The Creative Tech Lab — Remote-Local Sprinting in Jamaica (Part 1 of 2)
The GV Design Sprint is a framework for rapidly building and testing new ideas. Incrementic teaches and facilitates Design Sprints. If Design Sprints are new to you, the best way to get a grasp of the concepts is to read the book by Jake Knapp.
The Creative Tech Lab is an initiative of the Inter American Development Bank (IDB) this announcement describes the initiative in more detail. The IDB is the largest source of development financing for Latin America and the Caribbean.
“Maybe focus on a proof of concept first?”, I found myself saying. The goal of the project was to explore problem spaces related to musicians. Over the next couple of conversations, I gently nudged them towards a prototype and test approach, rather than development and coding.
Pitching rapid prototyping
Without ever explicitly using the term “Design Sprint”, I suggested, “there’s an approach that walks you through understanding the problem, then rapidly prototyping and testing solutions”. The IDB team was open to the approach.
I scheduled a one hour demo of the methodologies, which we conducted at IDB Jamaica country office (there was a slight twist as we included a remote participant from IDB Washington DC). The exercise was pivotal, it helped the team members get a taste of the process and thinking and, ahead of the sprint, we were able to better frame the problem.
Getting on the same page
The ideal Design Sprint is conducted over 3 to 5 consecutive days, face to face with a small team. To help the sprinters stay hyper-focused on their tasks we typically “ban” electronic devices for the majority of the sprint. By the end of the sprint, we have created a prototype and tested it with representative users.
As is often the case with many undertakings, ideals often don’t neatly fit reality. One challenge was negotiating the schedule for each day. The first draft of the schedule didn’t resemble a sprint it included welcome remarks, a presentation, a video, a panel discussion and, a fireside chat, not ideal for a focused sprint workshop, to be conducted over a 1.5 day weekend.
We discussed the intended outcomes, they wanted to be as inclusive as possible, in fact, over 50 musicians from across the Caribbean expressed their interest in participating in the workshop. They also wanted to deliver 3 separate prototypes, a typical sprint produces one prototype. Basically, it wasn’t practical to get everyone in the same room. Due to the schedules of many of the participants, weekends were the only practical times.
Our solution was a hybrid remote-local sprint. We would conduct the sprint over 3 weekends. We would involve remote participants on the first two weekends. Instead of banning electronic devices, we used them for collaboration. The panel discussion, fireside chat, and other activities would be reserved for the final weekend and we would try to get as much sprint related activity as possible done over the first 2 weekends.
Apart from scheduling, I was also concerned about the proposed scale. Conversations included things like…“We’re looking at 30 participants, we want to draw on musicians from around the Caribbean, can we do this via webinar?”. “Can we create three prototypes?”. I decided to remain flexible as we ironed out the details.
Behind the scenes
I didn’t know this at the time, as I had almost no direct interaction with him, but behind the scenes, influencing some of these constraints was “the mastermind”, Matteo Grazzi. Matteo and the IDB team had grand motives. He was later to describe the project as an experiment. The goal? Pilot an approach that could be repeatably used to address challenges. In his words, “We were … trying to understand if this kind of workshop or initiative could be useful, not just in Jamaica but all over …”.
When speaking about the team’s reaction, Matteo said “when we approached them … they were like … you are crazy!”.
Sorry to end so abruptly. The balance of this article is still in draft form, so I have scheduled a part 2. This allows me to release part 1, while I finish composing part 2. Stay tuned.
Corrections: The Creative Tech Lab initiative is not part of the IDB iLab (this was suggested in the original version of the article), by associating the Creative Tech Lab with the iLab, the article may have implied that the initiative was related to social innovation, which was not the case. Finally, the remote participant mentioned in the article was at IDB Washington DC, not New York.
