Maybe the best part about a sprint is that you can’t loose. — Knapp, J. (2016), p223
This is my most favourite quote from the book Sprint: How to Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just Five Days, written by Jake Knapp, John Zeratsky and Branden Kowitz.
It suggests that this process will always generate a reliable level of value whenever used. Anywhere, anyhow, anytime. Always. Indeed when it was utilized by our group of students in a remote pandemic arena for our university project, value was definitely yielded. Immense value, in the eyes of some end users, as we later learned.
While this project was completed by following the Sprint process, it’s success - nay value — was made due to the problem defined and the people who took it on.
The People
Culturally we were a student mix of Greek, Australian, Austrian, Greek and Polish. Professionally we were a mix of practicing and up and coming UX designers. All eager to apply our sprint learnings to a real world problem.
The Problem
For me personally it is important to like and care about what you do. This is why I was happy to join a group who selected a problem centring around hospital efficiencies during pandemics.
The Process
Monday — Map
Activities
- Long Term Goal
- Sprint Questions
- Ask the Experts
- How Might We (HMW)Statements
- Map & Target
Thoughts : We found defining the long term goal helped keep us focused on what was important over and over throughout the sprint week. Asking our sprint questions helped us all in the team align on the same level and collectively fill in as much of the bits still needing to be understood by us as well as topics for Asking the Experts. HMW Statements took what we learned from the experts and formed tangible problem statements for addressing which when clustered showed key topics of concern for the potential application. Mapping provided us a good view of the problems spaces flow as well as forced us to focus our efforts on the most important piece — this seamed to have formed the bedrock of the remaining sprint activities.
Tuesday — Sketch
Activities
- Research
- Lightning Demos
- Divide / Swarm
- Four Step Sketch
Thoughts : Each of us had found some examples of loose example apps, bizarrely there was no duplicates, which reinforces the flexibility each of us had in bringing our own values to the team. Seeing real life examples of apps doing, in whole or in parts, similar things in other industries got the creative juices flowing for the following Four Step Sketch activity. This was incredible useful as it allowed many ideas to be brought out then focused into most viable.
Wednesday — Decide
Activities
- Art Mueseum
- Heat Map
- Speed Critique
- Straw Poll
- Supervte
- Winners & Maybe Laters
- Rumble or All-in-One
- Fkae Brand Names
- Storyboard
Thoughts : Art museum allowed us to showcase our ideas while also noting gaps. Storyboarding allowed us to turn the viable ideas into scenarios to further identify gaps, while allowing a focused flow to feed into the next prototyping phase.
Thursday — Prototype
Activities
- Tool
- Divide & Conquer
- Build the Prototype
- Do a Trial Run
Thoughts : The storyboards were great foundation for prototyping and allowed us to have something mocked up and flowed pretty quickly, which then allowed us to find and fill in further gaps for the testing the following day. Figma was chosen as the prototyping tool given its online and collaborative capabilities as well as most students already familiar with it.
Friday — Test
Activities
- Customer Interviews
- Taking Notes / Keeping Score
- Wrap Up
Thoughts : The score card was setup to reflect the flow of the prototyping for easier reporting and tracking of topics as they came up during test interviews. Testing yielded great insights from all testers, with issues in minor flows, visual design and terminology. All testers were excited at the prototype demonstrated and the real value it would bring to their daily work. Some testers also stated further usage of the app within the hospital system (eg. budgeting).
Final Thoughts
It was impressive to see the team band together around understanding the problem-space and the importance of highlighting the right problem to bring into the sprint as the goal. The openness we found with each other when uniting around solving this problem was great and respectful.
The divergent phase gave the chance for individual interpretation to be incubated, while the convergent phases allowed the combination of solutions to attempt to solve the common problem. I think in both these phases we’d benefit in more real-time sketching which was not possible in this project, particularly during convergence.
Having participated in similar sprints and workshops in past, where these all were face-to-face, I found the online process yielding less material while lacking to maximise team energy. The special Miro Remote 5-Day Design Sprint (Created by Steph Cruchon with John Zeratsky, Jake Knapp & Jackie Colburn) held our Sprint-world together. It allowed use to collectively synchronously collaborate as a team on the day activities. It was lets say practical for remote working. However engagement and productivity was not comparable to face to face workings. Having participated in these sprints and other workshop methodologies in the past I found the below lacking:
- Personal relationship building
- Learning
- Sharing
- Collaboration — you cant just pick up a paper and start sketching
BUT having said all this, the quote at the top of this article still rings true as viable, valuable ideas were brought out and tested successfully with users. So while not ideal to run these online they are much better than not undertaking the sprint at all!
A challenge was keeping momentum given the teams distribution geographically and different time zones. Also personally it was to focus on a singular key workflow — I’m a big picture person and it took some time to come around to focus on one tiny part.
The most rewarding part of this entire process was to hear the user feedback, some good and some bad, but most of all thinking throughout the user testing that ‘wow, this process really works!’
The most surprising thing I found was you don't need to have experience in a subject / problem space to run the sprint! No one on our team had direct hospital experience, yet by following this process we managed to yield a great idea showing real positive impact to the problem space. This to be truly show how versatile this process is!
We learned the key is to solve a problem worth solving, and recruiting people open and passionate enough to solve it using the tools Sprint provides. People, the right people, are key to the success of this methodology, and the right people being;
- Care : Passionate about solving the problem
- Collaborative : Work well in a collaborative environment
- Open &Versatile : Able to let go of whatever daily process they follow, and try something new, while refraining to be drawn back into the processes they know and rely on within their comfort zones
Miro board link
Resources
Knapp, J. (2016). Sprint: How to Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just Five Days (1st ed.). Simon & Schuster.