How and why we accelerated our design sprints
Introduction
The Design Sprint should be part of every routine in any Product Design Team across the world, used not only to build products from scratch but also to iterate, improve or expand upon features in the product, before testing them with current or potential users.
We have come to adopt design sprints as part of our continuous design thinking process here at Push Doctor and test the ideas that come out of them with users in our own user testing lab, which we refer to as the PoD internally.
Let’s make it short
Since 2016 when the first Design Sprint book was released the methodology has been revised and compressed to satisfy the business requirements of even the fastest paced businesses. After over 350 design sprints carried out by Jake Knapp and his teams, they had found little hacks and more efficient processes to compress the design sprint down even further. This led them to create Design Sprint 2.0, an initiative which takes the design sprint down to 4 days, with just 2 days needed with a full sprint team. We have found a way to compress the sprint down further still, tweaking and amending it based on our business needs and pace.
The Problem
The most difficult part in organising a design sprint is recruiting different stakeholders to sit around the table, leave their laptop on their desk and give us their undivided attention for 5 full days. Most stakeholders and other departments want to be part of the design sprint, but their own priorities and workloads restrict them from giving us that amount of time.
What we have found within Push Doctor is that key people in the business, especially the medical team, hold key pieces of information about the current features of the product and its users. These insights can have a big influence on what we should be improving about the service, or what new features we should be testing.
After coming across this scenario a few times and the need to run design sprints regularly with the same stakeholders, we decided to take influence from Jake Knapp and compress our design sprints down. Internally, we have began to call these ADS.
What is ADS?
ADS stands for Accelerated Design Sprints. It takes condensed methods from Jake Knapp’s design sprint book including a few methods of our own, and splits them into modules. So for each sprint you run, you choose the modules that will help you achieve the best sprint for the problem you need to solve.
Using the ADS structure meant we could take our design sprints down to between 2–4 hours. This improved participation enormously, attracting more interest from stakeholders as they felt it was a reasonable amount of time they could give up, while also helping to make them feel included in the future vision of the product and user experience.
Alongside the ADS, we wanted a way to make sure the ideas and concepts that come out of the sprint can be shared around the business, discussed and prioritised for testing. This is why we built the Design Matrix Template, a document which takes whiteboard scribbles, groups of post-it notes and concept sketches into something that can be shared and used as a tool when moving onto the next phase. We have included a template version of this for you to download.
Who is involved in the ADS?
The facilitator role is key in the ADS as they will need to plan the session in advance, making sure the design sprint is being taken in the right direction. This can be shared with other members of the design and product team for everyone to feed back on and agree the methods that will be used during the session.
The product designer can sometimes take the role of facilitator but usually sits within the design sprint to pick up the prototyping side of things. They will sit alongside the stakeholders, get involved in sharing ideas, dot voting, creating concepts but it is then their job to take these ideas away and create a prototype that can be tested with users also sharing the outcome of the design sprint using the Design Matrix Template.
The participant needs to come with an open mind and any knowledge or insights they have about the business and users of the product or service. They may not be used to this way of working, so you may have to allow time to introduce how the ADS works and what outcome you want to achieve. We also found that introducing an icebreaker sketching exercise can help people to open up to sketching out their ideas and vision.
The ADS modules we use at Push Doctor are:
- Setting a long term goal
- Defining user types
- Mapping out user journeys
- How might we’s
- Sprint questions
- Ask the experts
- Stakeholder interviews
- Lightning demos
- Dot voting
- Invest in an idea
- Ice breaker
- Crazy 6’s
- Supersize
- 4 way sketching
- Storyboarding
- Prototyping
- Testing
Example:
Mapping out user journeys
Mapping out user journeys starts by identifying some end users of the product and using their needs, wants and personalities to map out how they currently use the product. These are written on a whiteboard so that alternate journeys can be mapped out alongside them. These are then used to see how users get to the end goal and any potential issues that may occur along the way.
How might we’s
How Might We’s (HMWs) are little insights into the pains and needs of our users. We start by creating a long term goal (i.e. “to increase membership rates”) and then the participants write their HMWs on post it notes. We then map these into categories based on the themes that emerge, this part is called Group and Label internally.
Lightning demos
Lightning demos give participants the chance to think about products that currently exist and how these ideas could be integrated into the product being developed. All participants come up with a list of products or services that may solve some of the issues raised during the HMWs. These ideas are then shared with the rest of the group in short demonstrations, either through showing the website or just describing the feature.
Icebreaker
As most stakeholders are not familiar with drawing, using an icebreaker eases them into drawing out ideas before introducing more ‘daunting’ drawing stages. This is usually quite a short task (maybe 5–10 minutes) but is useful to explain drawing ideas especially for those who have not done a design sprint before.
Crazy 6s
Crazy 6s (a variation on Crazy 8s) involves sketching 6 quick solutions to problems that arise from HMWs. As part of the accelerated sprint, six ideas still provide variation in answers but in a slightly quicker time scale. Crazy 6s are usually timed (about 1–2 minutes per idea) and participants are encouraged to think of any ‘crazy’ idea that comes into their head.
Dot voting
Dot voting makes sure everyone’s voices are heard. Based on the ideas that have emerged from the design sprint, people place dots on the ideas they like best. The dots give a visual representation of what ideas are the most popular and provide a better understanding of what should be developed.
Supersizing
After people have voted on their favourite ideas they then take the idea they like best and expand on it, providing a bit more detail on how the idea would work. This allows us to see what ideas could work immediately versus those that would take a bit more thought to implement.
In conclusion
ADS has been a great way for us to get more participation in design sprints across the business. Working in a relatively new industry in digital health, still with a lot to find out, test and discover we need to move as quickly as we can to get results fast. ADS allows us to have more design sprints without taking people away from their everyday tasks driving engagement.
We have been running ADS for the last 6 months and we are continuing to improve the process — making amendments to modules and discovering both tweaks and wholly new techniques that can save us time or improve the outcome of the sprint.
The output of the ADS relies heavily on the product designer. It is key that they get as much as they can from the design sprints to take that into a prototype to test. Working closely with the facilitator they can help keep the energy high in the sprint and aid other members in the sprint with exploring a design thinking approach.
If you would like to know anymore about how we run our ADS sprints here at Push Doctor then feel free to get in touch and drop the design team an email design@pushdr.com.
You can also download a Sketch file of our free Design Matrix Template if you want to share any outcomes of your design sprint.
Jess
The design team
