What a Design Sprint Referral Network Might Look Like
One of the things I’ve always been interested in doing was finding an outlet for newly certified design sprint facilitators to start practicing their craft.
A lot of messages I saw in online forums spoke to a unmet need for these practitioners to get their feet wet in real, honest-to-goodness engagements.
So, as part of a virtual design sprint event we held last November, three different teams from around the globe signed up and came together to work on just that.
From the Sprint Brief, I worded the challenge like this:
Create a network for design sprint professionals to find meaningful work, learn from one another and practice their craft.
It was simple, but essentially set the stage for the creation of some sort of referral network. I felt this network could act as an outlet for continuing education on the process and design thinking in general.
For the rest of the Sprint Brief, I put as much detail as needed without being too prescriptive. I wanted those who were volunteering their time for this to feel it was their project, not mine. I wanted to really understand and learn from different perspectives before putting my two cents into the mix.
When we met with each team during our kickoff week (prior to the virtual design sprint taking place), we started some initial discussions about the Brief and what the challenge encompassed. In fact, the majority of our time was spent discussing logistics, volunteer availability and role expectations. Everyone was ready to dive in and get started.
Here’s what happened…
The following are high-level summaries of each team’s work on the design sprint referral network (DSRN) and the approach they took towards realizing potential directions and solutions.
Team C (America/Canada)
The first design sprint group (Team C) saw the referral network as a way of implementing a certification system. The team wanted to create an internal accountability measure, allowing members to submit their credentials for ranking purposes. For Design Sprint Facilitators, this information would be used to find professionals to help them with their design sprints.
As the team progressed with their work, their solution sketches started to focus on two main themes: How the certification system would measure a practitioners aptitude and abilities, and the hiring process when trying to find someone to help with your design sprint.
As the final designs started coming together from the user flow and storyboards, the emphasis on finding talent for hire eventually eclipsed any immediate need to showcase a certification system. The team began to explore how existing practitioners and businesses could:
- Create the framework from a Design Sprint from scratch
- Find professionals for an upcoming Design Sprint
- Endorse other practitioners for their efforts
- Be an outlet for learning and furthering their skills.
Their screens explored different ways of sorting professionals by skills, location, preferred role and other related data points.
Design Sprinternationals (Team E in Europe/Dubai)
Our European team (dubbed the Design Sprinternationals), envisioned the referral network as a place to find qualified design sprint practitioners, facilitators and mentors. The network would also provide opportunities for gainful employment for those who were actively looking.
Early on, there were discussions on how to make the network a trustworthy source to find people:
How can we confirm the integrity of the network’s profile data?
How might we create a reliable screening process to better understand the aptitude of a given professional?
Could they create something that provides more value than existing platforms? (LinkedIn, Upwork, etc.)
During the ideation and prototyping stages, the team opted to add a mood board into the mix. It demonstrated various ways of visualizing content, helping to establish baselines that will eventually go into their color palettes, typography, layout and image treatments.
As the team built out their prototype, they started to create an entire engagement process. Starting with an e-mail invitation by an existing member, users would work through way through various marketing messages before landing on a registration page.
As the team put their finishing touches on prioritized screens and layouts, the team had a complete workflow ready for user interviews on Friday.
Team F (Asia/Oceania Region)
Author’s Note: Two of the original team members (Abel and Juggernaut) produced a much more involved report on what happened with their team. You can read about Juggernaut’s summary here, as well as Abel’s own story about what happened.
On the other side of the world (from where I am in Dallas), Team F aimed to create a place where new practitioners could find job opportunities and ‘buddies’ to help learn the design sprint process. Their biggest concerns involved the accuracy of information on the network, providing enough learning opportunities for new practitioners, and ensuring the quality of available jobs.
Their lightning demos produced artifacts related to mentoring, community and on-boarding. Some team members outlined entire flows to illustrate the user experience with signing up for a particular network.
Solution sketches dove deeper into mentoring and finding buddies. Design mockups eventually explored interfaces that attempted to capture a users’ preferred role, previous experiences, time zones, and other criteria to match them with potential professionals.
Like the other teams working on this particular problem, Team F also produced a profile page to feature different mentors and facilitators. Their final designs showcased a work flow process for design sprint practitioners to find their mentor/mentee matchups.
The following week, I met with each team for their design sprint team retrospectives to see how things went. I asked a few questions about the design sprint challenge (the referral network) what they felt the referral network could be.
If I were seriously considering the creation of this resource, what would they look for?
How did it differ from the findings mentioned above?
Were they in agreement, or did they see it as something else entirely?
After that, I went back into Mural and Zoom to revisit user interviews and their results. I created a separate Mural board for some affinity diagramming of themes, responses (positive, negative or informative) and repeated statements (patterns, phrases) heard during user interviews from all three teams. I combined those with earlier statements made during team retrospectives on the sprint challenge.
Here’s what stood out.
