The Design Sprint — First thoughts
Seeing how fast teams can move never fails to excite me.
The Design Sprint, is an innovative method for teams to hustle. It is a time-sensitive, result-oriented process that pushes teams to achieve months of work in a single week. The Sprint book demonstrates a step-by-step guide to facilitate a Sprint, allowing practically anyone to give it a try. The difficult part is tackling the challenge.
Also read: 3 Steps To The Perfect Design Sprint Question
At the Lab of Forward Thinking, I was fortunate to be given a chance to co-facilitate the Design Sprint with the team in Manulife Cambodia.
While the focus for the week was on an insurance product, the Sprint process is definitely not limited to the insurance industry. As Sprint facilitators, we are neither industry veterans nor experts in product distribution. We are merely introducing a new way to turn ideas into viable, scalable solutions within a short span of time. Upon reflecting, I would like to share some of my significant learnings during the week.
Customer experience is not only about the product.
Great products are never only about having the best features. Although these remain crucial, a truly successful product delivers a holistic end-to-end experience for their customers. This means providing a good experience starting from the point where customers become aware of the product all the way till the post-sales experience.
This lesson was taught to me when I least expected it. After two iterations of prototyping based on what was thought to be a complete customer journey map, we presented our final mock-up to our customers for a test. The product was well-received and the mock-up was helpful for our customers to understand our value proposition.
It came as a surprise to me when one of our interviewees hesitated to use our product despite giving positive feedback for it. Upon further probing, it was revealed that the hesitance was due to gaps in the underlying infrastructure of the banking services in the country.
Despite our product not being in the banking domain, it led to a gap in the experience journey and ultimately undermined its appeal to the customers.
Test. Validate. Repeat.
Everyone loves brainstorming. Ideas flow freely, collectively leveraged to build on one another. However, the danger with brainstorming arises when teams rush to come up with solutions without properly validating the assumptions of the problem.
In our case, the team had such tendencies. When mapping the customer journey, the team put themselves in hypothetical situations to visualise the pains and gains of the customers. Along the way, many assumptions were made, which could be problematic if left unvalidated.
It was tempting for the team to simply formulate their solutions immediately given the looming deadline ahead. As facilitators, it was challenging to steer the team to identify the critical assumptions to be tested. Nonetheless, this process was necessary. Otherwise, the team might end up solving the wrong problem.
“Enlightened trial and error succeeds over the planning of the lone genius.” — Peter Skillman, IDEO.
At the heart of the process, in my opinion, is Eric Ries’ mantra of validated learning. The best way to learn about the problem is to get out of the building and test the underlying assumptions.
Overall, the Design Sprint is a wonderful process for prototyping ideas and validating them quickly. It is clear that many hours were put into perfecting the Sprint process, combining elements of human behaviour and psychology to improve team collaboration.
At the end of the day, there is no secret formula behind the process. It is merely a series of steps put together to point the team in the right direction to make the right decisions.
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