During the past weeks, I was a part of a remote design sprint through a course of my master degree. Because of the remote nature of our master degree, each member of the team lives in a different country. Therefore a remote design sprint was the way to implement this methodology.
Our challenge was to help a company create a validation system that will ensure a safe working environment without compromising employees’ vaccination status. It was a familiar challenge, since,nowadays, we are surrounded by similar applications and solutions.
The methodology
We followed Jake’s Snapp book “Sprint: How to Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just Five Days’ ‘ as our guide through the process, although we had to adjust things in the remote setting. We used Miro as our whiteboard, and worked there with digital post-its and dots. We also had to find a digital time timer to have the time pressure of a regular sprint. Since it was the first time for all of us being a part of a design sprint, we decided to rotate facilitator’s and decider’s role on each day.
How was the experience?
Design sprint is a really fascinating experience, even for a beginner. It challenges your design thinking skills and helps you unlock your creativity, especially on Tuesday and Thursday. It also requires all your cognitive strength, since each day is full of activities, and each of them is demanding in different aspects.
During Monday you need to be focused, in order to digest your challenge, think of your long term goal, sprint question and your target map, and then during experts interviews, to be focused and fast enough to take any important notes. Tuesday, I believe, is the most important day as it’s the basis for the rest of the week. I really enjoyed the lighting demos activity, that helps you unlock your creativity and think outside of the box before creating a sketch for your challenge. Wednesday was a smooth day, where the team discussed and decided on the sketches, and based on the winning ones we created our storyboard in Google Jamboard. Thursday was the most challenging day. I found a rapid prototype nearly impossible for us to stay on schedule. In final day, Friday we tested our prototype in order to get conclusions about our idea and it was a useful and easy going day.
How did we work?
We communicated through Slack to decide on time slots of our synchronous sessions, as well as activities that could be done asynchronously like finding experts and users, finding products for lighting demos and writing the interviews script. The fact that we had almost all of the activities synchronously, personally made me enjoy the sprint the most. Because of that, workload was balanced in the team, since each member contributed to the activities. The diversity of the team, not only in ethnicity but in character as well, was an important aspect that helped us succeed, since we had interesting and helpful conversations after any disagreement that led to a more structured result. I believe that each member of the team brought something to the table.
Remote Setting: How was it?
Generally, I think that the remote setting didn’t limit us that much. Many activities were implemented digitally and remotely without any issue. I found some activities completed easier remotely, like 4-step sketching, where I didn’t have the pressure of somebody else looking at my sketches. What I believe would be much easier in a regular sprint is creating the storyboard and prototype. If we were all in one room, we could create a storyboard with pen and paper rather than trying to do so by moving a mouse on a screen. Regarding the prototype, it would still be done digitally, but being in the same room help you keep a pace and stay organised in such an activity, that is easy to get out of plan.
Learnings
For myself: Being a part of a design sprint, helped me boost my self-esteem around creativity after having sketching activities. Through user testing, I have gained more experience around interviews, and I still need to work on it. I also learnt that there is nothing wrong in expressing your opinion, even if you think it’s unnecessary.
For the team: The team helps you and you help the team. Each person contributes to the final result, and each opinion influences and improves the process.
For the methodology: Design sprint is a demanding process, but i found it really rewarding, since you can test a risky idea in such a small period of time