Daria Malik
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s a consumer it is a bit of a challenge to find a perfect product or service from among other identical ones. We are picky, we search and test for the best, until we are satisfied with particular one and eventually become a loyal customer. From professional point of view, it looks slightly different. You come up with an idea for a product or business, because we see a gap in the market that you could fill or simply you believe that you are good at what you do. Either way it is extremely difficult to be recognised and convince other people to choose your product. It might take months or even years to finally benefit from your investition. Sometimes it happens that the product or service was not convincing enough and your business fails. And this is where design agencies come in with help. A professional team that will thoughtfully navigate complex challenges with a bias towards the developing right solutions. Identify the
problem, target and research your audience, plan your strategies and tactics, create and test the campaign. All of this done to land your company and product in the right place, moment and right audience to maximise your sells. However, it comes with a great cost as well. Depending on if you are a start-up business or a large company that wants to expand the business in new products, or target new audience, the process will be costly and will certainly take several months of research to test the right options for you. Some things should not be rushed in order to make the best out of it, but competitors will not be waiting for your move. Sometimes we could lose the momentum – the right idea in the right moment, and analysing the risks for too long could result in devastating outcome. Jake Knapp with John Zeratsky and Braden Kowitz, authors of the New York Times bestseller “Sprint”, came
up with a solution and created a revolutionising method of “five-day process” for answering critical business questions through design, prototyping, and testing ideas with customers. What feels like a mad-man dream, actually seems to work. Companies like Nest, Flatiron Health, Medium, Blue Bottle Coffee, Savioke and Fit Star have used this revolutionary process to help them enter new markets, design new products, develop new features for millions of users, and define marketing strategies with success. Sprint works for all kinds of customers and it works for websites, mobile apps, paper medical reports, and high-tech hardware. Sprint it is not just used for developing products. It could be used for prioritization, for marketing strategy and naming companies. During his work, Jake Knapp, tried to optimise work and productivity of his fellow workers at Google Ventures. He undertook experimental tests in brainstorming
workshops with teams of engineers to improve team processes. In his book he says: “But one day, in the middle of a brainstorm, an engineer interrupted the process. “How do you know brainstorming works?” […] So I reviewed the outcome of the workshops I’d run. And I noticed a problem. The ideas that went on to launch and become successful were not generated in the shout-out-loud brainstorms. The best ideas came from somewhere else.” Later on he mentions that we are the most productive under the pressure of deadlines, and we cannot afford to overthink details or get caught up in other, less important work. Communication between workers and client takes superior time of the process and every meeting, email, and phone call fragments attention and prevents real work from getting done. To limit this time to minimum would acquire everyone to be in the exact same room. This is how the idea of sprint was born.
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ngineers, the product manager, and the designer are all in the room together, each solving his or her own part of the problem, each ready to answer the others’ questions. It is also quite important for the client to be present, not only to communicate his values and ideas, but understand the creative process. The process would start on Monday and last till Friday. In five days the team would try to:
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o prepare for the sprint you will need to block out the entire week in you and your team’s calendar. To ensure team’s focus one hundred percent of the time, no devices will be allowed in the room. Book a room with two whiteboards and reserve a sprint room for the entire week. Get a Decider, without a Decider, decisions won’t stick. Get a Facilitator, to manage time, conversations, and the overall sprint process. Use a timer to create focus and urgency. Stock up on post-it notes and plenty of markers. You’ll need these to jot down ideas and map them on a wall. To ensure full diversity of experts in the sprint team, it would require having a Decider to call the shots, Facilitator, to keep the time and track the process, Marketing expert, crafting company message to the client, Customer service, to interact with customer, Tech expert, to advise what can be build and delivered and Financial expert, to explain how much the project will cost and how much can expect to get from it.
UNDERSTAND IDEATE DECIDE PROTOTYPE TEST
and map out the problem, pick an important area to focus.
and sketch out competing solutions on paper.
make decisions and turn ideas into a testable hypothesis.
hack together a realistic prototype.
get feedback from real live users.
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ne of it was, AJ&Smart, founded by Jonathan Courtney and Aussie Michael Smart in Germany. They adjusted sprint process to 4 days calling it the Design Sprint 2.0 to make the process more efficient and it would require the full Sprint team for two days instead of five. To shorten sprint process for one day it requires defining challenges and produce solutions in first day. The second day is about voting for the best solution and defining the prototype with a storyboard. On third day the work would be focused on building the prototype and setting up the user tests. On the last day the real user would test the prototype and give feedback. This process seems to work extremely well for AJ&Smart, and they are proud to work for companies like Lufthansa, HSBC, Daimler, Western Digital, LEGO, eBay, Deutsche Telekom, UEFA, Udacity, Bain & Company, N26 and the United Nations. Moreover, there are agencies that provide services of one-day, two-days and three-days sprints. To make that possible, something
has to drop off the agenda, example - to skip prototyping or user testing. Shorter sprint may seem like a more realistic investment of time and money, but it might lack the clue of the whole sprint process, which is user feedback. Some companies approach running a shorter sprint, because they would not believe that a full five-day process could work, and they would not want to invest more money. Another problem in shorter design sprints is that organization would not plan on including diverse team, instead creating groups sharing responsibilities. The process would not include everyone and that would not keep everyone engaged. Some shorter sprints would require to carry out multiple sprints, where on each another problem would be solved that did not work on the previous. In some cases, companies are promising on selling three or four-day sprint, but it ends up being eight days of work or more, because some activities would take place before sprint.
