How I experienced the Design Sprint 2.0 as a facilitator and researcher

Esta Ashtari
Sep 3, 2018 · 7 min read

The company Join found out that employees feel lonely and not connected enough with other employees in the company. Join was curious about finding a solution to this problem. They asked a group of UX-designers and developers to come up with solutions by following a design sprint.

On Monday before starting the design sprint, we came together to discuss the planning for this week. I was asked to be the facilitator in the design sprint. Because we had 4 days to come up with a solution we choose to do the design sprint 2.0. In this design sprint defining the goal and ideation were both on Tuesday. In the previous design sprint defining the goal was on Monday and ideation on Tuesday. With the previous one, we had more time to focus on problem and goal definition.

DAY 1: Map & Sketch

The image above gives a impression and description of the first day. The product owner invited some experts to start the day by interviewing them. The funny thing was to ask the group to take notes of the interview in the form of ‘How Might We’ questions. The first day morning was about defining the problems and the scope based on experts interviews but also creating a map where we defined the user. In the map we also defined the goal of the user and how he is discovering, learning and using the product.

In the afternoon it is about gathering idea’s as much as possible, with lightening demo’s but also different ways of sketching. Like other idea generative design sessions. The session or assignment starts with getting as much as possible idea’s with broad questions and later narrowing down by making choices with dots or a top 3. To make quick decisions and save time we asked the decision maker or product owner to make the final vote.

Day 2: Decide and story board

The image above gives a impression and description of the second day. On the second day, it was about deciding and making solutions. The day started with participants walking around in the Art Museum. The final concepts were presented in the museum. They had a name and were anonymous. After walking around the participants had to vote with dots on everything they liked about the Artpiece. A lot of dots were supposed to create a heat map. The participants walked around and put their votes. The heat maps showed me which parts or idea’s participants liked the most.
It was my turn to get the participants around me and read the most chosen ideas. I asked someone to take notes and write every idea on a different post-it. This was the speed critique.

After the speed critique, it was time to vote on the concept they liked the most. They also had to present the reason for choosing that concept this called the straw poll. The last step was the super vote, is done by the decisionmaker. He got two dots to vote. One dot for the concept and one for a feature he wanted to add.

It was time to define the flow of the product in 6 steps. I gave the participants 6 post-it’s to write the actions which a user will take to fulfill his goal. They had to start with the first action than the final action and at the end fill the actions in between. The map was helpful to start with the first action and the sprint questions for the last action.
After that, it was time to vote on the flow. Everyone got one dot to vote on the flow except the decision maker he got two dots. One dot for the flow and the other one for the action he wanted to add to the flow.

When the actions and the flow were clear, we started storyboarding. In squares, we drew the actions of the user with the product but also discussed a lot to get the idea more clear.

DAY 3: Prototype

The third day was the time to make the prototype. The steps and the difference between the wireframes and the mock-up were very small. With two designers we had to split the work, one started wireframing and the other with the look and feel of the design.
The final product was an integration of Slack. Slack is a communication tool within the companies. It had to be a friendly chatbot who can introduce colleagues and let them connect with the same interests or same learning goal.

Because the final product was a friendly chatbot, we had to give it a face. So I drew different mascots and tested it with different people. I asked them with which one they would like to talk. Most of them choose a penguin.

“I definitely like to talk to a penguin”

mascot sketches

Together with the product owner, we named the chatbot Olly.
We needed to finish the wireframes as soon as possible so the developers could start planning to code. On the next day, we had to test the product with the users, but first, we needed to make a usability testing plan.
We also had to find people who would like to be a participant in the usability test. It was not easy to find in one day people who are working in a company with more than 100 employees and who also use Slack.
Within one day we made wireframes, stylesheets, mock-up’s, prototypes, usability testing plan and we convinced 5 people to participate in the usability research.

DAY 4: Test

Day 4 and the last day of the design-sprint. We had to test the prototype with the 5 users therefore we made an appointment with each one of them a day before. The usability test starts with introducing the goal of the product and the goal of the usability test and how it works. We asked for permission for recording and also to think out loud while they were using the app, this helps to capture the problems they had immediately.
The usability test consists of questions and assignments. After the introduction, we asked the participants some questions to understand their context and how they use a similar product at this moment. Then we gave them the assignments to see and hear how they interact with the product. We also asked them questions after the test to understand the problems and frustrations they had with the product.

Mockup after improvents

Later

After the test, we found similar problems the users had when they were using the product, so we made final improvements.
Some of the problems were:

  • The questions of Olly were too big and they didn’t have the feeling it was a real conversation, because they saw the hall conversation at one time.

“I am already receiving messages before asking”

  • We were using two different interfaces, that confused the users.

“ Is this slack? Or did I go to a different website? Where am I?”

  • We also used snooze as a reminder, but they didn’t understand what the purpose of the snooze button was.

“What is snooze?”

  • Also, the term overall in that context was not clear to them.

“Overall, what does that mean?”

With these problems, we changed the prototype and also simplified Olly and made it just a head of a penguin instead of a whole animal(see image above). We communicated the improvements with the developers. The developers worked on the algorithms and called it the Allgolly. With coding they let the product come alive.

Conclusion

I really enjoyed being a facilitator in this design sprint. I experienced before being a part of the design sprint 1.0, but now I was also the facilitator in the design sprint 2.0, which was 4 days instead of 5. In the new version, some parts were more efficient. For example, we did not immediately start with storyboarding but first, we determined the flow. This made it easy to trace the next step and get started immediately with drawing the story.
I experienced the process of the design sprint but also the time pressure. The first two days were intensive because facilitation in a design sprint was new to me, but my experience as a user researcher helped me to prepare the design sprint in details that I was used to. The week looked like a design session to me, but with a real tested product as a result. This was the switching moment from the idea to the product.
The hard part but also the exciting part of the design sprint was storyboarding. Because it was at the end of the day and as a facilitator, I had to keep everyone involved and I had to make sure that the discussions were useful.
During the design sprint, I added 3 parts that were missing in this sprint. I add a discussion to chose the user before creating the map. After storyboarding we made must and should have list, to focus on the importance within the time constraints.

“I like to repeat this process to be a better facilitator. If you have any questions or suggestions feel free to add a comment!”

Esta Ashtari

Written by

User-Centered-Design is what I stand for as a UX-designer. With my research and design skills, I provide a user-friendly service, product or interface.

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