The Design Sprint is a staple structure in the business world for solving big challenges through innovation and whole-team incorporation. The design sprint is a five-day process, initially developed at Google Ventures, used for validating ideas and tackling a business problem. The process guides teams through a design-based thinking process to uncover insights, prototype an idea, and test it with users.

Understanding the ins and outs of the Design Sprint is important when preparing to run your own. This process will bring new ideas to life, open collaboration between teams, and unleash everyone in your organization.

What is a Design Sprint

Design Sprints have multiple functions and benefits. They are broken down into five days to develop innovative and actionable solutions for your organization effectively. The five days include:

• Map

The map phase is dedicated to exploration. It will jumpstart creativity and encourage multiple solutions throughout the next Design Sprint phases. At this point, participants will identify the long-term goal and map out the plan of action to tackle the challenge. 

• Sketch

The sketch phase is to develop different action plans that will result in viable and creative solutions. It is critical to take as many variations as the team comes up with to ensure the best and most sustainable solution. 

• Decide

In the decision phase, your team will have many solutions to consider. This is the time to decide on a solid plan of action and select the ideas that will be prototyped. In this phase, the team will no longer be generating ideas. They will be deciding which solution is sustainable and effective.

• Prototype 

The prototype in this phase is essentially an experiment used to test a hypothesis. In this phase, the team decides what they will build to receive feedback and validate the hypothesis.

• Listen

The final phase is likely the most crucial one. Team members will test their prototype with live users. Prototyping will demonstrate to the team that the solution is, in fact, a viable one and will allow the team to move forward with confidence.

Who Should Run a Design Sprint?

The Design Sprint is especially useful for leaders looking to accelerate innovation. Product managers, designers, and founders looking to optimize product-market fit. Marketers looking to enhance product positioning. Consultants and facilitators looking to boost their impact. Regardless of role, people find the Design Sprint an unrivaled tool to validate ideas and business problems. Many organizations have benefitted from running a Design Sprint, and consumer packaged goods companies have used the process to improve their product design. Technology companies have created better products and gotten to market faster than they would using their standard approaches. Likewise, leaders in healthcare have designed new patient experiences. The Design Sprint is extremely effective and can be put to use by leaders and teams across various industries.   

Why Run a Design Sprint?

When teams and organizations have an opportunity or challenge that has great business potential, it can be difficult and time-consuming to build and sustain momentum toward change. Design Sprints offer a rapid and effective alternative to the status quo. For example, when kicking off a new initiative, a Design Sprint can help focus your team and resolve debates or conflicting opinions the team may have on where to start, what the process will be, or what the final result should look like. Or, if your team is looking for breakthrough features on a product, a Design Sprint can help generate new ideas and, through prototyping, uncover what your customers will react positively to. It is an excellent way to get months of work accomplished in a week. These are just a couple of examples of the benefits of the Design Sprint. Your team may also be in need of switching gears or iterating on a new product or when you need a way to talk to your users to untangle what is working and what is not.  Design Sprints help you avoid rework and save you money by spotting opportunities and gaps in one week rather than waiting months. Design Sprints offer customer insights that will transcend egos and opinions by prioritizing prototypes & roadmaps rather than lengthy specification documents and assumptions. 

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When to Run a Design Sprint

Design Sprints are beneficial at various project or product life cycle stages. The following are some excellent times to turn to a sprint:

• When kicking off a new initiative.
• When looking for new breakthrough features for a product.
• When you need to switch gears or iterate on a current product.
• When you haven’t talked to your users enough.

How to Find the Magic

Design Sprints help organizations find the magic and deep value for their end-user before committing to a solution that may not hold the most value. The sprint helps teams identify each individual responsibility and discover what’s most important to focus on within the project and how to achieve the best possible solution effectively. 

The Design Sprint helps us make sure we are building the right thing rather than obsessing about getting the thing exactly right.

Focus on Desire

The Design Sprint is targeted at testing desirability–keep this at the forefront of your mind. When you create a simulation of your concept and use it to test your ideal vision, you gain deeper insights into the ideal state and desirability from the end-user. You can then take those insights to the table when you build out the final solution. While it is efficient and a big win when your prototype becomes the initial spec for what you end up building, its primary goal is to answer your questions and gain insights.

While the main focus of a Design Sprint is testing desirability, we certainly don’t want to waste time testing completely infeasible things. At Voltage Control, we recommend including someone in the Design Sprint who understands the logistics (ex: engineer, operations, hardware, software, materials, etc.). A person with relevant insight into logistics can lend a perspective that might inspire others with the confidence they need to explore certain ideas they may have been afraid to approach. This person also serves as a built-in filter to keep the group from wasting time on outlandish, impractical ideas. That said, the facilitator must ensure that the logistics and status quo aren’t stifling innovation but rather informing and directing it. 

Where to Run a Design Sprint

The five-day sprint was originally developed as an in-person workshop. People come together for an engaging, interactive experience and participate in hands-on, visual, and deep work collaboration. 