Cumulative Results and Findings
(Please note: The following items are my own deductions and conclusions, and do not necessarily reflect the practitioners or the user participants who gave their time and effort for this challenge in November)
- Users need to know the referral personally
“When somebody I know recommends me the network, I would join.”
It was clear from the commentary that the referral network would rely on existing relationships between professionals. Additionally, the invitations to the network would have to originate from people they had high trust in. - The network had to be exclusive
“Quality of the network is important, especially if someone is vouching for it or done through more rigorous recruitment process.”
It wasn’t enough that the referral network would provide professionals with learning and employment opportunities. It needed an element of exclusivity for it to seem valuable. It couldn’t work like other open networks already available on the market. - The value proposition needed to be immediately apparent.
“I want a clear idea of the benefits and the costs involved with joining. Is this going to waste my time? Why should I care?”
There was a value proposition evaluation that was pronounced with some participants. This was especially true for those that had been practicing design sprints for a few years. Would the referral network appeal be apparent right away? … to both practitioners and businesses looking to hire or connect with professionals? - The less cognitive friction, the better
“There’s too much to read / not a clear call to action / very busy interface.”
In the modern world of digital experiences, a good user experience is expected by default. While the teams did their level best to put something ‘real’ in front of testers with limited time and resources, it was abundantly clear that the referrals’ interface needed to be top notch.
How do you define ‘real’?
So, how would we make the Design Sprint Referral network, real?
If I were to hypothetically put time and effort into the first iteration of this service, what would the experience be like? How could it align with some of the greater themes outlined above?
Here’s my first take on it.
- A closed social network
The age of open social networks, where anyone and everyone can join a network with just an email or phone number, is going to end fairly soon. Too many examples of industry tech giants being compromised or breaking the implied promise of data privacy is hastening that reality forward. I’m thinking that protected social will started trending more. - Small, interconnected groups
The exclusivity characteristic mentioned during user interviews speaks to a network of smaller, connected networks based on a foundation of trust and shared experience. Topical interest or subject matter familiarity is a plus, but not required. - Nodes and Connectors
Every network has a gateway, or a central point where other connections attach to it. Using this metaphor, a member of the network can be a ‘node’ (or person that knows others they can vouch for) to other members, and a ‘connector’ (people connected to you with varying degrees of experience and trust). - Lightweight profiles
I’m willing to bet that most people are reluctant to make yet another online profile for themselves. Why not use the ones they already have?
So, keep it lightweight and distill down available data about practitioners to the following:
- Nickname or First Name (no last names)
- Positioning Statement
- Who they’re connected to
- Documented and/or verified experience with design sprint roles and activities (through participation in workshops, design sprints, LDJ’s, etc.)
- LinkedIn or similar profile (for primarily importing information or broadcasting who they are… if they really want to do that) - By invitation only
The referral network would ideally grow organically. This growth would be fueled by invitations of existing members. Each invitation would carry an implied (or deliberate) level of trust. The person bringing in a potential new member vouches for them. - Video interview meet-n-greet
Once you have an invitation, you can opt to do a recorded or live video with someone from the referral network. Ideally you’d pair people together with similar disciplines or backgrounds, but it ensures that those joining the network are real people. - Tags
A simple way of applying perceived or experienced characteristics of another professional is the use of descriptor tags. This gets away from involved, elaborate reviews of someone’s abilities that can be creatively gamed or flawed through interpretation. Members of the network can use existing tags, create their own, or confirm existing tags someone else may have applied.
Let’s fast forward into the future
How about the 1–2 year projection into what could be? Let’s get on our audacious, ludicrous speedy time machine and project how this could evolve as a viable resource for referrals:
- Work for practitioners and businesses
The referral network would be perfect for finding candidates from around the world for business-driven design sprint and service network engagement. Likewise, businesses could extend their teams to include outside talent at the fraction of the cost that placement agencies would normally charge. - Developing professional authority
As practitioners grow, how do you differentiate one designer or developer from another? What are their unique professional characteristics and market positioning what would allow others to refer them? Using the referral network, you’d build a track record of growth and exploration that could position you as a professional authority in your particular niche. - Professional Development
While executing and showcasing what you can do is one dimension of a professional career, self awareness and knowing your strengths augment and support a lot of that effort. The referral network could expand to support learning curves, strengths coaching, public speaking and other areas of professional growth. In other words, members helping members through referrals. - Lifestyle support
What if the referral network had a built-in foundation for supporting your lifestyle? You could utilize your professional relationships to see what others use for health insurance, financial assistance, professional memberships, email marketing, payment services and more. Want to know more about a particular service? Lean on your referral network and see what others say.
I’ll be starting work on this in 2019, and I’d love to work with others on making it a reality.
If you’re interested in keeping track of it’s progress, or would like to get involved, sign up for DSRN updates, join the DSRN Slack channel or visit the DSRN Facebook group.
No matter which communication method you choose, you’ll get updates and be able to contribute when you have time.
Thanks for reading, and let me know what you think!
