How a design sprint helped us create a newsletter theme in a week
Bringing vision to life
Developers are problem solvers. That’s one of the first things you learn when you start to code. Being a designer and a developer is about practicing the skill to create things from scratch. It’s also about bringing ideas to life that are often thought impossible to do so.
Being a problem solver also pushes you to evolve, create and innovate constantly. Naturally, an industry of problem solvers was bound to tackle yet another issue-time.
Designers and developers are people with imagination and big ideas. But often, time is an obstacle that stands in the way of efficient execution. Eventually, the next big thing was introduced and it changed how many design agencies work.
I’m talking about design sprints.
Design sprints are an art form of its own. These art forms are a process that spans over the period of five days. It’s a meticulous 5-stage phenomenon which aims to serve as a shortcut.
What I mean by that is the concept of compressing a whole design project in only one week. First introduced by Google Ventures, this system soon became the go-to approach of many design agencies. It makes sense. It’s efficient and it works.
The design sprint
At Revue we developed a tool for personal newsletters. We take pride in making it very simple for users to craft their newsletters, and making sure that what they send out in the end looks beautiful.
To continue doing that even better, we introduced themes. That seemed like the perfect opportunity to try out design sprints.
Themes were a feature requested quite often by our users, so we knew this is the next big step to take. We had to reach out to someone who understood what we wanted to create and how we want it done.
Preferably someone with the same values and similar drive towards innovation. Soon after, we partnered up with the extremely gifted team from Awkward.
Awkward understands the industry they’re in and they’re beyond creative. That’s why we trusted them to move forward with our project. Imagine my excitement once they suggested that our collaboration will be a design sprint.
As a designer myself, I was eager to get cracking and see first hand what being in such a sprint is like. Everyone else on the team felt pretty much the same way.
Finally, Revue got to experience a proper design sprint and we loved it.
In order for this operation to be a smooth sail from the get-go, all the key players involved had to do their fair share of work. That’s why I’d like to introduce you to them. Firstly, on Awkward’s side there was Davey Heuser, who was the lead designer behind the project.
When it comes to our team, our CTO Mo was in charge of the back-end, I took on the front-end implementation of the theme and Nikky had an indispensable role in the Prototype & Validate phases.
UNDERSTAND
In the first stage of the design sprint, we all sat down for an extensive talk to define the following: what our users need; what is our business goal and what does that mean for the technological execution. Launching themes for Revue was and still is a big deal so we really wanted to stress why we were creating this feature.
By communicating clearly that it’s all about our users, Awkward understood the idea behind this project. Focusing on visual aesthetics, user friendliness and character of the themes became the main priority.
We reviewed how doable our ideas and overall vision are given the time constraints and technical feasibility. It’s really important to think of those aspects before the actual designing starts. This went on for a while, but in the end we were heading in the right direction.
DEFINE
Once we jolted down all that was necessary, we started thinking main focus and strategy. That’s an essential step of the design sprint process.
You also need to take into account the user journey when it comes to your product and use this for your ideas.
In our case, focus was on simplicity. Given how much email has changed over the years, newsletters weren’t far behind. Lately, we’ve noticed the emerging trend of using digests in different ways, mostly focusing on content.
We believe the next big thing will be editorial-looking newsletters so we felt that acting on this idea of ours could take us a step closer to achieving our mission of reinventing the newsletter.
Davey Heuser, the lead designer in our project, made his first mock ups and presented them so we could see where he’s headed. It was remarkable how well he grasped our initial ideas.
He explained what his “inspiration board” consisted of. And he was spot on. The prepared examples all had to do with the elegance and sleekness that a contemporary editorial looking digest has.
Now the question became “How can we go about this?” from a strategy point of view. Thing is, designing for email is way different than designing for the web.
At the end of this stage we decided upon the concept and it was time to brainstorm on how we can make this happen.
DIVERGE
Now we had to really dig into the details.
This means thinking about all possible ways to bring our vision to life. Brainstorming, sketching variations, you name it!
In my opinion, this is one of the most exhilarating parts of the sprint. After Stage 2, where it was decided in which direction we’re heading, Sprint Master Davey (we didn’t actually call him that) showed us what he had done so far.
He presented multiple options as to how the layout of the digests can look like. Should the bio of the person be at the top or bottom? How can the text divider look like? What about fonts? Should there be a “like issue” button and if there is, how should it look like?
Those were all good questions. They were also tough to answer.
But most importantly, it got everyone talking and sharing ideas. That’s the best way to reach clarity on where you’re headed next.
DECIDE
All of the ideas were great but choices had to be made. Every choice was explained and every possible outcome was discussed.
During that process, we put our “thinking hats” on and at this stage, it was crucial to be critical. Yes, by observing the possibilities, people had different opinions.
The point of this part is to really get everyone’s thoughts and ideas out in the open.
Main goal here is to make sure that everyone in that room gets to express their opinion and some sort of a discussion is sparked.
Mostly because in this stage you will have to make final decisions about the prototype.
Some thought there weren’t any drastic changes to the design, whereas others considered that to be a plus because it was more about bringing the already existing strengths of the Revue digest to the forefront.
That paved the way for an extremely constructive discussion that had to do with Revue’s identity and mission by putting user experience in the center of it all.
It was great to have someone as experienced as Awkward guiding us through all of those stages. Being directed is a great perk in a design sprint. Otherwise you risk to sink on your own with too many things on your plate and not being sure where to put your focus next.
PROTOTYPE & VALIDATE
At the end of the week the final design was ready and it looked amazing. Once the last details were discussed, we began implementing our ideas. Davey started on the prototype we agreed upon and Mo and I gradually began to work on the back and front-end so we can efficiently incorporate the prototype.
It was time to also test, or in other words validate what we had so far. So Nikky, our product researcher, thought of the brilliant idea to set up a Slack channel with some of our top users in order to get their honest feedback and test how the template will be received.
It was also a great way to get some of our users talking to each other and exchanging digests, ideas and other insights. This is something I highly recommend, since it worked out great!
Another big takeaway was the necessity to test the prototype once it’s finished. It lets you catch and fix bugs on time. It also lets others share a different perspective that you might’ve not seen so far.
What worked for us and what didn’t?
What worked:
Being part of a design sprint truly was a wonderful experience. You might’ve seen all those cool pictures from Google Ventures design sprints, but that doesn’t mean much until you experience it yourself.
It’s definitely an intense process and it requires a whole lot of dedication. It’ll take up your entire focus and will put it in one project, but it’s totally worth it.
For Revue, a design sprint was the perfect choice. It allowed us to bring an idea to life quicker, launch and validate much faster than it would’ve taken initially.
What didn’t work:
To be honest, I can’t really say that there was much that didn’t work for us. The overall experience was great. An important thing to mention is that as a startup we’re constantly balancing between speed and quality.
This means that if we took 3 more weeks, let’s say, to work on this theme we might’ve ended up with something even more remarkable.
We also might’ve ended up with more themes launched at the same time.
It’s important to take into account the different cultures between startups and design agencies and adapt quickly.
That’s why you have to search carefully in order to find a good fit for your own startup!