Sticky notes are aplenty, and whiteboards are used to write and sketch out ideas. However, you don’t need to wait to be IRL to undergo a sprint. Remote Design Sprints are also incredibly effective and can be run with your remote team asynchronously. There are many tools in the virtual landscape to help your team experience effective and productive remote collaboration. Tools like virtual whiteboards can be used to promote visual collaboration just as you would in person.  

Design Sprints Aren’t Just for Designers

If you want to run a Design Sprint but are not a designer, that isn’t a problem. Any qualified facilitator can run a Design Sprint, and these sessions benefit companies of every industry. The best Design Sprint facilitators bring the necessary knowledge and skills to share with their teams. 

The post The Design Sprint appeared first on Voltage Control.

The Design Sprint is a staple structure in the world of facilitation for solving big challenges. It’s a five-day process, initially developed at Google Ventures, used for validating ideas and tackling a business problem. The process guides teams through a design-based thinking process to uncover insights, prototype an idea, and test it with users. 

Whether you are preparing to run your own sprint or are going to partake in one as a participant, it is important to know the ins and outs of Design Sprints to get the most out of them. Let’s take a look.

Why Run a Design Sprint?

Design Sprints have multiple functions and benefits. Here are some of the top reasons to run a sprint:

• Align a team around a shared vision.
• Answer critical business questions.
• Discover the essence of a creative challenge or problem.

Cut through endless internal debate by building a prototype on which your customers can give feedback.

When to Run a Design Sprint

Design Sprints are beneficial at various project or product life cycle stages. The following are some excellent times to turn to a sprint:

• When kicking off a new initiative.
• When looking for new breakthrough features for a product.
• When you need to switch gears or iterate on a current product.
• When you haven’t talked to your users enough.

How to Find the Magic

The Design Sprint is a platform/tooling agnostic. It helps companies find the magic and deep value for their end-user before building anything. The sprint helps teams identify their core “jobs to be done,”; what’s most important to focus on, and how to get there.

Think of the Design Sprint process and prototyping as the evolution of Mario in the image below:

The Design Sprint is a process to begin iterating toward your customers’ ideal version of fire-spitting Mario. The end-users experience with your product is the focus–the magic you want to create! Follow-on activities are how you actually build the product and what you build it with. After sprinting, your team will have more confidence in the core value and needs of the end-user before the heavy work of actually building the product.  

The Design Sprint helps us make sure we are building the right thing rather than obsessing on getting the thing exactly right.

Ready to get started? Let our expert facilitators guide you through a design sprint to spark a change in your organization and drive new ideas. Please reach out to hello@voltagecontrol.com for a consultation.

Focus on Desire

The Design Sprint is targeted at testing desirability–keep this at the forefront of your mind. When you create a simulation of your concept and use it to test your ideal vision, you gain deeper insights into the ideal state and desirability from the end-user. You can then take those insights to the table when you build out the final solution. While it is efficient and a big win when your prototype becomes the initial spec for what you end up building, its primary goal is to answer your questions and gain insights.

While the main focus of a Design Sprint is testing desirability, we certainly don’t want to waste time testing completely infeasible things. At Voltage Control, we recommend including someone in the Design Sprint who understands the logistics (ex: engineer, operations, hardware, software, materials, etc.). A person with relevant insight on logistics can lend a perspective that might inspire others with the confidence they need to explore certain ideas they may have been afraid to approach. This person also serves as a built-in filter to keep the group from wasting time on outlandish, impractical ideas. That said, the facilitator must ensure that the logistics and status quo aren’t stifling innovation but rather informing and directing it. 

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Where to Run a Design Sprint

The five-day sprint was originally developed as an in-person workshop. People come together for an engaging, interactive experience and participate in hands-on, visual, and deep work collaboration. Sticky notes are aplenty, and whiteboards are used to write and sketch out ideas. However, you don’t need to wait to be IRL to undergo a sprint. Remote Design Sprints are also an increasingly popular option due to The Great Pause. With adjustments to cater to the virtual landscape, your team can still experience effective and productive remote collaboration. There are even virtual whiteboards (yes, digital stickies!) and other remote tools to promote visual collaboration just as you would in-person.  

Who Participates in a Design Sprint

Everyone involved in a Design Sprint plays a vital role.

The sponsor is the person with the big idea; they have the vision. They seek to answer: What is the problem you are addressing, and what is your desired outcome? The sprint is designed to build and leverage something that comes closest to the “right thing.” On some occasions, multiple sponsors in an organization champion the Design Sprint to help solve their shared problem. When they have opposing opinions on how best to solve it, it’s super exciting too if one or neither of them is right!

The sprint team is a curation of 7 people who you feel will provide diverse and critical perspectives on the project. Who’s opinion and insight do you value? Who’s voice and input do you need most to get you from point A to point B? Think about who understands the problem deeply. Who has to deal with it on a regular basis? Who will have to implement and support the solution? Who understands the needs of the customers? Who will build your prototype? Who can represent operations and logistics? Who understands the voice of the brand and how to position the solution?  Who understands the finances? Who always figures out how to break things? Who is really creative about breaking the rules? 

