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Acknowledgements

Berlin, Germany April, 2020

The Ultimate Guide to Remote Design Sprints would not exist

without the support, dedication and hard work of AJ&Smart’s
Product Design Team.

We also want to thank the Design Sprint community for the

inspiration, commitment and enthusiasm to continuously improve
the process behind the Design Sprint. Never stop asking the
important questions of how we can all work smarter and create
better products, faster!

Finally, we truly appreciate the community feedback we receive

every day and we will be updating this guide based on the
suggestions we get from you, the reader! We value any and all
feedback we receive about improving various aspects of the
Design Sprint process, so we are looking forward to hearing your
ideas and advice.

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The Ultimate Guide to Remote Design
Sprints by AJ&Smart

Over the last 5 years, AJ&Smart has run hundreds of Design Sprints
on complex product and business challenges all over the world.
Seeing first-hand how effective the Design Sprint methodology is at
solving demanding problems, we decided to share our knowledge
with anybody who wants to work smarter and create better
products, faster.
  
It took us a lot of trial and error to figure out the best practices for
running Remote Design Sprints. Don’t worry, you don’t have to go
through it too! We pooled all our knowledge and lessons learned
and compiled them in this handy guide, just for you! This is *the*
guide for anybody who wants to learn how to set up, run and
facilitate a successful Remote Design Sprint.
 
Running a Design Sprint remotely can seem daunting at first, but
we believe that Remote Design Sprints are not a challenge to
overcome but an opportunity to make your work easier, more
collaborative and efficient.

In this guide, we have collected all our resources, tools, hacks, tricks
and much more for running successful Remote Design Sprints. We
have also included useful links and tips from other companies who
make working remotely a breeze.

Let's dive in!

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Why Run Remote Design Sprints?

Here are some of the main advantages of running a fully remote

Design Sprint:

• Team location and availability are not an issue when

sprinting remotely. Not everyone can travel or block an
entire day for an in-person workshop, but shorter, remote
workshop sessions allow for a lot more fl exibility. This can
be a huge help when trying to convince a client to run a
Remote Design Sprint with you. What is more, you will have
an unlimited pool of user testers at your disposal and
recruiting gets a lot easier.

• No workshop space? No problem. Let’s face it: Having

access to a perfect workshop space is a rare treat. You have
to work with what you get and often you will have to accept
constraints like cramped, dark rooms, tiny whiteboards and
sticky notes that fall off the walls. All of these things are
non-issues when you work digitally. You can set up the
perfect workspace template for your Sprint workshop and
use it over and over again.

• It is efficient! Less busy work, less paper waste. At the

end of an in-person workshop, the walls are covered with
sticky notes, sketches and paper. You will spend a lot of
time after the workshop is over to digitise the results and
then you throw most of it into the garbage bin. In a remote

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 workshop, everything is already fully digital and can be
easily documented, recorded (with permission, of course!)
and shared. 

• Contributing ideas is easier, faster and more

anonymous. Working digitally allows people to focus on
capturing ideas instead of worrying about handwriting or
ownership of ideas. It is easy to write and rewrite ideas
clearly and quickly, without legibility being an issue.

• It gives facilitators more tools to help others. During an

in-person workshop, it can be hard to switch from
managing the group to helping individuals. When working
remotely, monitoring the progress of each participant is a
lot easier and allows you to do discreet, individual
coaching when you see someone is struggling. In addition,
sharing instructions with everyone becomes a lot easier.

• More focus and quicker sessions. Working with a group

of people in one room can be a lot of fun, but it can also
lead to distractions, such as unrelated conversations
happening at the back of the room or long, chatty coffee
breaks. When working remotely, it is easier to keep the
focus on the workshop and it allows facilitators to manage
the group dynamics a lot better. Furthermore, remote
sessions are shorter than their in-person counterparts, so
you will achieve more in even less time.

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 • And last, but not least… you probably already run
partially Remote Design Sprints anyway! Think about it:
apart from the workshop, how much of the work involved in
a Sprint is currently already remote? From conducting
research interviews with stakeholders, to prototyping in
Figma, to user tests via video call – with a few adjustments
and proper planning, you can easily make the jump to a
fully Remote Design Sprint.

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The Challenges of Running a Remote
Design Sprint

Make no mistake: running Design Sprints remains hard work, and

Remote Sprints come with their own, unique set of challenges:
 
• Working across different time zones. A Remote Design
Sprint makes it easier to include people who couldn’t travel or
weren’t able to free up their calendar to join in for an all-day
session. However, this also means you have to deal with time
zone differences and time slots which work for everyone.

• Lower engagement and lack of interpersonal dynamics.

Working together in the same location makes it easier to keep
everyone highly engaged and accountable. When you have a
distributed team, you have to work harder to keep them
focused on the task at hand instead of the million little
distractions the Internet has to offer.

• Technical issues. Small tech issues can compound quickly

and lead to a lot of frustration. Examples include slow or
inconsistent wifi connection, low battery, broken mics and
glitchy webcams.

• Remote collaboration. Working in the same location and

covering it with sticky notes, sketches and drawings on
whiteboards makes collaboration feel real to people quickly.

