Design Sprint

An Introduction
Introduction
It’s no longer enough to release a well-
designed, perfectly usable product. Google,
Facebook, Airbnb, Uber and even one or two
non-US companies can churn out a polished,
high quality product whenever they want at
this point.

Good UX and UI design are a given. Now that

software design and development processes
have been so well refined the problem turns to
finding the right product.

The right product is the product that delivers the most

value for your customer while meeting your business goals.
To find out if you have really created something valuable,
you need to see customers using it as fast as possible.

The Design Sprint is a pragmatic method for cutting

through the crap and gaining the momentum needed to
bring products to your customers without wasting weeks,
months or even years building the wrong thing. It allows
you to fast-forward to a future where your product exists
and you can see your customers reactions without making
any expensive commitments.
Learn & Define
In the first section of the workshop we will attempt
to define what the challenges are, who these
challenges affect and which part of the broader
challenge we will solve in the first week. Here
we lay the groundwork for decision-making and
concept creation later in the day.

Ask the Expert & How Might We...

Using the How Might We... method developed by Procter and

Gamble, we interview the “expert”, or the person or people in the
room with the most knowledge about the challenges at hand.
We write the How Might We... notes to standardise the note-
taking process so that everyone’s notes look the same and ensure
we don’t restrict the solution space but pose broad questions
to general problems. We then vote on the most important
challenges to solve, giving the Decider extra votes.

Voting Rules

• The Decider gets 4 dots

• Team Members get 2 dots
Map & Make the target

Once we know the key challenges we want to solve and who

we think we might be solving them for, we create a simple map
showing the “story” of the user’s journey through the hypothetical
product. We then take the top voted How Might We challenges,
add them to the map and select a target area to focus the
prototype on.

Lean Persona - Optional Exercise

Creating a Lean Persona allows us to generally agree on our

perceived target audience or audiences. We are aware that this
lean persona will change over time but use this assumption
based version as a guide for decision making.

Sprint goal and questions

Defining the Sprint Goal and Sprint Questions are like building
the foundation for the sprint. We want to clearly define and agree
on an overarching goal for the sprint along with 3 key questions
we want the prototype to answer.

Here we once again refer the the top voted How Might We
challenges to create the questions.
Ideate
Now that we’ve created a canvas to guide us
through the rest of the week, we can begin
ideation and solution building. We do not rely on
creativity to get us through this part of the Sprint
as creativity can be a fickle, unrepeatable thing.
We rely instead on proven techniques for solution
and idea production. The first half of the ideation
section is all about quantity, we don’t worry about
having good solutions, just lots of solutions. We
later curate the ideas we like.

Applied User Story Mapping - Optional Excercise

We start with Applied User Story Mapping, a modified version of

User Story Mapping developed in-house at Parallel labs. We use
our basic knowledge about who we are designing for to create
a timeline which we use as a basis for coming up with solutions
in the context of the user’s day. We aim to produce potentially
100s of ideas, then use voting to curate down to a dozen or so
interesting ideas. We simply leave these ideas stuck to the wall for
later use.

Voting Rules

• All Team Members get 12 dots

Live Demos

Each team member now has 15 minutes to find interesting and

relevant examples which could be used as inspiration for the
sprint. These examples don’t have to come from the industry they
are solving the problem for. They can also come from completely
different companies that have approached similar challenges.
Each team member should have at least 3 examples to present
to the rest of the group.

4-part-sketching

Now the time has come to put solutions on paper. Each team
member will work alone on creating a detailed concept for the
challenge the team is trying to solve. We don’t just jump straight
into “sketching” and have a clear 4-part sketching process which
helps ease even the sketching haters into it. By the end of the
sketching session, each team member will give the moderator
one concept to stick on the wall to be viewed in the “Art Gallery”
the next morning. We do not recommend voting at this time of
the day as your decision making abilities will be very impaired.

Optional warm-up: 30 circles

1. Note taking: last results, checking the sprint question

2. Doodling
3. Crazy Eights
4. 3-step concept sketch

Remember, your concept needs to be understandable by someone who

isn’t you! You will not be presenting this sketch tomorrow!
Decide
Now that the heavy lifting has been completed on
the concept side, it’s time to make some decisions
about what exactly to prototype. We will continue
the “Together Alone” work method from day one
to avoid getting lost in useless conversations.
3 rounds of voting will help team members to
narrow down the concepts and allow them to
move onto the Storyboarding session where the
final prototype is defined.