Finally, you’ll need to consider a few special roles when planning a Sprint:

The Decider is one of your sprint team members who will make all the critical decisions. Perhaps it is the CEO or a stakeholder; they have the final say. It is their approval you seek to take the generated idea to the next level of integration. Ideally, they will be in the entire Design Sprint. If they can’t make it to the entire sprint, they should proxy to someone else or make sure to attend at key moments when decisions are made. Pro Tip: Good Deciders listen carefully, ask questions of the team, and make swift and concrete decisions.

The Prototyper is one or more of your sprint team members with the skills needed to build your prototype. Depending on the opportunity or challenge you seek to solve, your prototype may take different forms. If you know you are building a mobile app, then you’d want to select a prototyper with UX & UI design skills who is familiar with app prototyping tools like Figma or Invision. If you aren’t quite sure, you’ll want to use a prototyper with deep design skills and diverse prototyping experience to ensure they are ready for anything. 

The Experts are 3-4 people that we invite to join us on Monday so that we can ask them curious questions while we write How Might Statement to unlock potential solution ideas. Curating experts is a great way to include people whose input is crucial but just don’t have enough time to attend the entire sprint. 

The Facilitator is a non-biased and neutral leader who is an expert in facilitation and the Design Sprint process. This person can be internal or external to your organization.

Pro tip: Hire an outside facilitator when dealing with big or sensitive decisions.

They are removed from office politics, making enforcing good behavior from the group easier and protecting the leadership from including a specific agenda. A workshop facilitator increases engagement and positivity in the group, and an outside facilitator is a fresh new face and personality who can help to break old patterns and create new ones for optimum productivity. 

Now that you know the “who, what, when, where, and why’s” of Design Sprints, you are more prepared to utilize the 5-day workshop to tackle your big challenges and ideations. Happy exploration! 

Want to learn more about Design Sprints?

We are here to help you succeed from expert facilitation to in-house training. Please reach out to us at hello@voltagecontrol.com.

We also host regular meetups, boot camps, summits, and virtual workshops–from Professional Virtual Facilitation Training to our annual Control the Room Facilitator Summit. To sign up or learn more.

The post What is a Design Sprint For? appeared first on Voltage Control.

As with almost anything in life, planning is essential. Design Sprints are no exception. Design Sprints are a 5-Day process development by Jake Knapp who documented the process in his NYT bestselling book Sprint. With the Design Sprint method, Jake distilled Design Thinking into a simple and repeatable structure that anybody can follow. This simplicity is both helpful and problematic. Since Design Sprints present such great promise, the idea of doing one generates great excitement. This excitement, combined with an easy-to-follow structure, causes many people to dive in without the requisite thought and preparation. Don’t be one of them!

“By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.” ― Benjamin Franklin

This article is an extension of a prior post on Design Sprint planning tools and resources. In my previous post, I assembled some of my favorite links and assets so that you might more easily find them. In this post, I’ll provide a bit more structured guidance on the types of things you’ll want to consider as you embark on your Sprint. Whether it is your 1st Sprint or your 100th Sprint, you’ll want to keep these things in mind, so bookmark this page!

Figure Out Your “Why”

Just like the Sprint starts with the end in mind, so should your planning. While I don’t advocate that teams lock their goal in stone prior to the Sprint, it is helpful to explore the Goal and have a thoughtful perspective on where you’re generally pointed. The last thing you want is to begin the goal exercise on Day 1 with everyone staring at you like deers blinded by headlights. Start off your Sprint with a solid understanding of the purpose and how that fits into your company’s vision.

TOOLS TO CONSIDER

Liberating Structures is an effective set of methods that are great for planning and aligning stakeholders. If you are struggling with planning, Purpose to Practice (P2P) is a simple-and-rigorous method that you can use to layout the essential elements of your Sprint. This tool works well for both small groups and extremely large groups and is an excellent tool for building alignment early in your process. After using P2P for a few different projects, it will become an everyday method you can use to do anything from planning staff meetings to outlining key elements of your next product design process.

Within each element of P2P, you can use different methods to get at your answers — or you can simply invite your stakeholders to assist by asking core questions for each element. Below are a few things to consider for each element.

1. Purpose: For many teams, purpose is elusive or at least not a daily topic of conversation. There are a few Liberating Structures (LS) that are well suited for helping you articulate your purpose. 9 whys, TRIZ, 1–2–4-All, and 25/10 are great places to start.
2. Principles: If you find it challenging to define or agree on your principles, check out these LS activities: Appreciative Interviews, TRIZ, and Min Specs are effective tools for teasing the details from your team.
3. Participants: Select your facilitator, decider, and other key roles. Consider who is missing.
4. Structure: Think about how you will document the Sprint, prepare for your kickoff meeting, schedule a space, and order coffee/food.
5. Practices: Consider pre-work like: upfront research, unanswered questions, and lack of clarity.

“Who” Matters

I hear from folks all the time who are struggling with who to invite to their Design Sprint. Worst of all are those people who don’t even realize it is such a critical concern and simply invite their peers. If you do not include a diverse set of stakeholders across all the functions of your organization, then there is considerable risk that your project will falter.