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 Working remotely can feel abstract at fi rst, so using the right
tools to collaborate in real-time is very important.

Don’t worry! In this guide, we will show you how to handle each
individual challenge with the right techniques and tools.

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How to Run Remote Design Sprints
Successfully

Running a successful Remote Design Sprint is dependent on three

factors:

• Correct preparation and onboarding. Preparation is

important for any workshop, but even more so when it is run
remotely! You would never start an in-person workshop
without all the necessary materials and properly setting up the
room. Similarly, during the run-up of your remote workshop
don’t forget to set up your workspace, test your tools and
make sure people can get started with as little friction or dead
air as possible. Taking the time to manage everybody’s
expectations and frame the workshop’s purpose will make a
huge difference, both on the participants’ satisfaction and
your own peace of mind.  

• The right choice of tools. There is no shortage of fantastic

tools to collaborate and communicate, but not all of them are
appropriate for every situation. Depending on who you work
with and their location, there might be restrictions on what
tools they can access and use. Make sure to take this into
consideration when you are planning the workshop and
always have alternatives to fall back on.

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 • Facilitation. It is even more important in Remote Design
Sprints to have a strong Facilitator. They set the rules and the
pace of the workshop, ensuring everyone has clarity on each
exercise, understands the importance of the task and knows
how much time they have. Everyone else should be on mute
for most of the workshop. They can use the chat function to
ask questions and the Facilitator reads these out and answers
them for the whole group.

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Onboarding

Proper onboarding is the secret sauce that leads to smooth,

successful Sprints! It makes ALL the difference when you do the
groundwork of setting things up thoroughly and in advance.

The onboarding phase is critical because it sets up the stage for the
entire collaboration and allows you to set up the tech properly,
understand the challenges better, identify misalignments faster,
defuse conflict and anxiety earlier and manage the expectations of
each participant. 

Your role during the onboarding is a mixture of a pilot and a flight

attendant on a passenger plane. Similarly to a pilot you run
technical checks and make sure that everything is going according
to plan. On top of that, you welcome the participants on board,
make sure they feel comfortable and know what they can expect,
just like a flight attendant would.

Remember: Just because YOU know what a Design Sprint is, it

doesn’t mean that every single participant knows it too. There
might be misunderstandings about the difference between a
remote workshop and a conference call and it is up to you to clear
them up. 

In this regard, running the entire Sprint remotely is similar to

running it in-person. Dotting the i's and crossing the t's during the
onboarding will make your life easier, lead to better outcomes and

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make the entire experience a lot better and pleasant for the
participants. 

Here are the things we do in the preparation and onboarding

phase of a Remote Design Sprint that we consider best practices.

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Talk to the Decider
 
Usually, the first touchpoint in the preparation of a Design Sprint
is a chat with the Decider or the project’s owner. This is usually
the same person, however, often when working with enterprise
clients, it might be different people. 
 
Either way, jump on a call with the Decider as soon as possible
and use this opportunity to get as much information and insights
as possible about the problem space and the challenge (tip: ask
for permission to record these calls for reference!). You should
also be ready to run them through a quick overview of the Sprint
process and give them the opportunity to ask questions. 
 
In addition, ask them to confirm who is going to take part in the
Sprint workshop! It often happens that this hasn’t been decided
yet – if that is the case, coach them on the right team selection.
Keep in mind that you need to onboard the other team
members, so make sure that you know who the participants are
as soon as possible.
 
Useful tools and templates:
 
Loom - Loom records your screen right from your browser. All
recordings are uploaded to the cloud, ready for sharing.
Zoom - Reliable video conferencing that works seamlessly from all
kinds of devices and can handle large numbers of participants
without any issues. For remote workshops with larger groups
consider getting a pro account.

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AJ&Smart 15
 

Send an onboarding message to all

participants
 
As soon as you know who is going to join the Sprint, the very first
thing you should do is to send each participant a friendly
onboarding message where you welcome them, introduce
yourself (and your team) and give them an overview of the
project’s timeline. 
 
Provide a link to an online scheduling tool

In your first message include a link to an online scheduling tool

so that you can book individual interviews with each team
member. The interviews themselves can all happen the week
before the Sprint, but finding the right time gets more
complicated as time passes. Therefore, do this as early as
possible to avoid issues with participants’ availability. 
 
Provide a link to an online survey

Another link you should include in your onboarding message is

to an online survey where each participant can go through a
brief questionnaire to get more insights on the challenge. This is
also a great way to detect a lack of alignment in the group – the
earlier you are aware of this, the better. The survey has another
benefit - when you look at the results, you will see who hasn’t
responded yet, most likely because they haven’t read the

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message. This is something that happens in almost every Sprint
and it never happens because of malice or a lack of interest.
Sometimes, emails don’t make it through a firewall or are
classified as spam – it happens. If you do this in advance, you will
have plenty of time to reach out to participants individually and
remind them to go through the survey and schedule a call.

