDENT FOR BRANCHES AND EXTENSIONS MARAGONDON BRANCH On a whiteboard, draw five to seven frames (and up to no more than fifteen) to start the storyboard. The first frame should contain the opening scene to provide context and familiarity to your users just before they interact with your product. For example, it could be a simple web search, a store shelf, app store or social media site. Thursday: Create a prototype Once you’ve drawn out the storyboard, devote the entire day to building the prototype. The secret to building a prototype is to fake it. Aim to create a prototype of “Goldilocks quality”. Ideally the quality should be good enough so that it appears real to users but not too much that you spend forever perfecting it. For example, creating mockups using Sketch or Keynote and importing that into a prototyping tool like Invision is an easy way to get software prototypes out quickly. To tackle the task, the sprint team should be split up into the following: Makers. Usually at least 2 designers or engineers responsible for creating the individual components of the prototype. Stitcher. Either a designer or engineer should be collecting the components from the Makers and combining them into a seamless fashion. Writer. Usually the product manager should be writing realistic text to ensure that the language makes sense to the user. Asset Collector. They are responsible for scouring the web and image libraries to provide photos, icons or relevant content to assist the Makers. Interviewer. They should write the interview script for Friday’s customer interviews. Friday: Test your prototype with users Test it with users When it comes to user testing, the Nielsen model suggests that you only need to interview five users who fit in with your target customer profile. The rationale behind this is that testing more than five users diminishes the value of return since you will already have identified 85% of the problems after listening to five people. The questions and tasks that you ask the user to perform during the interview should simulate a real world environment whilst the sprint team watches the recording in a separate room. Learning from feedback Ideally, you should watch the recordings together as a group. Draw a table on a whiteboard divided up into five columns for the five customers and rows for each area or task of the prototype they addressed. Prepared by: Ms. Eloisa Mae Lipio  Republic of the Philippines POLYTECHNIC UNIVERSITY OF THE PHILIPPINES OFFICE OF THE VICE PRESIDENT FOR BRANCHES AND EXTENSIONS MARAGONDON BRANCH Look for patterns and themes in the feedback and work towards prioritizing these into your backlog as items or features to address in the next iteration of your product. When Should a Design Sprint Be Used A Design Sprint can be used to develop solutions in a variety of problem areas but it’s primarily designed to develop already established digital products with well-defined scope and a knowledge base already in place. The Design Sprint is effective for continuous improvement and rapid iterations of existing digital products. They go hand in hand with agile ways of working because they can be repeated often, each time on a different focus area. They’re effective at exploring solutions quickly and getting validation from customers before committing large amounts of money, time, and attention. This makes them attractive to budget-conscious managers and teams with limited time and resources. How to Combine Design Thinking With Design Sprints Design Thinking is effective for understanding the complex, varied, and changing needs of humans. This deep insight allows practitioners to solve complex problems and design innovative solutions. The Design Sprint methodology is effective for aligning stakeholders and rapidly iterating existing digital products. This speed and focus makes it an ideal process for use in agile ways of working prior to delivery. The two can be combined and leveraged to create value at different phases of product development. The Design Thinking process can be used before development has started, during discovery, to build a knowledge base and explore a range of possible innovations. This can give the product team the information they need about the user experience, in order to give context and direction to the development team. Prepared by: Ms. Eloisa Mae Lipio  Republic of the Philippines POLYTECHNIC UNIVERSITY OF THE PHILIPPINES OFFICE OF THE VICE PRESIDENT FOR BRANCHES AND EXTENSIONS MARAGONDON BRANCH Later in the development process, once this foundation has been established, the Design Sprint method can be used to rapidly iterate the digital product, producing incremental improvements for continuous delivery, within agile sprints to refine and validate ideas. References https://businessinnovation.design/blog/2014/3/23/why-design-thinking-will-fail https://www.designcouncil.org.uk/news-opinion/guardian-benefits-design-thinking https://medium.com/innovation-sweet-spot/5-tips-for-avoiding-the-pitfalls-of-design-thinking- c351a101ac18 https://makeiterate.com/design-thinking-vs-design- sprints/#:~:text=The%20Design%20Sprint%20is%20best,different%20phases%20of%20product %20development. https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/topics/design-sprints https://uxplanet.org/whats-a-design-sprint-and-why-is-it-important-f7b826651e09 https://www.designsprint.academy/dsa-blog/what-is-a-design-sprint Prepared by: Ms. Eloisa Mae Lipio