Lucky Number Seven

You must limit the number of attendees in the Design Sprint to seven people. For every person you include above seven, you increase the risk of generating so much content that you can’t stay on time and devolving in to an uncontrolled conversation that is difficult to steer. Everyone won’t be heard and it’s difficult to break into small groups. More is not more.

The Sprint book recommends that you include someone who understands the customer, the financials, the messaging, the logistics, and prototyping. You should always remember to include someone who can ensure the project will have support post-Sprint. Within the Purpose to Practice framework, the key question one asks when looking at Participants is: “who must we include to meet our purpose?” Another question I find helpful, which I learned as part of my Liberating Structures learning, is deceptively simple: “who’s missing?”

Strike a Balance

Don’t forget to account for the mindset or attitude of the attendees. It is important to strike a balance. While you want to cultivate an environment conducive to collaboration, you don’t want to avoid the skeptics and cynics either. It is not about seniority or stroking egos, it’s about different points of view and people who will really be able to engage and bring an open mind.

For large organizations, consider tools within the Liberating Structures repertoire to determine who should be in the room. 25/10 Crowd Sourcing can be used to generate ideas from a large group and could be used with either “who must be included to meet our purpose” or “who’s missing” from the discussion thus far. Social Network Webbing, TRIZ, and Discovery and Action Dialogue all have the potential to generate great ideas for composing your sprint participants.

Invite Others In

An excellent way to involve more people in the process without going over the 7 person limit is to bring them in on Monday as an expert or invite them to a daily readout. I’m a big fan of the daily readout as it exposes more of the team to the process and the progress that is being made.

Figure Out Recruiting

You should also have a solid game plan for how you will recruit your testers and who will be in charge of running the interviews. Sometimes I recommend starting your recruit beforehand, but most of the time you can do it during the week. Make sure that your test moderator is skilled at interviewing, knows how to put together a discussion guide, and has an unbiased approach.

Prepping Participants

Always take the time to educate your participants. Most of them will not have heard of Sprints, much less read the book. Even ones who have read the book may have missed parts. It’s important to set expectations. I recommend having a 30-minute kick-off meeting about 1 week prior to the Sprint. This is an opportunity to set expectations with the team and agree on any last-minute items that need to be addressed before your Sprint.

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“What” You’ll Need

Do not wait till the last minute and buy whatever your local office supply store happens to have in stock. Jake carefully selected the supplies he recommends based on running hundreds of Sprints and they really do provide better results.

Don’t Skimp on Supplies

You can follow my supplies post to make sure you get all the correct items. Unfortunately, Amazon doesn’t have good support for a bill of materials, but I have put links on each of the supplies so you can make sure to get the correct items.

Two common mistakes to avoid are the pop-up Post-Its since the sticky side alternates from top to bottom and the Avery dots as they are difficult to remove from surfaces. If you do decide to get the Avery dots, you should also consider getting a putty knife.

I also like to include a pair of scissors, a Bluetooth speaker with a playlist, 3M flip charts, and a set of Tibetan chimes as sometimes the time timer alarm wears out its welcome.

Brain Food

Design Sprints are deep and intense work. This work requires that our body and mind are functioning at their best. Don’t short circuit your progress by bringing in unhealthy snacks and comfort food. This is tempting for some as they consider these treats a benefit or reward for this special event. Don’t fall prey to that trap. Bring in healthy food that’s high in protein and low in sugar. Nuts, fruit, protein bars, and vegetables are a great place to start.

Also, order delivery for lunch. Going out to lunch with a group this large always takes too long and disrupts your schedule. Also, the team will need time for bathroom breaks, checking email, etc.

“Where” is Critical

Space is critical. I’ve participated in enough Design Sprints in inadequate spaces that I make it a priority to discuss the venue in detail prior to starting the Sprint. There are some great pointers in this article on the pitfalls of facilitation.

You’ll want to have ample room to move around. Consider the fact that you’ll be hanging things on the wall and organizing them as a group. With all attendees in the room, can you comfortably cluster around the walls and still easily move from one side to the other?

Are the plenty of whiteboards? You will write up the goal, the questions, and the map, so you’ll need 2 large or 3 medium whiteboards. The smaller 2′ x 3′ whiteboards aren’t recommended.

Consider the location. Is there natural light and is the environment free of obnoxious sounds and odors? Ensure that there are minimal distractions. For some companies, working off-site might be helpful to get people out of their typical mindset. A change of scenery can be helpful for some companies, especially in environments entrenched in the status quo.

Have you also scheduled time to review? Did you schedule a room to conduct your interviews? Will they be in person? You may also need to consider how you will connect the two rooms for observation.

“How” to End Your Sprint

Reflecting on your Design Sprint after is important. If you are uncertain about how to best conduct your retrospective, consider the Liberating Structure, What, So What, Now What. WWW is well suited for synthesizing your Design Sprint insights because it supports you in building a discipline of reflection and action.