 
Useful tools and templates:
 
Basecamp - AJ&Smart uses Basecamp to keep all communications
about a project in one place to avoid messy inboxes and email
threads, and allow every team member to easily find up-to-date
information about a project and what everybody is working on.
https://youcanbook.me/ - Online scheduling made easy! Just
defi ne time slots and ask participants to pick the one that suits
them best. You will automatically get it in your calendar.
Survey template on Google Forms - This is the template for the
survey we send to all Sprint participants in preparation of the
one-on-one interviews. We gather insights to uncover potential
misalignment in the group and get data to frame the challenge in
preparation of the workshops!
 
 

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One-on-one interviews with the
participants
 
If you followed the process outlined above, you should have
time blocked in your calendar with individual one-on-one
interviews with each participant the week before the first remote
workshop kicks off. You should also have each participant’s
responses to the survey and you can use this information to
structure the call and ask clarifying questions when needed.
 
Use the insights of the interviews to populate the workspace

Each of these interviews is a goldmine of information and will

help you have a much smoother workshop. We use the insights
to already populate the workspace of our collaboration tool with
virtual HMW’s, Can We’s, 2-Year-Goal’s and a draft of the map.
This saves a lot of time and helps the group to get started
instead of staring at a blank page.

Brief the participants on the workshop tools

Another important component of these calls is a quick preflight

of the digital whiteboard you will run the workshop on and
ensuring the tech is set up correctly. You really don’t want to find
out on the day of the workshop that some participants don’t
know how to use the tool. Our advice is to do this prep work in
advance, because it is going to save you a lot of trouble.
Otherwise, we guarantee you that people will have technical

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difficulties and this will delay your schedule. This is something
we learned the hard way!

Give the participants a tour of the digital whiteboard you are

using and let them quickly play around with the most important
features. We will describe this in greater detail later, but don’t
worry, it is not complicated! The most important thing they
should learn is how to navigate the workspace and create, copy
and move virtual sticky notes and dots. Keep it simple! There is
no need to confuse them with tools for power users that will only
be used by you.

 
Brief on communication tools and setting

Make sure to ask the participants to check if the communication

tools are set up correctly and if their webcams and microphones
are working properly. Suggest they book a quiet meeting room
with reliable internet for the workshops and ask them to have a
stack of letter-sized paper for sketching nearby. This way, there
are going to be fewer distractions than staying seated at their
desk. They will also feel more comfortable sketching without
curious onlookers.

 
Brief on the workspace setup

We recommend that participants use two screens if possible -

one for the whiteboard and one for the group video. This is a
nice-to-have perk but not always doable. If not, use the call as an

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opportunity to help participants set up their workspace like this:
⅓ of the screen should be dedicated for the video call, and ⅔ for
the digital whiteboard. This way, everyone feels like they are
working as a team and their participation becomes more
collaborative and less anonymous. 

 
Provide information about the Design Sprint

Another important thing to remember: It is likely that the

majority of participants (if not all) don’t know what a Design
Sprint is, confuse it with Sprints from Scrum/ Agile, or have heard
the term but don’t really know what it means in practice. This is
normal and you should consider this the perfect opportunity to
give them an overview of Design Sprints, the outcomes they can
expect, and what the underlying principles are (e.g. “together
alone”). And of course to get them excited! The Sprint workshop
won’t be another tedious conference call or remote meeting. It is
going to be fun, collaborative, creative, challenging – and most
of all, satisfying.
 
If you take advantage of these calls, the entire group is going to
be already familiar with the basics at the start of the workshop.
This will make things run a lot smoother, exercises will be faster
and you can keep each session shorter. 
 

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Useful tools and templates:
 
Loom - Loom records your screen right from your browser. All
recordings are uploaded to the cloud, ready for sharing.
Zoom - Reliable video conferencing that works seamlessly from all
kinds of devices and can handle large numbers of participants
without any issues. For remote workshops with larger groups, you
should definitely get a pro account.
Basecamp - AJ&Smart uses Basecamp to keep all communications
about a project in one place to avoid messy inboxes and email
threads, and to allow every team member to easily find up-to-date
information about a project and what everybody is working on.
Miranda Time Zone App - We use this to quickly find time slots
that work for everyone when scheduling remote workshops across
different time zones. 
Survey template on Google Forms - This is the template for the
survey we send to all Sprint participants in preparation of the
one-on-one interviews. We gather insights to uncover potential
misalignment in the group and get data to frame the challenge in
preparation of the workshops.

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Running a remote workshop

It’s showtime! The time has come to kick off the fi rst remote
workshop of your Design Sprint. 

One by one, participants join the Zoom meeting and you can see
their cursors move over the digital whiteboard. Today you are
going to be busy facilitating, but if you have done the necessary
prep and onboarding work, everything should go smoothly and
you should be able to focus 100% on facilitation. 

Here are a few tips to make your job even easier! 

Your workspace

We run our remote workshops entirely on digital whiteboards.

There are a bunch of great tools out there - we have made good
experiences with Miro, others swear by Mural. We even used
Google Slides once, when Miro was not an option. Honestly, the
tool you prefer is not that important. The important thing is that
participants can all see each other and interact and contribute
to the whiteboard in real-time. This makes collaboration a lot
more tangible.

