We ran a remote design sprint and this is what we learnt
A team from Kainos has been working with a UK central government department to build a new service that went live in January 2021.
Over the last couple of years we’ve designed, tested and built tens of journeys for the users to complete, but the service home page never got the attention it deserved until it was no longer fit for purpose and led to poor user experience.
In April 2020 we found ourselves in a situation where we needed to address the problems with the service home page while continuing to design and build new journeys for the service. We chose to run a design sprint and these are some of our learnings.
1. Plan, iterate and test your schedule, activities and tools
We had planned to run the design sprint in our Kainos offices in Birmingham, but then the coronavirus pandemic hit and we had to change our plans. Everyone from Kainos and the client started working from home and got used to new remote working tools, so we decided to run the design sprint online.
The ‘traditional’ design sprint by Google is run over five days, but we knew from the start that it wouldn’t be realistic — we had competing priorities, client availability was very limited, and we’d already discovered that video call fatigue was a real thing. We ended up scheduling 4 x 4 hour sessions over a week.
We found useful templates and blog posts from others who had run design sprints remotely and took tips and inspiration from them.
We chose to use Zoom for talking, video and screen sharing, and Mural for collaborative working such as sharing images, posting sticky notes and voting.
Perhaps an obvious thing to mention, but you should test your tools before the first session to make sure everyone on the sprint can use the remote collaboration tools and that they can take part in the planned activities. Many government agencies and companies limit which software can be installed and they might not be allowed to share their screens, so be mindful when planning your sprint activities. Maybe you have planned activities that require a certain type of license that not all participants have, so make sure you know your tooling.
2. Be selective about who you invite
Be as strict about who should participate as you would be when working on site. You need to make sure everyone in the design sprint is engaged and can contribute to it. It’s easier to facilitate the sessions when there are not too many participants and everyone knows their role.
Make sure all decision makers are involved in the sprint — our service has three parties who all need to agree on the designs, including the content. One of the decision makers was not fully engaged (due to other commitments) in the design sprint which caused issues when the designs were about to go into development. Next time we know to emphasise the importance of full engagement and make sure decision makers who are present have the authority to decide on behalf of everyone.
3. Facilitate, encourage & engage
Appoint at least two facilitators for each breakout group — one to drive the discussion and keep everyone focused on the task and one to help with any technical problems. There will be some participants who are more vocal than others and it’s important to make sure everyone will have their voice heard.
You may also need to be at your persuasive best to encourage some participants to do things out of their comfort zone. Drawing and sketching concepts is a good example of this and something not everyone feels comfortable with. We found using pen and paper and taking photos of the sketches and uploading them on Mural was a good way to lower any performance anxiety anyone may have had and helped us focus on concepts rather than trying to make the sketch look polished.
4. Time box all activities and don’t forget the breaks
We needed to have clear outcomes after each day, so we time boxed all activities and were strict about keeping time. This was our schedule:
Monday
9–9.15am Overview
9.15–9.45am Frame the problem
9.45–10.15am What are our design challenges?
10.15–10.30am Break
10.30–11.30am Prioritise needs
11.30am-12pm Review and agree the problem statement
Wednesday
9–9.30am Examples of good service home pages (breakout sessions)
9.30am-12pm Collaborative design (breakout sessions)
12–1pm Offline working
Friday
9–10am Present and critique designs
10–10.15am Break
10.15am-12pm Vote on the best elements from each design against the problem statement & iterate design collaboratively
12–1pm Lunch break
1–2.15pm Iterate design collaboratively
2.15–4pm Present design, feedback & agree next steps
As with any workshops and long meetings, people need to take breaks to remain focused and comfortable, so we made sure to have regular breaks.
This schedule worked quite well for us, although after the first day we realised we needed to allow at least 5 minutes after the breakout sessions to get participants return to the main Zoom call. Also, it was clear our schedule was too tight on the first day and we should have allowed more time for framing the problem and discussing our design challenges. Next time we’ll know better!
The Experience Design team at Kainos designs the right thing, the right way, and for the right reasons. We combine user-centred design with a pragmatic approach to solve problems. Get in touch to find out more.