The more you and your team build a reflection-and-action habit, the more capable you become at adjusting in real-time, together. It also helps reduce unproductive conflict and makes space for people to get a sense of what others are oriented to before jumping to action, which is helpful when you are trying to make progress quickly and who don’t want to have to backtrack.

I hope that these tools are as effective for you as they are for me. If you have any questions or have found other approaches that work, I’d love to hear from you.

Want to find out more about planning a Design Sprint? Check out Design Sprint Resources & Planning Tools next!

The post Essential Tips for Planning a Successful Design Sprint appeared first on Voltage Control.

The term Design Sprint refers to the five-day process that centers on design methodology and uses design thinking as a framework. Though the word design is involved, the reality is that anyone can learn how to execute the Design Sprint phases, whether they are a designer or not.

In this article, you’ll learn:

• What Are Design Sprints For?

• The Five Design Sprint Phases 

• Design Sprints Aren’t Just for Designers

What Are Design Sprints For?

A Design Sprint is a process used to validate ideas and problem solve. Created by Jake Knapp, Design Sprints are “The ‘greatest hits’ of business strategy, innovation, behavioral science, and more — packaged into a step-by-step process that any team can use.” 

Every sprint consists of five Design Sprint phases, each of which encourages participants to consider human-centered solutions to complex problems. 

Within each phase, facilitators will work to help their team:

• Understand: Identify and understand the end-users problem areas 
• Ideate: Develop potential solutions to the main problem
• Decide: Transform the best ideas into a hypothesis
• Prototype: Create a realistic prototype
• Test: Get feedback from users in real-time

The Five Design Sprint Phases 

Successful sprints begin with first-hand experience of Design Sprint phases. While Design Sprints range in complexity based on one’s needs, thoroughly understanding each phase of a Design Sprint will make the entire process easier. 

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Though each phase varies, the five Design Sprint phases are easily broken into a five-day process.

A typical sprint includes the flowing phases:

1. Monday: Exploration Phase

The main goal in the exploration phase is to jumpstart creativity and to encourage multiple solutions throughout the next Design Sprint phases. At this point, participants will identify the long-term goal and map out the plan of action to tackle the challenge. 

Beginning: You’ll start the Design Sprint off with a structured discussion to plan out the weeklong process. In the initial phase of the Design Sprint, your team will begin by considering their business from different perspectives. 

Middle: Experts will then share their experiences and knowledge with the team in 10 -14 minute sessions. Participants will use shared knowledge to focus on collaborating as a unit and developing a shared brain.

Each member will share different elements relating to the problem while the facilitator captures all the information shared through a whiteboard. The other team members will reference this information throughout the sprint process. Ultimately, the team should explore as many possibilities as they can, regardless of how viable or realistic they are during this phase.

End: As the first phase concludes, the team selects a target: a manageable part of the problem the team will solve during the week.

With a better understanding of the end-user and the product, team members can move on to the next phase.

2. Tuesday: The Sketch Phase

The main objective of the sketch phase is to develop different action plans that will result in the most viable solutions.  

Beginning: In the next phase of a Design Sprint, team members will begin to translate ideas into tangible solutions. The design process during this phase may include adding new features or redesigning a project. 

The day will begin with inspiration as the team reviews which ideas to improve and remix. At this part of the process, facilitators will encourage continued brainstorming.

Middle: By mid-day, team members will sketch using a four-step process to emphasize critical thinking:

1. Review key information

2. Design ideas on paper

3. Consider many variations

4. Create detailed solutions

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These activities help team members develop well-formed concepts as they clarify the challenge. Facilitators can use templates like Mural and Miro to stimulate further ideation.

End: The team will finish the phase by identifying customers to include in the final testing phase.

3. Wednesday: The Decision Phase

During the decision phase, your team will have many solutions to contend with. At this point, it’s time to decide on a solid plan of action and select the ideas that will be prototyped. 

Beginning: Start this phase by critiquing each solution. Team members should consider the solutions that they’ll be able to achieve with the time and resources available.

Middle: Toward the middle of the day, the team will choose the solutions that are most viable for meeting the long-term goal. Consider voting to determine the best solution to pursue. 

End: Team members will choose the best options from the sketch phase and implement them in a storyboard. This is the step-by-step plan for the prototyping phase. 

4. Thursday: The Prototype Phase

The prototype in this phase is essentially an experiment used to test a hypothesis. In this phase, the team decides what they will build to receive feedback and validate the hypothesis.

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Beginning: This phase starts with the team developing a realistic prototype to test with users. This prototype should be finished in one day.

Middle: After developing the prototype, confirm the schedule for the test, review the prototype, and develop an interview script.
End: Finalize everything for the Friday user test.

5. Friday: The Validate Phase

The final phase is likely the most crucial one. Team members will test their prototype with live users. 

Beginning: Live users will test the prototype and provide feedback. This information will pinpoint various issues in the product’s design. This will allow team members to make improvements.

Middle: In a Design Sprint, each team member will participate in the validation session.  The goal is to capture the learnings and apply various concepts as the team gains user feedback. An interviewer is necessary to facilitate the discussion with five potential users. The end-users involved are target customers that will react to the solution.