Sketch Voting

Voting takes place over 3 rounds. In round 1 every team member

silently reads through the concepts while sticking dots on the
ideas they find interesting. In this round every team member
has an infinite amount of dots. As we are not talking, if any team
member has a question about a concept, simply write it on
a postit and stick it underneath the concept. Once round 1 is
finished, the moderator will read through each concept
one by one focussing on the areas with the most dots. If a
concept has any questions attached, the creator of the concept
now has the chance to explain.

In round 2 each member gets a large dot with their initials

written on it. Each member now has time to decide one which
one idea or full concept they will vote for. No discussion please!
Once the time is up, everyone sticks the dots on at the same time
so nobody is influenced. Each member now has the chance to
explain why they voted.
Round 3 is for the decider(s) only. The decider now has the final
say which concepts should be prototyped. The decider receives
2 large dots and can place both on one or two concepts. If the
decider places both dots on one concept, it’s simple, this is the
one to prototype. If he places them on 2, the decider must decide
whether to combine the concepts into one prototype or make
two smaller prototypes for testing and put them head to head.

Voting Rules

• Round 1: All members infinite

• Round 2: All members 1 dot with initials
• Round 3: Only Decider 2 dots
Synthesize
It’s time to bring everything together now and
create a storyboard of exactly what we are going
to prototype. This is no place for being vague, we
will draw out a step-by-step guide of exactly what
happens in the prototype, exactly what it looks
like and how things happen. This part of the sprint
can often be one of the most brain-draining, but once
you’re done you’ll see it’s also extremely important.

Storyboarding

An “Artist” is chosen from the team to be the person translating

what everyone is saying into images. This person is responsible for
drawing the storyboard. The artist does not need to be amazing
at sketching but should be constantly attentive. The artist first
draws about 15 empty rectangles or squares depending on what
type of prototype you will have.

The moderator must now work very hard to keep team members
on track with the Sprint Goals and the target. Remember, no
matter how much fun it might be to prototype something
outside of the Sprint questions and the target – this can
easily throw the entire Sprint off track!
Prototype
We’ve made some tough decisions and now have a
clear idea what we want to test. It’s time to build our
prototype! The storyboard makes it absolutely clear
what our prototype has to achieve. It probably sounds
crazy, but it’s perfectly possible to build a viable
prototype you can test with in just 7 hours.

Prototypes are disposable!

Don’t fall in love in with your prototype. It’s an entirely disposable

artifact and it’s only purpose it to test your assumptions. The
likelihood of finding out that large parts of your prototype have to
be changed, scrapped or redefined is very high.

Stick to the storyboard

You might be tempted to add more stuff to your prototype, but

don’t give in! Every step until here had the purpose to circle in
on a target, so don’t lose focus now. Stick to your plan, test your
assumptions, and learn.

The Goldilocks Quality

The ideal prototype looks just real enough, a little bit like a movie
set. You want testers to interact with it like a real product and
make them forget it’s just a facade. Luckily, there are dozens of
tools that can help you put together high-fidelity prototypes in a
very short amount of time.
Testing
Now that you’ve created your prototype, it is time to
test all your assumptions and find answers to your
sprint questions. There is no way to skip this step, this
is what you’ve been working for so hard this week:
real life feedback from people not familiar with your
product. If you want to learn to iterate and improve
this has to happen. Really!

You should have been busy organizing testers since Tuesday

and should have about 5 appointments with people fitting your
target audience lined up. As your prototype gets more refined
from week to week, you can expand on your testers, but for the
quick and raw results, 5 initial testers are fine.

After onboarding the user, have her use the prototype and
narrate how she is using it, what works, what she expects to
happen, what really happens. Take notes all the time (ABC:
Always Be Capturing)! Focus on the sections of the test, where
you get answers regarding your sprint questions and hypothesis.

Capturing demographic information from the user is less

important, rather have her tell you about how she is, at the
moment, solving the problems and doing the tasks your
prototype tries to help her with. An open conversation at the end
of the test usually brings many insights as the user relaxed as lets
her thought roam.
Relearn & Iterate
After all the tests, cluster the notes from each test and
find common similarities in the feedback from all the
users. Aggregate insights and come to a conclusion
with regard to your sprint questions, collect ideas on
how to improve the prototype or weather to pivot to a
different solution or question for the next sprint. Iterate.
Drop us a line if you want to know more!

robin@parallellabs.com

Content credits : AJ&Smart