Prepare the whiteboard

The entire workshop will rely on your digital whiteboard, so take

your time to properly prepare the workspace. The good thing

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about working digitally is that you can create your perfect
workshop setup and then turn it into a template that you can reuse
over and over again. It is a good investment of time that will save
you a lot of work in the long run. 

Reduce presentation channels

We recommend that you avoid jumping back and forth between a

workshop deck and the digital whiteboard. Each time you do that,
some participants will be left behind confused and it will take time
to get everyone’s focus back. Miro allows you to embed slides on
the digital whiteboard directly. Ideally, you would have
onboarded participants to the process before the workshop, so
that everybody understands the principles right before the
workshop starts. This allows you to jump straight into workshop
mode and to get people engaged.

Use separate frames

Our recommendation is to create a separate frame for each

exercise and each part of the workshop: One for HMW’s, one for
the Map, one each for Can We’s and Goals, and so on. Each of
these frames will be the focal point for each exercise and will allow
participants to quickly navigate the workspace. It is also a nice way
to structure the workshop and give participants a sense of
accomplishment as they move through the frames.

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Setting up

Even with diligent preparation and onboarding and even if you

have worked with the client or team remotely before, you
should still buffer 5-10 mins for people to join and work out
the kinks that are bound to happen occasionally in a remote
setup. Take this into account when you are sending out calendar
invites! This way you won’t stress out because you have gone
over schedule.
 
Keep remote workshops shorter

In general, we recommend keeping remote workshops shorter than

their in-person counterparts. Sitting in front of a screen is
surprisingly exhausting and after a while, it gets very hard to stay
focused. We always limit them to a maximum duration of 4 hours –
this includes breaks and an overtime buffer, so realistically you
should be able to finish earlier. There are a couple of natural
breaking points in the workshop structure when it makes sense to
end the session and continue the morning next day.

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Set up two screens 

As a facilitator, it really helps to have two screens: one for the

digital whiteboard (e.g. Miro, Mural), and another one for the
video call (Zoom, Hangouts, etc.). This way, you can see all
participants and check if someone looks confused or distracted,
or if they have technical problems.

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Encourage video conferencing

Encourage participants to switch on their webcams and share

their video! This will help you see if engagement is low or if any
of the participants seem confused. It will also encourage the
participants to work from a quiet place instead of just dialling in
and muting while driving for example. An added bonus is that
you will have more fun when you see each other. Zoom, for
example, offers virtual backgrounds and the AJ&Smart team
often uses them to lighten up the mood at the start of a remote
workshop!

Useful tools and resources:

Zoom - Reliable video conferencing that works seamlessly from all

kinds of devices and can handle large numbers of participants
without any issues. For remote workshops with larger groups, you
should definitely get a pro account.

Miro - Miro is a digital whiteboard and our tool of choice for

smooth real-time collaboration, both for running remote workshops
with clients and working more efficiently as a team.

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AJ&Smart Remote Workshop Template - This is our remote
workshop template on Miro. This is view only because you have
to invite people individually for editor access, but feel free to
take a look around and use this as a template for your own
setup!

7 ways to make remote collaboration more effective with an

online whiteboard - More on how to get the most out of using a
digital whiteboard.
 

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Facilitation
Warm-up
Warm-ups are a great way to break the ice, while also encouraging
people to explore the digital whiteboard before the real workshop
exercises kick off. Sometimes, it is the first time a team has worked
together, even if they all work at the same company. That’s why it is
a good idea to set a welcoming, social tone at the start of the first
session. You can use some of the following warm-up exercises to
energise the team.

• We often start our workshops with a quick 360° introduction

round, while we familiarise participants with the sticky notes,
the principles of “together alone” and time-boxing. We ask
each participant to create three sticky notes and complete
one of these sentences: “My name is…”, “My role is…”, and
“My wish for the Sprint is…” This is done in silence and with a
5-minute timer. When the time is up, we take turns to read out
our sticky notes and introduce ourselves. It is as simple as it
gets, doesn’t take a lot of time and serves as a nice way to
introduce everybody and learn the tools.

• In a different version of this exercise, we ask the participants

to complete the sentences: “My name is…”, “My first job
was…” and “Something I learned there was…”

• There is a lot of great icebreaker exercises out there and you

easily adapt them to remote work. However, we recommend

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 you use icebreakers which allow people to quickly try out the
tools of the digital whiteboard and utilise some of the sprint
principles.

Preparing Map, HMW’s, Goal and Can We’s

In the guide to onboarding, we recommend to survey and interview
participants and the Decider in advance of the Sprint workshop. If
you do this properly, you can already capture A LOT that would
come up in the workshop and add it to the digital whiteboard
before the kick-off! We do this in every single Sprint, whether it is
in-person or remote. It has made our Sprints a lot less stressful for
us and has led to improved outcomes and higher client satisfaction.

This has several advantages: 

• You don’t start from a blank canvas. It is a lot easier and less
intimidating for participants to add to (and tweak) existing
material than to fi ll an empty workspace. 

