I’ve just run my first Remote Design Sprint Experience
As part of our Bootcamp, we had the opportunity to carry out a Design Sprint, which due to the COVID-19, we had to do remotely. However, it has been an enriching experience that I really enjoyed. I carried out this project with my team Enric and Angels, hand in hand with my teacher Pere Feliu and Nuria Gómez. As it was a remote project, the use of a platform like Miro helped us to do a good job.
First of all, Design Sprint is a methodology of a five-day process for validating ideas and solving big challenges through prototyping and testing ideas with customers. The idea is to develop and test a prototype as quickly as possible to determine if it will be a workable idea or not, based on user feedback.
Before investing in the development of your product or new functionality that requires an expensive process, you can dedicate 5 days for the team to understand the problem your company is facing, design solutions, create a functional prototype, and validate your ideas in a matter of hours. Managing to be a more agile organization.
So, let’s do it!
Day 1: Understand
This is the stage of mapping, defining a challenge, and choosing a target. The challenge we faced was “how to contribute with technology to overcome isolation and “unwanted” loneliness?”
To tackle this challenge, we started by asking ourselves many questions, the so-called Sprint Questions. There we dumped all the questions that could help us guide the project. Questions like: “Can the product make it not seem like a problem to be alone or feel like one?”, “Would it help users in a critical situation?” or “Would users classify and join according to their profiles and interests?”.
After the questions, the next step was to map! Each one created a User journey, in which we reflected how the emotions of the users were reflected during their experience in different activities related to the challenge, intending to find the pain points and thus know where to focus a solution.
Our next step was to change the questions into opportunities, thanks to the How Might We (HMW) technique, in this way, taking into account the pain points, we rethought the Sprint Questions in possibilities, such as: “How might we present the product so that being alone or feeling like that it is not seen as a problem?”.
After the HMW ended, we held the election, better known as dotmocracy, where we chose the most interesting and innovative ideas on which to focus. In this way, we choose adolescents as our target and we defined our challenge, which was: “How to prevent and solve the critical problems of loneliness in adolescents, generating a connection between them based on their interests, avoiding bad practice within of this product?”.
Day 2: Sketch
We started the day very early looking for ideas and solutions from other companies or projects that had a relationship with our work, which we then presented and carried out the Lighting Demos, where each team member quickly sketched the ideas and then collected them to have a broader view.
Having the lighting demos ready and everything we did the day before, each one took out the ideas that they believed to be most relevant and sketched, looking for solutions with the most innovative ideas. Each one chose the idea that seemed the most promising and we carried out the Crazy 8’s technique, where we make 8 variations of the same idea to find the most interesting and functional. To finish, each one polished their idea, sketching 3 views with the details of the solution, better known as a storyboard.
Day 3: Decide
We started by showing the sketches we had made the day before. Each one observed the storyboards, analyzed and expressed their doubts, writing them down in a post-it, but never judging them! Each one explained their sketch and then we carried out the dotmocracy, to choose the one that best suited the needs of the project and our users.
Then, we had to choose! And the “winning” idea that was on par with our challenge, was to create a mobile app where the main figure of a mediator (real-time assistant) helps lonely and friendless teenagers to find self-confidence, and step by step and at your own pace, feel ready to interact with others. In the app, they could have contact with other young people who share the same interests and hobbies, and also they could play games in the same app, chat with them, make video calls see different events (and participate), and be able to create a community.
In this phase, we had to decide how we would present the information in an attractive way for adolescents, how we would present the format, what details we would include, such as, for example, we decided that we would make the app vertically and finally all the details necessary to carry out the project. Then we made a storyboard where we represented the user’s navigation using our product. To finish, we gave life to our storyboard by making the wireframes, that way, we would have the skeleton ready and we would only have the last details in the creation of the prototype.
Day 4: Prototype
It was one of the most anticipated days for our team! The goal is to test if the idea will work, as soon as possible. We start by deciding all the visual things (look and feel), the final distribution of the elements, texts, what images we would include, etc. In short, everything we would need to make a minimum viable product, so we had to limit ourselves to some screens that allowed testing, to obtain feedback from users.
As it was a single day to do the entire prototype, we divided the work. Some looked for definitive graphic resources and texts, others made the structure of the app and then another was putting all the parts together. We used both Sketch and Figma. In this way, we were building our prototype.
After having finished the design of the screens, it was time to use InVision, which is a tool that allows you to visualize how navigation between the screens would be, and what would allow us to carry out the last step: Testing the product with our users.
Day 5: Test
And finally, we have reached the “last” step, which is simply not the last (remember that it is an iterative process) but it is the decisive step after 4 strong days of preparation to verify the functionality of our product and get feedback from our users. For that, we select 5 people, which comply with the characteristics of our potential users. Each of us conducted an interview, guiding the user to test the product. We all take notes on his behavior and what they tell us.
As I mentioned at the beginning and since it was a Remote Design Sprint, we did the interviews using Zoom, and each user accessed the Invision link with our prototype for testing. The truth was a great experience and it turned out very well!
At the end of the 5 interviews, we obtained very valuable information. We capture all the information in Miro, to see all the positive and negative points. Everyone congratulated us for the app and for the approach we gave it because it would help those teens who need it the most. Our interviewees also give us important points for improvement, things that we were looking for at this step.
Points to Improve
Thanks to our users’ feedback, we were able to improve some aspects of our product, which were:
- Improve progress bar.
- Differentiate the creation of the personal profile of the mediator, since many were confused, thinking of the profile of the mediator was their own profile.
- Add more descriptive texts to better guide users.
Things we’ve improved
After analyzing the points the users gave to us, we decided to make some modifications to leave the product well done according to the user’s needs.
- Add some graphic details and improve the look and feel.
- Add more descriptive information and texts on the main screen and throughout the app.
- Improve the feedback screens of each interaction to give it more value.
- Add the user profile as well, so they are not confused with the creation of the mediator profile.
Last thoughts
The Design Sprint was something totally new for us, and it seemed a crazy idea to carry out in so few days, but today, after having done everything we did, living each part and each phase of the process, I must say that the results that can be obtained with this methodology are incredible. Finding solutions and testing products in their earliest phases, save a lot of time and avoid wasting energy on products that do not satisfy user experiences (products without “soul”).
I like the idea of the prototype mentality, which makes you understand that the faster you put a product to the test, the faster you know if it works or not, and more importantly, what I learned the most, is that the more we work on something, we take more affection to that. After one day we tolerate criticism better, but after 3 months it becomes more difficult.
Want to learn more?
If you’d like to become an expert in UX Design, Design Thinking, UI Design, or another related design topic, then consider to take an online UX course from the Interaction Design Foundation. For example, Design Thinking, Become a UX Designer from Scratch, Conducting Usability Testing or User Research — Methods and Best Practices. Good luck on your learning journey!