End: As the Design Sprint phases come to a close, your team will know exactly what steps to take to finalize the solution and what comes next.

Design Sprints Aren’t Just for Designers

If you want to run a Design Sprint but are not a designer, that isn’t a problem. Any qualified facilitator can run a Design Sprint and these sessions benefit companies of every industry. The best Design Sprint facilitators bring the necessary knowledge and skills to share with their teams. 

These facilitators effectively lead group discussions and manage team dynamics as they select the next course of action in their Design Sprint scenario. The best facilitators are those that are in tune with design methodology and are well-versed in Design Sprint phases. Most Design Sprint facilitators also work as agile coaches, strategists, UX designers, consultants, product managers, and similar roles. 

Want to get started running Design Sprints?

Design sprint certification can help you learn the ins and outs of Design Sprints as you strengthen your facilitation skills and gain confidence in the process. 

With Voltage Control Design Sprint classes, you’ll learn more about the five-day process and how you can run your own. Sign up today and stay tuned for information on our Design Sprint certification. 

The post The Facilitator’s Guide to the Design Sprint Phases appeared first on Voltage Control.

Though many people associate design thinking with the role of the designer, experience in design isn’t a prerequisite. Anyone can use design methodology to host transformative design sprints. 

In this article, we’ll discuss the following topics:

• Design Thinking Benefits Everyone
• What Are Design Sprints?
• Who Runs Design Sprints? 
• What Do Design Sprint Facilitators Do?
• The Power of Expert Facilitation
• What it Takes to Be a Facilitator 
• Facilitator Certification Programs
• Facilitation Certification and Beyond

Design Thinking Benefits Everyone

Design thinking is at the core of any design sprint and centers around prioritizing the needs of the end-user. Just as design sprints aren’t solely for designers, design thinking is one methodology that benefits everyone. 

71% of companies report that design thinking improved their working culture while 69% share that the methodology accelerated their innovation processes. 

Ultimately, design thinking is a framework, not a form of design. Whether you’re an actual designer or you’re a member of the c-suite, applying design thinking in the workplace will have incredible benefits for your business. Everyone can learn design thinking and apply this approach by running a design sprint. 

What Are Design Sprints?

Design sprints are a five-day process designed to answer critical questions through design, ideation, prototyping, and testing. In a design sprint, facilitators aim to merge business strategy, behavior science, innovation, and design thinking into one innovative process.
The design sprint originated in 2010 as Jake Knapp’s brainchild. Knapp was Inspired by Google’s product development culture, IDEO design thinking workshops, and similar innovative ideas from industry leaders. In 2012, he brought the design sprint process to Google Ventures and the team continues to refine the process further.

Who Runs Design Sprints? 

While design sprints quickly gained popularity with startups and tech companies, businesses of any industry and size run design sprints as well. Design sprints are an excellent solution for brands searching to develop a digital product or looking to solve complex problems. 

Jake Knapp shares, “When we talk to startups about sprints, we encourage them to go after their most important problem. Running a sprint requires a lot of energy and focus. Don’t go for the small win, or the nice-to-have project, because people won’t bring their best efforts. They probably won’t even clear their schedules in the first place.”  

Design sprints are ideal for companies with a desire to reduce their invested resources and accelerate learning as they generate and explore new ideas and concepts. These sprints help improve design and development as they jumpstart an innovative and fast-paced environment where results are guaranteed. 

What Do Design Sprint Facilitators Do?

A design sprint facilitator must guide their team through the sprint’s 5-phase process as they manage the dynamics of the group. Facilitators of the most effective design sprints are experts in design thinking and understand what it takes to lead their team to success. 

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It takes a confident and highly motivated facilitator to navigate the complex process of a design sprint. The most effective design sprint facilitators have the necessary knowledge and the capacity to share their expertise with others in the intense and fast-paced environment of a sprint.

Most design sprint facilitators aren’t designers. Ideal design sprint facilitators often have the following roles:

• Strategists
• Project Managers
• Product Managers
• Agile Coaches
• UX Leads
• Innovation Managers
• UX Designers 
• Design Thinkers
• Workshop Facilitators 

Expert facilitation starts with the desire to champion design thinking and spearhead the innovative process of the sprint. Interested in improving your facilitation skills? With a facilitator certification, anyone can hone their facilitation skills and run game-changing design sprints on their own. 

The Power of Expert Facilitation

The power of the design sprint lies in the expertise of the facilitator. In a fast-paced environment like a design sprint, it’s crucial to have a facilitator that can pull the best results out of their team, keep the group on track, and generate the intended deliverables in the available time frame. 