• Participants are still able to contribute to each exercise.

The artefacts you prepared in advance set a nice example to
work from and make it easier to understand what’s expected
from them in each exercise.

• It makes facilitation easier. The prepared artefacts will spark

other ideas faster. It also shows that you listened to each
interview and made the effort to understand each
participant’s unique perspective, so you will immediately build

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 up rapport and trust with the team.

• It makes the workshop smoother and faster. The digital

whiteboard makes it super easy to move artefacts around and
change wordings – much faster than on a real whiteboard. So
even if you end up changing some of the prepared artefacts,
you will save time.

• It leads to better outcomes. The team can focus on thinking

about the challenges without worrying about phrasing each
sticky note perfectly, since you already did this for them.

If you do this, you can guide all participants through each exercise,
show them all prepared artefacts, allow them to read through them
and add new ones afterwards. 

Useful resources:
 
10 things about remote facilitation we (AJ&Smart) wish we’d
known sooner - In this article, we share even more tips on nailing
remote facilitation.

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Voting
Many digital whiteboards, such as Miro, have built-in voting
features. However, we prefer to do things a bit more ‘old-school’,
even when working remotely. Just like you would in an in-person
workshop, we create little red and green circles and use them as
virtual stickers to vote on sticky notes and concepts. Why? Because
it is visual, fun and easy. There is no learning curve for participants.
If they understand how to move the sticky notes around, they know
how to use the virtual dots. 

Another advantage of this approach is that you can vote on

different elements. If you use the built-in voting functionality of
Miro, you are restricted on WHAT you can vote on. You can vote on
individual elements like sticky notes, but if you want to create a
heatmap of an uploaded image of a concept, you can’t vote on
individual parts of the image – just on the entire image itself. So for
the heatmap, little red dots work a lot better and we prefer to keep
things simple.

Timeboxing
Digital whiteboards like Miro and Mural have built-in timers that are
easy to use and allow every participant to see clearly how much
time is left (which isn’t always the case in in-person workshops).
However, be aware that once you set them off, they will keep
counting down until they go off or you reset them. During in-
person workshops, we like to sneakily tweak the timers when we
realise some participants need a few more minutes or when the

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group is finished earlier than expected. This isn’t really doable
when working remotely – so once the timer is down to 60 seconds,
quickly check-in if anybody needs more time. 

Get a co-facilitator
 
Facilitating a Sprint involves a lot of legwork like sorting and
clustering sticky notes, getting new supplies, or making a coffee
run and preparing refreshments. These tasks might not strike
you as sexy or glamorous, but they are crucial to ensure a
smooth Sprint and happy participants – and it is a huge help for
facilitators when somebody is around to give them a hand. So if
you can, get a co-facilitator to help with keeping the workspace
tidy and organised. This allows you to fully focus on facilitation
and engaging with the participants. Since you are not in the
same room with the other participants, every second you spend
sorting through virtual sticky notes is dead air where participants
aren’t guided and don’t know what’s going on. So having an
extra pair of hands can make a big difference. 
 
In fact, this is also how AJ&Smart trains new facilitators. The first
few Sprints you help the lead facilitator until you are ready to
facilitate individual exercises and then, eventually, the entire
workshop. 
 
If you have a co-facilitator, ensure that responsibilities are
assigned in advance. Only the main facilitator should lead the
workshop so that confusion is avoided. 
 

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If you don’t have somebody helping you, preparing becomes
even more important. During the workshop, focus on engaging
the group and leave cleaning up for the breaks, or do it after the
workshop.
 
Avoiding distractions
 
• Turn phones to flight mode unless you really need to have it
on.
• Keep each workshop session short and focused, and have
fewer, but longer breaks. Sitting in front of a computer can get
really tedious and exhausting. You shouldn’t expect people to
sit through 8 hours of a remote workshop. Find ways to do
more, but shorter sessions. We are breaking up the two in-
person workshop days into four remote sessions.
 
Microphones and webcams

If you are planning to run Remote Design Sprints regularly, it is

worth adding a proper external microphone to your set up. Your
voice will sound clearer and crisper when facilitating, and it is more
professional. Some microphones also have a dedicated button to
mute the microphone, which often comes in handy. We use Blue
Yeti USB mics, but there are a ton of other great options out there.

While built-in webcams are good enough for most purposes, you
might want to treat yourself and get something that offers more
quality. As a facilitator, you should have a sharp and brightly lit
image. We are using Logitech C920 HD PRO webcams, but again,

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there are other great options out there, depending on your budget.
If you want to get really fancy, you might also think about getting
proper lighting so your face is evenly lit.  

While not a must-have, having a good external microphone and

webcam is an investment that quickly pays off. You can use them for
remote user testing, recording screencasts, videos or podcasts, and
your video calls will look a lot more professional.

Here is an example of the remote setup Amr, our Head of

Corporate Training and a self-proclaimed techie, has at home:

  

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Storyboarding
Just like in an in-person workshop, the Storyboard consolidates all
chosen ideas and maps them out in greater detail to align
everybody on what exactly is going to happen in the prototype.

