Barcelona Patrol Station
The story of our first Design sprint 2.0. If you have never heard of one before, you can read about it here.
Introduction
Our first project at the BCN Code School was aimed to help the Barcelona City Council to discover and implement digitalisation and connected technology to create safer experiences for the residents and visitors of the city. The goal of this initiative was to gain back trust and to improve the city’s reputation as an inviting, safe, and connected city.
Barcelona residents and visitors meet with problems like feeling insecure, especially in the most touristic city areas, high levels of frustration when being robbed and stay without a way to communicate, money and important documents. They feel lack of knowledge where to seek help and how to approach the police in case of a crime, they don’t know what actions they have to take when witnessing a crime.
On this projected worked: Lucie Mayrova, Mateo Pardo, Ricardo de Sousa, Polina Zagorski and Margarita Solovyeva as a facilitator.
Day 1- Research The Problem and Sketch The Solutions
After researching the topic, each member of the team did a small presentation about the problem with robberies in Barcelona. The purpose was to find information about how the problem affects locals and tourists.
While the speaker was presenting, the other members of the team had to write down all the interesting challenges, problems, and ideas that come to their mind. For that, we used the “How might we” (HMW) technique. HMW is a technique for brainstorming new opportunities and ideas.
This exercise highlighted how the Barcelona pickpockets issue has been mentioned several times by international media like the BBC, The Guardian, or TripAdvisor.
After sharing with the rest of the team all HMW`s we organised them into 6 groups:
The 2 most important HMW questions we selected were:
After what we did a brainstorming of the long term goals that we would like to achieve with our product. In conclusion, we decided that the long term goal of our solution would be that “In 2 years time BCN will set an example strategy for crime prevention and reporting”.
Then we had time to make Sprint Questions to think about the difficulties and constraints that we may meet in our way of creating a product. The team confirmed that the biggest hurdle would be the lack of easy access to the information.
We drew the journey map identifying different types of users and their potential reactions. The experience was divided in different blocks: how they received information about our product, the familiarity with the location, the reaction to the incident, the interaction with the product, and the goal. We identified that the most critical moments are when a person was robbed or when he witnessed a robbery.
The map also made evident that all the users of our solution will be in a critical state of mind: frustrated, upset, or lost. This state of mind means that they will be very distracted affecting their attention when using our product.
In the second part of the day we had a great time for the team to get inspired. Lighting Demos helped us to research on similar products, ideas, and features that could improve our solution.
During the exercise, for example, we have identified that people don’t like machines that are too close to human appearance. Also, we felt encouraged to create a sustainable and self-sufficient product (eg. by adding solar panels).
At that point we already created Sprint Canvas where we organised our HMS’s, goals, questions, journey map and our personas.
Last for the day, but not least four-Step Sketch. It was the time when we had to start to transform our ideas and findings into a tangible product.
This process is divided into the following steps:
1- Notes (20 mins): Gather key information discussed previously: HMW, long term goal, what-ifs, how can we, sprint questions, etc.
2- Ideas (20 mins): Doodle roughly the main ideas or concepts to take into account into the solution.
3- Crazy 8s (8 mins): Try to make 8 rapid variations of a product or part of the product.
4- Solution sketch (30+ mins): Choose one of the variations and figure out the details in 3 clear sections combining text and drawings.
As a result, most of the group members ended up proposing a device similar to an airport check-in machine or a parkimeter.
Day 2 — Voting For The Solutions And Creating The Storyboard
Day 2 was a decisive day! We had to select the solution to develop in a storyboard. We used a Heat Map to identify visually the best ideas from each proposal. The highlighted areas were where we set our focus on.
The heat map narrowed the path. We decided to work on a device that would have software to assist victims and witnesses of a theft.
It was obvious that we have to include emergency phone numbers, police and embassy contact details and any other useful information.
Then it was time for User Test Flow exercise. Each team member wrote the 6 steps where users needed to perform from the entry point until reaching their goal of sharing feedback. We presented and voted for the best User Test Flow. This gave us key screens and steps to develop in the storyboard like a welcome page with languages to choose from, clear forms to report incidents, and ways to communicate with the local authorities.
The idea of the Storyboard is to sketch out an entire journey through our product with enough details, including key concepts previously agreed on, so that all group members are aligned on what goes into the prototype. No new ideas could be added at this point.
The storyboard has opened a discussion about the user journey while using our product. We have realised the importance of the journey to be present to our user testers and have decided to spend some extra time/thinking in developing a cohesive and coherent structure that would give a better understanding to our user testers when testing our app.
Day- 3 Prototyping day
During day 3, taking the storyboard as a baseline, we created a prototype of our solution. We split our team into two artists and two collectors: Artists worked on the design of a prototype and Collectors gathered all necessary information. At the end of the day, we prepared for the following testing day by defining the script for the testing interviews.
Initially, we were really focused on the structure and functionality of the software, but soon we realised that the interface did not look very attractive. Despite being a service representing the local authority and the local police, we had to further develop the aesthetics to make it more inviting and user friendly.
Also at this point, we could work the detail of the pages flow and the navigation through the service. We could identify the dead ends to improve and solve logically.
Day 4- Test The Prototype With Users
Day 4 was a very productive and dynamic day, 5 users have tested our prototype.
We drew a table on the whiteboard with every user name and separated all into 3 categories: positive, negative and neutral. For the test, one person interviewed the user, and another one took notes about the user reactions/comments.
After testing three users, we identified some problems in our prototype and we made some changes to test in the last 2 users interviews. We realised that we had to:
- explain to the users the purpose of some of the steps
- to make some of the icons bigger.
Once all users had completed the testing, we could clearly see problems that we were not aware of, such as:
- lack of information to guide the user during the navigation and after using our service
- lack of details
- lack of icons that are easier to read than text
Summary
Our team understood the importance of the process of Design Sprint 2.0 and we were very satisfied with our project. Design Sprint is a very practical step-by-step process to solve big challenges and create new products.
After finishing testing, we confirmed that with BCN Patrol we could solve our HMW questions and the long-term goal. We managed to try out the side of the application that helps the victims of theft, but more development will be required to help the witness.
You can find our prototype here!