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Good design sprint facilitation boils down to three essentials:

• The capability to encourage synergy while leading a team to effective outcomes
• The capacity to adapt and iterate
• The ability to engender creativity in others 

When preparing to lead a design sprint, facilitators should strive to:

• Align all participants to solve a problem 
• Avoid delays while decreasing time to market
• Encourage rapid prototyping and testing of a solution

What it Takes to Be a Design Sprint Facilitator 

Design sprints hinge on the overarching question: What is the human need behind my process, method, service, or product? As such, becoming a better facilitator starts with learning the essentials of the process and a keen understanding of the five phases of a sprint:

1. Empathize: Facilitators share the perspective of their target consumer, customer, and audience to address the problem 
2. Define: Define the problem with a human-centered, tangible statement 
3. Ideate: Brainstorm to generate as many ideas as possible around this data
4. Prototype: Experiment and prototype possible solutions to best solve the problem
5. Test: Refine ideas by testing to create the most appropriate solution

In addition to understanding the design sprint process, facilitators know how best to prepare for design sprints. Ahead of a five-day sprint, facilitators will identify the most cohesive agenda, the best tools for the job, and the proper environment for the session. 

Facilitators that are serious about executing effective design sprints should explore design sprint facilitator certification to take their skills to the next level. 

Facilitator Certification Programs

The best way to equip yourself with the knowledge, tools, and confidence required to lead successful sprints is through a facilitator certification program. 

Voltage Control’s Facilitator Program aligns IAF (International Association of Facilitators) competencies to provide participants with opportunities to practice, earn feedback, and learn the skills required to lead next-level sprints for your clients or company. 

In the facilitator certification program, you’ll have the opportunity to:

• Cultivate a professional facilitator identity
• Reflect on areas of strength and opportunities to grow
• Implement the most appropriate facilitating approaches and methods
• Select the best tools and methods for your needs

Following a design sprint facilitator certification course, you’ll earn certificates of completion, ultimately receiving full certification once all courses are complete. 

Facilitation Certification and Beyond

While facilitation itself is fairly simple, applying design methodology in the most productive ways takes practice. Voltage Control’s facilitator certification program features the following:

• Facilitation Foundations
  • This is an introduction to facilitation core competencies. Instructors model various facilitation methods to allow learners the opportunity to practice

• Facilitation Electives
  • Elective courses allow for additional exploration and application in key focus areas 

• Facilitation Capstone
  • Course members will create a professional facilitator portfolio to show competency in foundation areas and identify a plan for continued long-term growth 

All successful design sprints begin with a confident facilitator that understands design methodology and possesses the skills for expert facilitation. Becoming a better facilitator starts with a facilitation program that will give you the practice and training you need to strengthen your skills.

Become a better facilitator today! Sign up to get more information about the Voltage facilitator certification program!

The post Design Sprints Aren’t Just for Designers appeared first on Voltage Control.

This article is based on our downloadable Remote Design Sprint 101 Guide. Check it out!

A lot has changed over the last year and a half, but not our ability to collaborate, creatively solve problems, and design impactfully. While some are beginning to return to physical offices, many companies and employees are opting for a hybrid work model resulting in the shift to a distributed workforce. With the right practices and technology, we can still have meaningful virtual meetings and remote workshops. Namely, remote Design Sprint workshops are an essential tool to utilize during these transitional times. They’re more important now more than ever, as companies adjust to survive and thrive in the pandemic-impacted world – from solving big business challenges quickly, to refining company processes to launching innovative ideas.  

A Design Sprint is used for validating ideas and tackling business problems, guiding teams through a design-thinking-based process to uncover insights, prototype an idea, and test it with users. We at Voltage Control have successfully adapted our tried-and-true Design Sprint model for remote work and documented everything in our Remote Design Sprint 101 Guide. This comprehensive guide is for anyone who wants to plan and run their own remote Design Sprint. Some of these ideas were also featured in The Sprint Book‘s Remote Design Sprint Guide, written by the inventor of the Design Sprint Jake Knapp.

In this article, we’ll review some of the benefits of running a remote Design Sprint in your organization and how to lead your own in the virtual landscape. Let’s continue to work and create together! 

Remote Design Sprint Purpose & Benefits

Before we jump in, let’s recap some reasons you may want to run a Design Sprint. Design Sprints have multiple benefits, including:

• Aligning a team around a shared vision.
• Answering critical business questions.
• Discovering the essence of a creative challenge or problem.

Some excellent times to run a Design Sprint are:

• When kicking off a new initiative.
• When looking for new breakthrough features for a product.
• If you want to test divergent solutions.
• When you’re prioritizing potential business opportunities.
• When you need to switch gears or iterate on a current product.
• When you haven’t talked to your users enough.

Remote Design Sprints are not the same as in-person design sprints in many ways, so we must treat them differently. Read on to find out how you can successfully run your next remote Design Sprint.

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5 Tips to Run an Effective Remote Design Sprint

1. Move slower

We are often asked if we facilitate a remote Design Sprint in the typical week-long format of an in-person sprint. In general, we believe that the pace of the Design Sprint needs to be slower in a remote setting. While technology can indeed speed us up, it can also slow us down. That’s because remote workshops account for many factors that we don’t face when we’re connecting face-to-face, such as time zone differences or Zoom fatigue.