Storyboarding is probably the most challenging exercise to

facilitate. Up until now, every decision and every discussion was
guided by a clear process, and you were able to think about the
bigger picture and ideas in broader strokes, without having to
worry too much about the details. This allowed you to cut some
discussion short. 

But now those details really matter and it is likely that the group will
have many circular discussions about how to phrase copy or what a
screen should look like. 

This is why we never jump straight into storyboarding, whether it is

in-person or remote. We came up with a few hacks that make the
Storyboard session a lot easier and streamlined.

User Test Flow

First, we do a remote User Test Flow where each participant takes

six sticky notes and, step by step, writes out their high-level
prototype flow from start to end. In the end, the decider picks their
favourite flow (with the option to mix and match as well). It is still
not going into too much detail, but establishes some guard rails
that structure the discussions around the storyboard. Once the

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decider has made their decision, each sticky note from the chosen
flow is placed in one the cells of the Storyboard.

Concept Pasting

It is very likely that the key screens have already been sketched out
to some degree of detail in the concept chosen by the Decider.
Maybe some of the other concepts show relevant interface
elements. Great! Take screenshots and paste them to the relevant
cells.

Breadboarding

The sticky notes from the User Test Flow establish the baseline of
what needs to happen in the Storyboard. Breadboarding (a
concept taken from Basecamp’s Shape Up method) takes the level
of detail one step further, but still without drawing detailed screens.
Instead, the co-facilitator captures interface elements and contents
of each screen in simple shorthand descriptions and collects them
in a list on each cell. 

Useful tools and templates:

Design Sprint 2.0 Storyboarding Hack - This video runs you

through User Test Flow exercise. Adapting it for remote
workshopping is really straight-forward, it works great on a digital
whiteboard!
Breadboarding in Ryan Singer’s Shape Up - A detailed
description of breadboarding.

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AJ&Smart 38
Prototyping
The workshop is over. Now it is time to turn the chosen ideas into a
high-fidelity, interactive, testable prototype. If you have run Design
Sprints before, you know that a lot of work needs to happen in a
short amount of time. Usually, you only have one day before the
first test, so you have to make sure to work as efficiently as possible.

A few years ago, we were frustrated with how much valuable time
we lost during prototyping just on swapping design files and
aligning on a design direction. Some prototypes looked disjointed
because each designer on the team worked on a different journey,
and didn’t have enough time to clean things up before the first test.

These weren’t huge issues that affected the tests, but we knew we
could make more progress and get up to a more realistic and
refined prototype if we could just focus more on design and spend
less time juggling files and doing check-in meetings.

The answer to our trouble was Figma and since we started using it
we haven’t looked back. 

What Miro or Mural are for digital workspaces, Figma is for design
and prototyping. It allows teams to work on the same file in the
cloud, collaborative and in real time. You can follow the work others
are doing in real-time, comment and ask each other for feedback,
or even work on the same screen as a team. Other members of the
Sprint team can join the workspace and add comments, change

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copy or record a quick video update with Loom, without
interrupting the flow of the prototypers.

For one project, we collaborated with the client’s design team in

another time zone. When our workday ended, they took over and
continued the work. It was amazing to see designers from San
Francisco and Berlin zipping and zooming around the same
workspace, collaboration and joking with each other without even
being on the same continent. This allowed us to make an incredible
amount of progress and our client loved the results!

And if this wasn’t enough already, Figma allows you to create an

entire clickable, interactive prototype with a few clicks and share it
with user testers via URL. Installing a client is not necessary and you
don’t need to export any screens to upload them to a third party
prototyping tool.

In addition, Figma offers a huge library of plugins that can make

your work a lot easier. 

Can you already tell we love Figma?

Useful tools and templates:

 
Figma - vector-based real-time collaboration for designers to
create high-fi delity, developer-ready designs and interactive
prototypes.

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User testing

AJ&Smart generally runs all user tests remotely. It is a lot more

convenient and greatly increases the quality of the tests, since you
can access a bigger pool of viable candidates and you can recruit
them anywhere in the world. It also allows you to plan for
contingencies and recruit stand-in testers in case you have a no-
show.

But first, let’s talk about what needs to happen before you can show
the prototype to testers. 

Recruiting

The team members doing the user recruiting are the unsung
heroes of every Design Sprint. Everybody is excited to see the
results of a day full of user tests, but finding people to test with,
getting them to sign up and show up on time is hard, non-stop
work and can last several days – depending on the profile of users
you are looking for. 

If you have to recruit testers for a B2C product, it is usually a lot

easier to find a big enough pool of people to test with. If you are
looking for people to test a B2B product or testers with very
specific expertise, it is going to be a lot harder.

The good news is, you have a few options that can make this
process a lot easier. But be aware that while some of them are

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easier than others, none of them is a magic bullet. You should start
recruiting as early as possible, and it is possible that a mix of
several approaches is going to get you better results.

Option 1: Ask the client to refer testers to you

This is the easiest and most straight-forward way to get testers. You
can ask your client to provide you with people to test with. These
could be participants in an existing Beta program or customers
they have a close relationship with. 

