Sprint Zero — Week 1
I am part of an excellent team at the University of Texas School of Law charged with the exciting task to re-design and re-build our faculty profiles and publications system. As I work through each stage of the process, I’ll be sharing what I’ve learned, what methods I used and where I failed/succeeded.
1: My Competitor Analysis Method
2: Designing Sprint Zero
Up Now: Design Zero — Week 1
Week 1 Schedule
Day 1 & 2: Usability Tests and Competitor Analysis
Day 3: Assumption Personas
Day 4: Storyboarding
Day 5: Pair Designing & Sketching
⬆️⬆️⬆️ Isn’t that just so adorable??? ⬆️⬆️⬆️
Week 1 Actual
Day 1: First round of usability tests (8 total), video editing between sessions & taking observations on post-its between sessions
Day 2: Second round of usability tests (4 total, cancelled 2), video editing between sessions, taking observations on post-its between sessions & sorting/coding observations
Day 3: Present test results to team & get really, really, REALLY discouraged about the project. IMMEDIATELY STOPPED THE PROJECT. and took a break for the rest of the morning.
Afternoon meeting to re-evaluate project. IMMEDIATELY BEGAN PROJECT AGAIN. after a little redirection.
Day 4: Create assumption personas, create survey
Day 5: Finish survey, pair designing
Lessons Learned
So what did I learn through this process?
Video editing is hard work & very time consuming.
I didn’t plan for video editing. I thought it would be something I could just do after the interviews. But once I exported my first video and realized that it would be a major undertaking, I had to really hustle.
Luckily, I planned 30+ minute breaks between each usability session and used that time to edit videos and take observations on sticky notes. I worked two 10-hour days to be able to pull this off and be ready for Day 3 of the sprint.
So, don’t underestimate using technology you’re not used to.
It’s easy to second guess yourself through the whole project. Don’t.
Every. Single. Day. I was plagued with the idea that I was wasting my time, my teammate’s time, my company’s time. I kept thinking I was doing a bad job, or the wrong job. And then something would click, I’d work through the discomfort and a beautiful outcome would surface.
After the usability tests I was really discouraged about the whole project. We discovered not many people even cared about the system, much less used it. Of course it had its problems (most of which were obvious) but it was the general MEH attitude from my test participants that got me down.
It was genuinely difficult to remember that their attitude was about the system, not my work. I just got so excited about the project & was discouraged when it seemed that no one else was.
Which leads to my next lesson…
Be flexible and hit PAUSE if needed.
On day 3, I presented my usability test findings. I ended up with a variety of questions, two of which put a halt to the whole project immediately:
- Who is using the system?
- How important is the system to the school?
As soon as I presented those two questions, I heard myself or my boss (I honestly can’t remember because I was in a trance) say something about pausing the project until we had those answered. So instead of creating assumption personas (which was on the schedule) we decided I needed to do more research and we needed to talk to our communications director about the project. So an emergency meeting was called.
The project was only paused for about 3 hours. But that 3 hours felt like an eternity to me. It was not fun, but it was needed. It taught me to hold on lightly to projects and be willing to let them go if that’s what is best for the business.
Listen to your team. Ask for feedback.
Teamwork! Be sure you’re on a good team, because mine was absolutely invaluable to this entire experience. I tried to read the room at every meeting (we had A LOT of meetings this week) and tried to ask at the end of every activity if they felt like it was worth their time.
The times I didn’t need feedback were after really good discussions. Because I knew if good discussions and ideas were being thrown around, then something was working well. I saw this most during our pair designing, where the activity itself almost became secondary to the conversation.
But my team was everything. 😍
When planning, think in smaller chunks.
My schedule was chunked at the beginning — 20 minute usability interviews with 40 minutes in between (mostly). But after that, I only saw time in big blocks, and that proved to be a problem.
What ended up working was creating an agenda and timeline for each activity. I needed us to stay focused so that we’d end on time and not waste anybody’s time.
Thinking in smaller chunks would have also let me see the holes in the plan — the things I forgot to schedule (like video editing!). I actually ended up canceling two usability tests because I just didn’t have time. I felt guilty for turning down people willing to help, but in the end that was a compromise I needed to make.
Deliverables Created
So what did I actually end up creating this week?
Competitor Analysis
While this was created before Monday, it’s part of the first sprint. You can read about my full process here.
Usability Test Results & Highlight Video
The usability test results caused me a lot of heartache, because they weren’t what I was hoping to find. Some issues that came up were obvious, but the overall attitude about the system caused me grief and actually caused us to pause the project for a bit.
From the usability tests we made:
- A keynote presentation of the key findings
- A 15 minute highlight video of clips from the usability tests
Personas
Personas were my favorite to create. We created Addison, Edgar & Dave. A student and two faculty members, who may or may not use our system. It’s only been a few days but I’ve already grown to love these characters and used them in subsequent activities.
From the persona creation we made:
- 3 asumption-based personas
Scenarios for Designing
From the scenarios we made:
- A pair designing meeting
- A group of sketched ideas and concepts about how to meet the needs of each scenario
Online Survey
Finally, we’ll be sending out a survey next week to collect quantitative data in order to answer the top two questions that we discovered this week. So a survey was created and tested.
Now on to week 2! Wireframing, design studio and backlog creation for Sprint One. Woo! 😊
