Adapting the Design Sprint
GV Design Sprints are all the rage right now. They’re a great way to solve problems, answer crucial questions about developing products, and help align teams and stakeholders on company and user goals. If Design Sprints are new to your company, you need to show their success quickly so you can keep them around. But what if you’re having trouble getting management on board with giving a team 5 days to do one? Here’s how you can get the small wins you need in less time.
We heard you know about “Design Thinking”…
When I first learned about Design Sprints, I was working for a company that grew rapidly from a startup to a 200-person strong operation. They’re good at what they do, but hadn’t gotten all of their processes and best practices figured out yet. I’d been preaching user centred design and design thinking for product development from the moment I joined the company, and was finally asked to begin facilitating Design Sprints with the development teams after a visit from Google. At least it was a start.
After trial run of the process, whispers of what the hell these workshops were swept through the company. It took a few weeks, but one day the head of brand design came to me to ask if a Design Sprint could help her team align with the social media team and generate ideas for new campaigns. My auto-response was “of course!”. I hadn’t used the Design Thinking process for anything other than UX and Service Design at this point, but I have an unwavering faith in its problem solving abilities.
Ain’t nobody got time…
Time was a huge issue in the organisation. Finding a free 30 minute slot for a meeting with more than 5 people plus a meeting room was like finding a needle in a haystack, as I suspect it is in most companies. As much as I advocate for Design Sprints, the most common complaint is that no one has the time (more on this later). Needless to say, I’ve become a master at adapting the format to fit different time constraints. For this collaboration between the brand and social media teams, we had a slot for just under 3 hours. Luckily, we did not need to prototype and test anything, so here’s what the agenda looked like:
Introduction (10 min)
Discuss Goal (15 min)
Inspiration Talks (1 hour)
Break (15 min)
Ideation Alignment (15 min)
Sketch & Review (40 min)
Debrief (10 min)
Show, don’t tell
I’m still improving in my role as facilitator, but with each group I learn something new. What I have learned to do is show the participants what they’re getting into before they begin. It offers reassurance if it’s their first time working with this process. In general, people are interested in understanding the Design Thinking methodology, so show them one of the many charts that describe it. Show them how ugly and quick crazy 8 sketches should be. Show them what a solution sketch can look like. In this particular Sprint, I found I also needed to show the group why taking notes on post-its was important. Without seeing what we’d do with them next, they assumed it wasn’t that necessary. Even if you’re facilitating, don’t be afraid to jump in and participate. Show participants what to do and why it’s important to the process.
“But the book says!”
I know what the book says: it’s gotta be 5 days. Welllll, not really. What’s the question you’re trying to answer? How crucial is it to the product or company? If it’s going to make or break it, do the 5 day Sprint. If you need teams to align and get their creative spark back, an afternoon is sufficient. If it’s to test a theory about an idea for a small feature, 2 and a half days will cut it.
This was the shortest Sprint I’ve done to date and the conclusive feedback I received was “I can’t believe how much we’ve achieved in just 3 hours. We have enough ideas now for the next 6 months!” During our discussion and goal alignment, the participants all spoke to the fact that they hadn’t taken the time before to sit down and collaborate, and it was starting to show in how static the social media pages were becoming. They now completely see the value and ROI in taking the time to collaborate and ideate. Spending just a few hours together saved the team time and spared them from frustration, creative burnout and, hopefully, loss of Facebook likes.
As mentioned, I’m always striving to be a better UX facilitator, so I’d love to hear from you. Do you facilitate shorter Design Sprints? What have you learned? What works and what doesn’t? How are you getting management buy in and show them the time and resources are worth it? If you’re interested in facilitating a shorter Design Sprint, you can find detailed agendas for a 2-day and 3-hour Sprint on my website. Happy Sprinting!
