Wednesday as in, well … let’s make a decision!
Wednesday is a challenging day my friends, however, I enjoy it because is very productive. Most of the major decisions during the Sprint occur on the third day, which can cause stress levels to reach a breaking point for some participants. However, by the end of the day, your team should have a storyboard that serves as the guiding post for prototyping day — Thursday!
Wednesday is most effective when properly orchestrated. There is a certain art to managing opinions, comments, feedback and turning those into decision-making points. Without proper execution, this day can get rough. Here are some issues we experienced and some possible avenues to work them out.
The Sticky Decision
By the end of Tuesday, you should’ve had concluded the sketching session. Collectively you will have many solution sketches with a title and short snaps of scenarios of what the feature you designed should work.
At the beginning of the day, the team will start the decision-making process by taking a silent look at solution sketches, as if in an Art Gallery. As your team progresses through the art exhibit, provide them with post-its and dots to annotate silent comments. In the end, the team will critique the sketches out loud and address the questions, and then proceed to vote again.
How can this activity go wrong?
Talking too soon. People will want to ask questions out loud from the beginning. Even when all participants will have post-its and opportunities to ask “silent” questions, someone will try to stir a conversation right there and then. I’m not saying that you have to run your Sprint with an iron fist, but try to avoid starting the critique process too soon. All participants should have the possibility to ask questions when the critique session begins.
Critiquing is not Criticizing. When the critique process begins, remember that you are commenting on the impact of the idea, not on the quality of the sketch, or if the sketch was produced by your best friend at the team. The critique process is great to address ideas that might not have been fully flushed, but that are important to the product goals.
Going on a tangent. Be careful about how these ideas and critiques are presented, sometimes they run the risk of taking the team in a different direction, making them re-think some sketches already produced. Don’t try to run with these ideas, but don’t throw them away either. One very interesting technique we had in our sprint was a “parking lot”. It’s a very simple way to utilize a whiteboard and to land ideas that might not be addressed in the Sprint, but that might be good to look at in the future.
What’s the positive outcome?
When properly done after the Art Museum you will have a heat map that will help the facilitator ask the right questions during the critique process. At the end of the critique process, the decider will have all the information to move forward with the prototype.
Decisions as a team can be challenging, but with structure and experience as a facilitator, this day will become easier and easier. Constantly refer to your map to keep a clear vision of what the goal is. And help the decider focus on that goal instead of deviating from it. Sometimes it's not easy, but it's worth it!
Storyboard. How constructing your story helps your goals.
When a decision has been made on the prototype direction, the team has to start the storyboard process. For this you will need a grid with at least 9 actions, it can be more, but these will help layout the script and steps that are needed to complete the prototype and to conduct testing on Friday.
How can this activity go wrong?
We experience a bit of a setback during the construction of our storyboard because items that we hadn’t addressed as part of the process popped out during our aim to design the best user experience. These items even when important and valuable not always need to be addressed during the development of the storyboard. I learned that the hard way.
Sometimes your product manager or product owner might insist on addressing a component that’s part of the interface, but it’s only with experience and understanding of your team that as a facilitator you’ll be able to point out how some of those questions and concerns need or don’t need addressing in different validation scenarios. There can be multiple tests that can occur after a Design Sprint. Just keep that in mind.
What’s the best outcome?
When the decider has defined the path for the storyboard then it should be easy to address the various touchpoints that are part of the story. If your goal is to create an improved login flow, then some areas that might need work would be step indicators and other interface updates that might help the user improve their login experience.
You should have a clear story at the end of Wednesday. And with that you will be ready for Thursday, or in other words: prototype day!
If you want a recap on Day 2 or Day 1, you can check my other articles here in Medium.
Next step… Prototype and then Test!
