Design Sprint

Synopsis

Want an efficient and effective way to test out any business or creative ideas? Inspired by Google Ventures, this Design Sprint presentation guides through a five-day process that can compress months of decision-making and testing into just one week. Use the tools from this deck to turn ideas into testable hypotheses.

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What could be the potential future trends in decision-making and testing processes inspired by methods like Design Sprint?

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The potential future trends in decision-making and testing processes inspired by methods like Design Sprint could include increased use of technology and AI to facilitate the process, more emphasis on user experience and customer feedback in decision-making, and a shift towards more iterative and agile processes. There might also be a trend towards more collaborative decision-making, with teams working together to brainstorm, prototype, and test ideas. Additionally, we might see more companies adopting these methods as they seek to innovate and stay competitive.

What are some alternative strategies to the Design Sprint method for testing out business or creative ideas?

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Some alternative strategies to the Design Sprint method for testing out business or creative ideas include the Lean Startup methodology, Agile development, Scrum, Kanban, and the Waterfall model. The Lean Startup methodology emphasizes learning and iteration, with a focus on customer feedback and validated learning. Agile development is a set of principles for software development under which requirements and solutions evolve through the collaborative effort of self-organizing cross-functional teams. Scrum is a subset of Agile and is a lightweight process framework for agile development. Kanban is a visual system for managing work as it moves through a process. The Waterfall model is a sequential design process, often used in software development processes, where progress is seen as flowing steadily downwards (like a waterfall) through the phases of conception, initiation, analysis, design, construction, testing, production/implementation, and maintenance.

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Sprint calendar

The Design Sprint was created by Google Ventures to test ideas without wasting resources. It's proven to work for all kinds of business cases regardless of industry, from tech companies like Slack, to consumer products like Blue Bottle Coffee. It's important to follow a structured day-to-day schedule during a sprint week, and the sprint calendar lays it all out:

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Can you provide a real-world example of a successful Design Sprint in the tech industry?

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Yes, Slack, a popular communication platform in the tech industry, is a great example of a successful Design Sprint. They used the Design Sprint process to test and validate ideas quickly and efficiently, which helped them in making informed decisions and saving resources. This process played a significant role in their success.

What are some alternative strategies to the Design Sprint for testing business ideas?

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There are several alternative strategies to the Design Sprint for testing business ideas. Some of these include Lean Startup methodology, Agile development, Scrum, and Kanban. Lean Startup methodology focuses on creating a minimum viable product to test market hypotheses and requires continuous innovation based on customer feedback. Agile development is a set of principles for software development under which requirements and solutions evolve through the collaborative effort of self-organizing cross-functional teams. Scrum is a subset of Agile and is a lightweight process framework for agile development. Kanban is another agile methodology that is used to manage work by balancing the demands with available capacity, and by improving the handling of system-level bottlenecks.

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• Monday is focused on identifying the question that will be addressed in the sprint.
• Tuesday is when teams ideate or brainstorm solutions.
• Wednesday is when teams select the solution to be tested.
• Thursday is when teams build the prototype
• Friday is for observing what has been done.

"How Might We" (HMW)

"How Might We" is a common tool used on Monday. How Might We questions reframe problems as opportunities. Don't spend too much time refining HMW statements, instead encourage team members to generate as many ideas as possible. Once a list is created, make an affinity diagram and categorize based on themes, then narrow down the list by voting. (Slides 14-15)

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User mapping

User Flow Mapping is used to reenact the step-by-step experience of users as they encounter a problem or interact with a product. The goal of this method is to gain insight into the user's mindset and identify pain points. From this sequence of events, pinpoint a target event based on your most important How Might We questions. (Slide 13)

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The target event is the most critical step that the user or customer must take to complete the task. For example, for the question of "How do we provide real-time customer support?" The target event may be clicking on the customer support chat window.

Lightning demo

The lightning demo is a group session that takes place on Tuesday to gather ideas and inspiration. It involves a timed exercise in which participants share existing solutions from other companies that they find promising. The goal is to provide a wide range of concepts for the next activity, solution voting and storyboarding. In many cases, lightning demo proves  that the best ideas are often already on our minds, they just need to be fine tuned. (Slide 17)

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Solution voting

On Wednesday, use dot voting to achieve consensus around a single idea that addresses the original sprint problem. Hang up everyone's solution sketches. Team members can ask questions or discuss details of the sketches during this time.

Give each team member three votes. They can distribute their votes among the different sketches in any way they choose. The sketch that receives the most votes will be the one that the team will move forward with to prototype. (Slide 20)

Now, create a storyboard to demo the solution. The storyboard can be anywhere from six to fifteen frames, with each frame representing one to two minutes of time. This flow of events will be used during the usability test on Friday. (Slide 22)

Prototyping

Thursday is when you create a prototype of your solution. Since this is the prototype that will be used during the usability test, make sure that it looks and feels believable. The key is to build a Minimum Viable Product that takes the least amount of time but is still good enough to be used, in other words, Goldilocks quality. (Slides 25-27)

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Another big task on Thursday is to plan everything that is going to be in the usability test sessions on Friday. The usability test plan should explain what you're trying to test, who will be tested, the prompts or questions to ask, and basic logistics such as location, dates, equipment or supplies. The team should do a dry run of the test and act out a test session from start to finish. (Slide 28)

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Testing

Finally, it's show time. As the interviewer conducts usability test sessions on Friday, observers should take notes and plot insights on a table. The test results will help to validate or invalidate the sprint's original assumption. The results will show whether your solution will succeed, whether it needs improvement, or whether it will be a complete waste money and resources. Even if the solution fails, it's a valuable process because you can learn from it and not waste any more time on a bad idea. (Slide 31)

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