Be aware that this option is a luxury and you shouldn’t get used to
relying on it too much. Companies are (understandably) protective
of their relationship with customers and won’t do anything that
could risk it… like showing them a prototype of a radical new
product, or handing over their contact details to a third party.
 
Speaking of which, there are legal or privacy issues you have to
consider as well. Clients will never, ever give you customer data
without asking them for permission first, and this might take time. It
is also possible that this approach will not get you enough people
to test with, and you need to find more using the other methods
described here. If you ask clients to help you, you are giving up a
lot of control over the recruiting process, so it is better to hedge
your bets and still try to recruit yourself.

In some cases, though, this is the only realistic option. For example,
in one Design Sprint for a car manufacturer, we needed to test with
owners of high-performance race cars – of which less than 200 had

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been sold worldwide. When you are testing a product for a hyper-
specific market, you have no choice but to rely on your client. Help
them by writing a paragraph explaining the test logistics that they
can use in an email to reach out to customers. Sit down with the
person responsible for reaching out to customers (usually
somebody from the sales or support team) and discuss the criteria
you are looking for in testers.

Option 2: Use a recruiting service

This option is convenient but can be pricey. There are dedicated
recruiting businesses that look for people to test with, based on the
criteria you give them. 

This can be a good option, but you should still expect a lead time
of at least a week, so start recruiting early. Be aware that the more
specific your criteria are (e.g. location, age, professional
background, work experience), the likelihood of finding enough
testers gets lower. So if you use a recruiting service, always have a
backup plan. 

There are also very expensive recruiting and research companies

that can find testers from more specific backgrounds and specific
demographics. We used one of these services when we were really
stumped how to find the right kind of testers and were amazed that
they managed to get us high quality testers on time. 

As we like to use recruiting services as a backup, we have a roster

of testers ready to jump in if we have cancellations.

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Option 3: Recruit with Facebook Ads

Usually, we recruit our user testers with Facebook Ads. This works
really well when testing a B2C product, but you can also find testers
from more specific demographics and backgrounds. 

Facebook allows you to target your recruiting ads very specifically,

and not just on Facebook itself, but also on other Facebook
properties, like Instagram or FB Messenger. Using the Facebook Ad
Manager is as much an art as a science. Facebook regularly
changes their algorithm, so we won’t be going into too much detail
how to set up and run a campaign. When people eventually click

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on your ad, they should be linked to a screener survey you set up
on Typeform or Google Forms (more on that later).

One important thing to keep in mind: Just because somebody sees

your ad doesn’t mean they will click on it. Therefore, try to make
your ad interesting and trustworthy. Teasing a reward for
participation in the test is a good incentive. Don’t forget to keep the
text short and simple and add a nice photo of people doing a user
test.

For a Facebook campaign, you need to strike the right balance

between targeting specific criteria and addressing a big enough
audience. We would recommend that you funnel as many people
from the right demographic as possible to your screener survey,
even if they only fit the more general criteria (such as location or
age). You can still qualify this pool of candidates with your screener
survey, so don’t exclude too many people. 

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Option 4: Reach out directly
This is the option that involves most work, but it is your best bet
when you realise time is running out and the tester criteria are too
specific to rely on Facebook’s ad algorithm. 

If you are looking for people with a very specific job title, hit up the
search on LinkedIn to find people to contact directly. If you need to
test with people with a specific medical condition, look for online
self-help groups. If you want to talk to people with an obscure
hobby or interest, look it up on Reddit. You will need to get creative
with this approach, and while it is the most stressful of the options,
it can also be really fun. 

Similarly to the previous option, your aim is to get as many people

as possible to click a link to your screener survey and fill it out. Start
by writing a text where you introduce yourself, and who you are
looking for to test with. Also explain how the test will be conducted,
otherwise people will feel anxious. Make clear that this is a test of a
product, and you are looking for honest feedback - and that there
will be a reward. Keep this text short, you don’t need to go into too
much detail until you are reaching out to people who filled out your
survey. Then, use this text and paste it everywhere you expect to
find people with the right profile.

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Screener Survey

A screener survey is a short questionnaire with multiple choice

questions that helps you narrow down the pool of people
interested in testing to a handful of qualified candidates that fit
your criteria perfectly and will get you the answers you need. 

Tools like Google Forms or Typeform make it easy to quickly build

beautiful, shareable surveys and collect all responses in a
spreadsheet.

You should always err on the side of caution and expect that some
of the people filling out the survey will bend the truth to a certain
extent – either because there is a reward involved, or out of plain
curiosity. Since you are testing with only five people, if one tester
doesn’t fit the criteria, they can skew the results. 

This is why it is important to construct the survey in a way that

makes it harder to guess the answers you are looking for. You want
to throw off people that click every possible answer in hopes of
getting a reward for testing. All possible answers to a multiple
choice question should sound plausible and should be, as much as
possible, mutually exclusive. Also, a lot of survey tools allow you to
set up conditions and branching logic, but we recommend to avoid
setting up an obvious “fail state” for the survey (“Sorry, but you
don’t fit the profile we are looking for…”). Otherwise, some people
will do the survey over and over again, until they get the answers
right.

