Product Design Sprint, rapid prototyping, UX strategy
First Draft is a virtual textbook — a beginner-focused programming learning platform developed by Raghu Betina, a professor of entrepreneurship at Chicago Booth School of Business. The platform is for students and teachers alike and tries to address multiple frustrations Raghu frequently comes across as a teacher himself.
It aims to automate everything that can be automated — such as grading and course materials — so that teachers can spend the bulk of their time on individual feedback with students. The purpose is to maximize outcomes for students while minimizing stress and tedium for teachers — create a textbook that teaches itself.
The following case study details a 5-day design sprint prototyping an early version of First Draft, conducted in collaboration with Thoughtbot.
We are using a whiteboard, markers, post-its, pens and paper, prototyping software, and Trello for documenting the sprint.
Phase 1: Understand
Every day of the 5-day sprint begins with a 15-minute “pitch practice” brainstorm. The exercise is designed to help think very clearly about the purpose and value of what we’re trying to create — clearly enough to elevator-pitch it.
The meat of the Understand phase is mapping out a user’s story. Since this sprint concerns a new product concept, we will imagine users engaging with the core features of the product — in our case two paths, one for students and one for teachers. Thoughtbot refers to this exercise as “the critical path.” This exercise is very useful for grounding discussion and keeping everyone on the same page going forward.
To help inform the scenario of the critical path, it’s good to do a quick brainstorm of all possible actions the user groups might undertake.
The path can take different shapes, so there’s multiple rounds of writing and erasing and writing and erasing again, until everyone feels like a solid scenario has been excavated.
At this stage we also review research and all insights the client has gathered, consider competitors and target market, take inventory of all ideas and get on the same page about the product mission and value statement.
Posting a question on Quora can be a quick and dirty way to get a sense of what a target market might value most in a given solution — for example addressing beginner students of programming what their biggest wants and frustrations are.
We also brainstorm a list of “How might we…” questions to help us start envisioning ways to address needs and wants.
Phase 2: Diverge
Day 2 begins with a 15-minute pitch practice once again. The pitch tends to evolve little by little, influenced by the activities of each consecutive day.
In this phase we come up with a problem statement and generate multiple ways we could wireframe the user’s critical path, to make the story more concrete. The goal is to take the ideas we’ve generated and sketch an actual UI showing how a user would move through this part of the story — where they click, what info they enter, what they think, etc. Problem statement:
How can I easily teach my students real-world programming while minimizing administration and maximizing meaningful interactions?
Sketching exercises: 2 hours
The entire team does various exercises (such as Crazy Eights) in order to generate lots of wireframe ideas. We take breaks to do voting sessions on ideas we like. There are lots of ways to do this. Below are some of my wires.
Phase 3: Converge
Pitch practice from the day:
In this phase we make a storyboard that shows exactly how the user will step through the prototype, click by click. This storyboard will become the spec for building the prototype. This is an activity that the group does together.
“In each frame, we draw a single action — whether it’s a pointer clicking on a button, text being entered, or a stick figure user doing something in real life. You don’t have to worry about layout or design in great detail, but you do have to think through every action that takes place in the story.” — Thoughtbot
We also create a map of needs and wants.
Phase 4: Prototype
In this phase the entire day is spent creating a clickable prototype based directly from the storyboard generated by the Converge phase. For this sprint we used Marvel to put together the prototype.
Phase 5: Test and Learn
In this phase we invite 3–5 users relevant to the target market (whom we hunt down ahead of the design sprint) to come in and interact with the prototype while we watch and interview them. Here are some notes from the sessions:
Conclusion
The product design sprint was immensely helpful to Raghu on his journey of developing First Draft, which he is building himself and piloting directly with his students at Booth.
At best, a product design sprint is an efficient way to get down to the crux of a solution. Even at worst — when the design sprint leads down a false path and culminates in a dead end — it is still invaluable because it serves to map out possibilities for any project.
