2018 Google Sprint Conference Recap
This month, article 6 of the Design Sprint series discusses key takeaways from the Google Sprint Conference.
At the beginning of this month, elite Design Sprint leaders converged on San Francisco for the second annual Google Sprint Conference. Paul Stonick and I were two of these lucky folks. I was on a panel hosted by the SIX around Transformations at Scale. Our Design Sprint Program continues to be an industry leader within large enterprise organizations. We are scaling Design Sprints across our organization as an innovation catalyst and business transformation tool. Tactically, we are aligning Design Sprints to current roadmap items in a strategy we are calling Inline Innovation. This means the problems we solve will go into production versus R&D Innovation labs. Also, we are using Design Sprints to drive roadmap items as the program gains momentum. Instrumental to the program’s success has been our tiered training model (Foundational, Facilitator, and Trainer) to onboard new facilitators. To date, we have trained 71 people across the organization through the foundational training course and have a team of 8 core facilitators + 3 trainers. These are the driving innovators of change as we activate Design Thinking across several functions within our organization.
The three-day conference was packed with cutting-edge thought leadership, trends and meaningful conversations. I’ve highlighted top insights from the discussion below.
The conference kicked off with an opening keynote from Tom Chi, former head of experience at Google X and senior director, Product & Experience, at Yahoo. His session identified three rules of prototyping. Rule one aims for the quickest path to experiencing proposed solutions with end users. Specifically, teams focus on creating a realistic façade to gather findings, not pixel-perfect designs. The goal is creating the minimum fidelity required to test assumptions and allow the team to move quickly. Rule two specifies that doing is the best kind of thinking. Smart people have smart reasons to back up their guesses. Teams must ask themselves, “is this statement a guess or direct experience?” Use testing to gather experiences and validate assumptions before moving forward when there are no facts to support statements. Rule three focuses on reason in time and space. A team should prototype direct experiences and observe how energy outcomes affect the room. He goes on to explain “magic-moments” based on positive and negative energy observations.
1. Positive energy = people care about something that is being exposed, and the tested solution is supporting that.
2. Negative energy = people care about something that is being exposed, and the tested solution is threatening that.
Exposing these moments are the focus of customer feedback. Once these moments are identified, teams switch gears to iterative design and testing.
Google’s own, Kai Haley shared her ideas on the flexibility of the Design Sprint framework. The core of the conference focused on the adaptability of the methodology as many teams are diverging from the original Google Ventures script. Specifically, many experts spoke in-depth about how teams are optimizing methods for larger organizations. In mature product organizations, agendas are flexible and allow facilitators to create activities based on the project’s goals and deliverables. This direction is directly proportional to the maturity of the UX and Product teams. Our team researches possible modifications based on different sprint types. However, the driving indicator understands why change is necessary. Only when a viable reason surfaces does our facilitation team explore possible alternatives. The key is not to modify for the sake of modification. The team must identify times when there is a better tool than the original agenda.
Design leader, Gretchen Anderson discussed ideas around storytelling. Narratives are explicit within our Design Sprints for emotional tie-in and engagement. As facilitators, we make the sprint live on infamy. A key element of our program focuses on socializing the story as a whole to make the organization smarter. It is these powerful moments that drive our organizational change. Additionally, storytelling continues to emerge as we explore the different sprint types mentioned above and the stories the team aims to tell.
Facilitator & instructor, Daniel Stilman focused on advanced facilitation techniques. The role of a facilitator comes with great responsibility. In knowing this, our education and training program continues to build on key attributes such as empathy, inclusiveness and outcomes. As leaders, our facilitation team drives organizational change. And it is the human element that will continue to push innovation as we align with our partners on a shared voice and vision.
The Google Sprint Conference was a gratifying experience. The insights and mastery discussed continue to drive our program to success. Stay tuned for Article 7 of our Design Sprint Series, where we will take a deeper dive into the 2018 program metrics and 2019 strategy. Keep an eye out for the next article and thank you for reading. Comments and feedback are always appreciated.
Links to other series articles are below.
Design Thinking and Design Sprints at THD
Fostering a Culture of Innovation
Scaling Design Sprints for Design Transformation