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In addition to the questions that qualify if they fit the criteria, you
should ask if they have a preferred time to do the test, and if they
have the necessary tech setup like computer, webcam, and internet
connection (like with the qualifying questions, don’t make it
obvious that there are right and wrong answers). And don’t forget
to ask how to contact them! You should get an email and their
phone number. If legally required, let them opt-in to get contacted
by you and allow you to save and use their data for the purpose of
testing.

If your recruiting funnels enough people to your survey, your

spreadsheet should fill up quickly. Several hundred submissions are
pretty common, but the spreadsheet makes it easy to filter, sort and
get a shortlist of good candidates quickly.

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Scheduling

Once you have a roster of promising candidates, you reach out to

them directly and try to schedule them for specific time slots on
testing day. Don’t forget to block time for the team to take a break
as well, as more than two tests in a row is pretty exhausting and the
team’s focus will go down as well.

In your email, give the testers more information on the test and try
and build a good rapport with them – they might have to plan their
day around the test, so they deserve some attention and gratitude
from us. 

The day before the tests, contact them by phone and confirm the
test appointment. We discovered that people are a lot more likely
to show up if they actually talked to a human before. Email
communication is very abstract and faceless, and they might think
that they are just one candidate among hundreds – so jump on a
call with them, and let them know that you appreciate that they are
taking the time to look at your prototype.

Just to be on the safe side, you should always recruit more people
than you need. This way, you have backup testers ready in case of a
no-show. 

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AJ&Smart 50
Interviewing User Testers

For remote user interviews we use Whereby. It works great on

Google Chrome and doesn’t require participants to create an
account or install software – all they have to do is install a plug-in for
screen sharing. However, this is super fast and doesn’t cause too
much friction. 

Another reason why Whereby is our video conferencing tool of

choice for user testing: You can set up a room with a dedicated,
permanent URL so you don’t have to share confusing meeting IDs
every time. You can also lock rooms to avoid people joining by
accident in the middle of an interview. 

Whereby also allows you to record interviews and save the

recording locally. We only use this as a failsafe, for our test
recordings we always use Loom (remember to always ask for
permission before recording!). It makes sharing the videos really
easy, as all videos are stored in the cloud right after the recording is
over.

To capture notes digitally, we use Miro. It is fast, avoids wasting

time and paper and gets you fully digital, easily readable notes
that can be quickly shared or exported after the test is done! We
capture all notes from the test in the same board we used for the
workshop. This allows clients to watch as the user feedback
builds up and we have everything pertaining to the Sprint in one
location. 

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Useful tools and templates:
 
Loom - Loom records your screen directly from your browser. All
recordings are uploaded to the cloud, ready for sharing.
User Test Intro Script - Use this script at the beginning of a test.
Whereby - When talking with users, we want to keep things as
simple and effortless as possible. This is why Whereby is still our
favourite: It is easy to set up and it just works!
Miro AJ&Smart Wall of Justice - Besides running remote
workshops, we utilise Miro to take notes during user testing, where
it has proven itself to be highly effective and rendered paper sticky
notes obsolete. Here is our Miro template for capturing test
notes.
 

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Handover and Wrap-up
Congratulations, you are almost there! All that is left to do now is to
document and summarise the results of the Sprint, and package
everything up for the client.

To make this easier, we use Google Slides and divide and conquer.
Google Slides allows users to work on the same presentation in
real-time. The way it works in our team is that each team member
takes over a different part of the report, for example breaking down
the user feedback, or adding screenshots and photos. At the end,
we do a proofreading pass where we leave comments on parts that
warrant further discussion, or fix typos on the fly. At the end, we
export the deck as a PDF file to share it with clients.

We then run the client through the results in a one-hour video call
via Zoom, where we can also answer all open questions or give tips
on how to best proceed.

Useful tools and templates:

Google Slides - Google Slides’ collaboration make it easy to

“divide and conquer” and quickly create reports documenting and
summarising the results of a Sprint with your team.

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Conclusion
That’s it! We hope you found this guide helpful.

Remote Design Sprints are not as scary as they seem. By making

sure you have followed all the steps correctly (onboarding and
setup, facilitation, prototyping, user testing, and handover), using
the right tools, and preparing properly, you might even find you
prefer them to in-person Sprints!

We would recommend running an internal sprint between

colleagues to begin with to familiarise yourselves with the small
changes to the process, using online tools and ensuring you are
confident for your first Remote Design Sprint. We would love to
hear how this Guide has helped you and your team!

Happy Sprinting!

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If you enjoyed our Ultimate Guide to Remote Design
Sprints, feel free to share it with anybody who might
find it helpful!

For more information about Design Sprints, strategy

and innovation, follow us on our social media
channels:

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Want to dive deeper into Design Sprints? We
recorded a FREE 1.5-hour video training where we
share how learning to run Design Sprints like a pro
completely transformed the AJ&Smart business.
Check it out here for a limited time!

AJ&Smart 56
Notes

Use this section to include any notes, comments or ideas you

have about running Remote Design Sprints successfully.

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