start at the end and agree to a l o n g - t e r m goal. Make a map of the ch a l lenge, ask the e x p e r t s at your company to
share what they k now. Fi n a l l y, p i c k a target: an a m b i t i o u s b u t manageable piece of the problem that can be solved in one week.
come up with s o l u t i o n s . R e v i e w existing ideas to remix and i m p r o v e , s k e t c h , f o l l o w i n g a four-step process that e m p h a s i z e s c r i t i c a l
thinking over a r t i s t r y. The best of these sketches will form the plan for prototype and test.
critique each solution, and decide which ones have the best chance of achieving l o n g - t e r m goal. Ta k e the winning scenes from s k e t c h e s and weave
them into a storyboard: a step-bystep plan for p r o t o t y p e .
adopt a “fake it” philosophy to turn s t o r y b o a r d into a realistic prototype. In one day make a prototype that appears r e a l .
i n t e r v i e w c u s t o m e r s and learn by watching them react to the prototype. This test makes the entire sprint worthwhile: At the end of the d a y,
you ’ll know how far you have to go, and you ’ll know just what to do next.
Jake Knapp, John Zeratsky, and Braden Kowitz (2016), Sprint: How to Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just Five Days. New York: Simon & Schuster.
INISH
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t the end of the process you will receive a feedback from your target group, and a chance to learn, whether you are on the right track with your ideas. You can have efficient failures that are good news, flawed successes that need more work, and many other outcomes. You are winner every time. Start-ups usually get only one good shot at a successful product before they run out of money. Sprints could give these companies a way to find out if they were on the right track before they committed to the risky business of building and launching their products. There was money to be made, and saved, from running sprints. There are supporters and opponents to this method. Some say that it lacks scientific rigor, sound research methodology, and it is too hasty and rudimentary for massive, multi-million dollar decisions to be made. Five days is really a short period of time to correctly establish the challenge, target and right solutions. There is not enough time to do a thorough research, think of any risks or even better solutions. The hastiness of taking certain decisions could lead a big company into serious image crisis. However, this sprint gives you a chance to get a real feedback really fast. Sprint could be just a first step of your idea into deciding which direction to take. It could save a ton of money and much more time into unsuccessful campaign, that could result even worse financial and image crisis. The opponents say that the sprint causes social tension and leads to hurting egos and helplessness. The misunderstandings between members of the team and unappreciation, caused by lack of agreement to the proposals, could happen. It is worth to remember, that while working in the team on the project, our priority should be focused on the quality of work and general goodness of the cause, rather than our own profits and ego. Inviting people and clients to work together gives them all a chance to work faster and efficient. Voting system gives a chance to hear everybody’s opinion and it is deliberately democratic. What feels like a right choice for us, might not be what the majority or target group needs. Sprint is an excellent way for start-ups to kick-off with their businesses, and a much affordable for big companies to get a real feedback over potential expansions and rebranding. This five-days process certainly revolutionised design thinking and process, and spreads like a wildfire all over the world. It will definitely become a common and more efficient way of working in the future
Typefaces Haettenschweiler SF Movie Poster Gentium Book Basic Agency FB
About the author Daria Malik HNC Graphic Design student in Edinburgh College.
Many thanks for my tutors Chris Hughes and Alex Gunn from Edinburgh College for their help and guidence throughout this project.
References Sprint - Knapp, J., Zeratsky, J. and Kowitz, B., 2016. https://www.thesprintbook.com/how https://ajsmart.com/about-ajs/ https://medium.com/swlh/design-sprints-are-absurd-a462e6413b7e https://www.gv.com/sprint/ https://uxplanet.org/whats-a-design-sprint-and-why-is-it-importantf7b826651e09 https://www.invisionapp.com/inside-design/design-sprint-2/ https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/topics/design-thinking https://www.sreb.org/how-create-campaign-step-step-guide https://uxdesign.cc/what-matters-for-the-design-practice-71ef866cf3ee https://workshopper.com/post/design-thinking-phase-4-everything-youneed-to-know-about-prototyping https://workshopper.com/category/design-thinking https://voltagecontrol.com/blog/do-shorter-design-sprints-work/