Using Design Sprints to fight smog in Warsaw

One of our core values here at 10Clouds is that we’re always striving to learn about new and exciting processes that we can use to help our clients reach their goals.

We get clients that approach us that have only an idea. That’s why we decided to offer the Design Sprint, particularly the 2.0 version of this (you can read all about it here), to our clients. It’s the ideal collaborative process that allows us to define a challenge from an idea that can quickly be transformed into a clickable prototype for testing. All of that in just four days!

The team

The Design Sprint was going to be run with and for the students of the University of Applied Sciences Utrecht. I wanted them to experience this fast-pace process that would benefit them in the long run, while working on a design solution to improve the air quality in Warsaw, where our HQ is based.

The team itself consisted of me (facilitator), four students that specialised in Communication Multimedia & Design and Product Design, and their two mentors who run the Co-Design exchange programme.

The design challenge

As hinted before, the challenge was to design a solution to educate Warsaw citizens about air quality and improve it in their environment.

Air pollution is measured in 5 levels on the CAQI scale, from very low (0–25) to dangerously high (>100). The levels are based on 3 major pollutants of PM10, NO2, O3 and 3 additional pollutants of CO, PM2.5 and SO2.

Most countries in the EU rarely pass the value of 50. Unfortunately in Warsaw, it’s a different story, where this winter the lowest value recorded was 49.

At the end of October 2019, there was a day with a value of 153, placing Warsaw among the 10 most polluted cities in the world on that day. So we knew that there is a strong need to design a solution that could encourage people to educate themselves on this topic and in return encourage them to take action. We were now eager to start the design challenge!

Day 1: map and sketch

The goal for the first day was to define the challenge and produce some solutions together. We kicked off with the expert interviews to give the students the best understanding of the air quality situation in Warsaw.

Throughout this first part we made notes in the How Might We (HMW) format, allowing us to already define some ideas. After the expert interviews, we placed all the HMW notes into categories. After this came the opportunity to add a vote on the idea that aligns the best with solving the design challenge.

Voting tree with the HMW ideas

What I loved seeing was that the HMW notes with the most votes were to design a solution that could help change the public mindset towards more greener energy and particularly how to visualise their impact on the air quality.

In the afternoon we kicked off with the lightning demo, allowing us to explore some solutions that served as inspiration. We quickly followed this with my favourite activity: the 4-step sketch process. This process helped the team sketch solutions rapidly. At the last step of this, each person sketched the final solution and include a catchy name.

And the solutions that the team came up with:

• An advertising poster that changes the more air pollution it gets exposed to.
• An AR app that uses your camera to visualises the invisible (i.e. the tiny particles that make up the bad air)
• An app that is synced with a device that captures and measures the air quality around you.
• A device that you can attach to your bicycle or buggy that shows how much air pollution you’ve taken in from the environment
• An in-home device that measures the air quality that works with an air filtration system that kicks in when the air quality is or forecasted to be poor.

Day 2: decide and storyboard

At the start of the second day, I informed the team of the following agenda:

1. Review and discuss each idea. Any questions or comments that came up needed to be formulated as an HMW on a post-it (a great technique to see opportunities and not criticise)
2. Vote on an idea by adding as many red dots as you wish, allowing us to see the heat map of the idea.
3. Use the user test flow process to individually map out the end-to-end flow of the most voted for idea on 6 panels. The last step to this was to map it on 8 panels to fill in any missing holes.

Finally, after a long day we had our idea laid out:

A poster campaign throughout the city that will direct people to a website and app. Once on the digital space, they will be informed, educated, and motivated to take action against air pollution through challenges.

This we then broke down into a few ideas that would help us reach our goal:

1. A poster placed around the city that would show what Warsaw weather and areas would look like if air pollution was eliminated. On the poster, there will be a call to action to visit a website to find out more.
2. Visiting the website will show a big prompt that will ask you when you use your car and for what distances you use it, with the result possibly making people aware of how they’re contributing. They will then be informed how they can reduce this via an app that will also allow them to set a weekly challenge for the greater good.
3. The app itself will play the most important role to motivate and change, presenting people with a weekly challenge. It will measure the mode of transport against the distance, to then inform how much someone is contributing to air pollution.

Day 3: prototype

Before designing the prototype, the team defined the four pillars of what they wanted to achieve with the solution

The narrative of this is that the solution should:

• Spike interest in Warsaw citizens
• Help them understand the current situation and how citizens play a role
• Give them the power to know that they can change things for the better
• Providing a solution that will make this happen, one challenge at a time

Now we were ready to start prototyping! For the prototyping, any solution can do, from having sketches to having UI designs created in Sketch.

Day 4: testing

The final day was here and the students were eager to start testing. They took out to the streets, visiting cafes hoping to get the feedback.

The overall feedback was positive, with people welcoming the idea. However, the consensus was:

“I am willing to change my habits, but businesses and government won’t change, and that’s where the real problem lies.”

It was then that the people were informed that as much as 50% of the air pollution in Warsaw comes from individuals. They were stunned, to say the least. And at the same time, it showed that there’s traction in the idea with the four pillars.

At the end of the day, we concluded that the response to the app was generally very positive, with people saying they’re willing to give it a try.

Summary

It was the first visit for the Dutch students and they weren’t familiar with the air pollution situation in Poland. The Design Sprint 2.0 process allowed them to get a good understanding of this that opened their minds to generate quality ideas quickly. It was amazing to see that by the end of the week they diverged and converged on an idea to prototype and test it

For well-established businesses and startups, it can mean the same. The collaborative approach with the many methods that come with the process will guarantee a validated solution that will save you time and money.

What’s your experience with Design Sprint 2.0? Share your thoughts in the comments. And if you have a better way to run it, let me know!

If you enjoyed reading this, some claps would be greatly appreciated. 😊 👏