Structuring a Remote Design Sprint
Takeaways from our remote sprint playbook.
By now, we all recognize the value of the design sprint as a great way to diverge, converge and align the team around an initial solution. When we went 100% remote in response to Covid-19, I was preparing to kick off designs for a new communication feature.
I knew a sprint was the right tool to utilize, but needed to figure out how to ensure efficacy with varying time zones and competing stakeholder priorities.
I started organizing the agenda by
- Work that could be done offline
- Collaborative group activities
By including “homework” (I know that term feels ironic right now), we were able to be more flexible with time zones and more efficient with our collaboration time without losing engagement from the team.
I prepared a sprint brief with my colleague Anthony. We included discovery pre-reading from research we had conducted prior to the sprint, as well as the agenda and some pre-work focused on lightning round preparation.
Our brief, included the project goal, user need statements which were synthesized from our user interviews and quantitative data compiled from survey results. This provided context and gave the team a thorough understanding of the problem to be solved.
Since we only had two short days, I decided the first day would be focused on ideation and divergent thinking with the goal of starting to converge by the end of the day.
Day two would be all about converging and refining through solution sketching and storyboarding.
You can see the agenda we put together below:
Day 1: Map & Sketch
- Review the Brief (10 mins)
- How Might We Statements: Generate, Vote, Review (30 mins)
- Sprint Questions, Agree on Flow, Agree on Target (10 mins)
- Morning Break (10 mins)
- Lightning Demos (30 mins)
- Sketching (70 mins)
Day 2: Decide
- Solution Sketch (60 mins)
- Dot voting (30 mins)
- Break (10 mins)
- Speed Critique (20 mins)
- Dot Voting (10 mins)
- User Test Flow (20 mins)
- Break (30 mins)
- Storyboarding (60 mins)
These are the tools we used:
- Google Drive — Lightning Round assets, brief, depository
- Mural — the sprint room and whiteboard
- Pen/paper
- Figma
- Zoom
Now, let’s take a look at the nuts and bolts of the actual process.
First Things First: Start With the “why?”
We started by reviewing the brief to align around the problem and the long term goal, and to outline logistics for the first-timers.
Tips for Preparing the “Room”
I like to keep the long term goal and sprint questions at the top of our board to help us make decisions throughout the sprint, so we replicated this practice on our Mural board.
I decided beforehand that we would have a board for all assets and a separate board for sketches. I prepared these templates beforehand so everybody knew where to find resources as the sprint progressed.
Lastly, we saved considerable time by predefining the flow ahead of time and validating through a short discussion with the team.
Learnings From Facilitating the Sprint
Round Robin for sharing during discussions to ensure every team member has an opportunity to provide input. — Be diligent about taking notes on the board.
Mandatory video — Although nobody likes to enforce rules, this one is important. It encourages engagement and accountability and to some extent, it allows the facilitator to read the room.
Manage expectations — as mentioned, we had some first-timers in this sprint, it’s important to make the outcome clear and provide rationale for booking the better part of two days on an already busy calendar. Some points to hit:
- Explain the business case
- Give some context as to why the process works so well
- Empower participants by reiterating why their unique perspective makes this the dream team
- Stick to the schedule
- Use a timer that everyone can see
- I like to give the 5 minute warning to allow team members to wrap up their primary points.
- Provide time for breaks
- Stay organized — without a whiteboard it’s even more critical that assets are well organized and the team knows where to find these resources for reference. It’s on the facilitator to ensure these processes are well defined ahead of time and updated as new artifacts become available.
Although it may feel impossible to forge the same type of collaboration and engagement as we have in-person, it’s possible to create results comparable to in-person sessions through careful planning and effective utilization of tools.