For example, you don’t want remote participants to spend more than four hours at a time on Zoom, as being chained to a desk and laptop for any longer can stifle focus and participation (learn more about tips on how to get rid of Zoom fatigue and energize your remote team here). Another consideration is the limited ability to read the virtual room intelligence to ensure that everyone is on the same page. The physical separation makes it difficult to notice if someone is distracted, struggling, or falling behind. Keep in mind the need for team connection, which is especially important in a virtual setting. If you do manage to detect that someone needs help, it takes extra time to stop and catch them up. Simply put, things take longer online. There are inevitably delays and extra processing time needed to get everyone on board no matter what tools you are using (more on that later). Account for extra buffer time to set up and field mishaps during the remote Design Sprint. You’ll need to prepare to support those that are less familiar with the tools you’ve chosen or having trouble with their internet connection. 

Another factor to consider in a remote Design Sprint is that participants are more likely to get distracted online. An effective Design Sprint ground rule to increase productivity is to ban the use of personal devices. However, it’s impossible to eliminate the distraction of screens during remote Design Sprints because laptops and tablets are the means for connection. In short, you have to wrangle the cats more. That’s because each participant is in their own physical environment. Natural external factors of working from home are also at play, such as pets or children. Facilitators will have the most success when they allocate extra time and are prepared to assist participants through these distractions (note: if you are looking for other general ways to improve remote team alignment, see here). 

2. Tweak the schedule

Running any successful remote workshop (especially a remote Design Sprint as it’s more complex than other remote meetings) requires adjustments to a typical in-person one, as fostering the same spirit of focus and connection can be a major challenge. However, this doesn’t mean that any remote workshop or remote Design Sprint is doomed to fail. With the right perspective and a little bit of tweaking, your remote Design Sprint can provide all of the value and human connection of an in-person one.

Because things move slower virtually, we request our Design Sprint participants commit to a series of mini-workshops rather than asking them to commit to the five full days (which is the typical length of time for an in-person Design Sprint). Between each mini-workshop, we assign homework and set the expectation that they will present their work at the next group session. Setting the expectation that the participant will present creates social pressure to encourage participation and ensure the work gets done. In the Design Sprint tradition of working alone together, participants do work alone offline in addition to the moments where everyone will be on the Zoom call at the same time. 

These mini workshop sessions build chronologically one after the other. This sequence could happen over the course of four days, or even eight if needed. Combined, they create the complete virtual Design Sprint calendar. Designing around the in-between times is powerful and an opportunity that in-person doesn’t support. 

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Another crucial aspect of scheduling a remote Design Sprint is considering different time zones, which isn’t a concern when everyone is in person in the same place. Time zones present a serious challenge and should not be ignored. It is important to be conscientious of all participants’ time differences. For example, it is unrealistic to invite someone to a workshop that would occur at 2:00AM their time. We use Worldtimebuddy and Calendly to easily select times that are convenient for all participants.

The extra headache of aligning time zones is well worth the benefits of connecting a globally diverse team, which is something we don’t get with in-person Design Sprints.

This shift to virtual and hybrid work has required us to see what is possible and has exposed new workshop designs. For instance, you would never fly someone from China to Austin, Texas to have a two-hour workshop on Monday and another one on Friday. It’s just too expensive, even if that was the perfect design for the content and the arc of decision-making. This is now possible because the logistics are different.

And because you will likely be dealing with different time zones in your remote Design Sprint, there is no standard schedule like when you meet at the same location in a physical sprint. You will have to adjust your Virtual Design Sprint schedule for each virtual sprint team so that it is reasonable for each participant’s given time window. We make a bespoke schedule for each virtual Design Sprint that follows the schedule principles mentioned above.

Now that we are immersed in them, we realize that remote workshops offer some incredible things that you CAN’T do in person. 

3. Set the stage and make sure to debrief

PSA: Virtual Design Sprints require more prep!

Remote Design Sprints need more planning because there are more outside factors to consider including the best tools to use and adjustments that need to be made for timing and methods to optimize engagement. At Voltage Control, we’ve developed multiple virtual workshop tools to help individuals, teams, and companies build the skills they need to design and run exceptional virtual workshops and remote Design Sprints. We also put together a Virtual Work Guide highlighting how to set up and facilitate productive virtual meetings to make them just as purposeful and successful as in-person meetings (if not more so). 

First and foremost, participants need to understand the tools, the process, what is expected of them, how things will unfold, and why they are doing all of this in the first place. This is much different than doing a Design Sprint in person. In-person, it doesn’t take a participant very long to properly acquaint themselves with the sticky notes and a whiteboard. That’s why we make sure to spend enough time getting everyone acquainted with the new digital tools and processes so they are set up for success. 

One way we properly set the stage is by investing a lot of preparation time into our Design Sprint MURAL board. This is the digital space where both individuals and the group will participate in most of the Design Sprint exercises. The more prep we can do in the MURAL board, the less headache for the virtual participants. We can’t expect them to be as savvy with our virtual facilitation tools as we are. So we create videos of us walking through the MURAL board, the exercises, and the key features they will be using. And just in case someone didn’t watch the videos, we schedule boot-up time at the beginning of the sprint so everyone can understand this new paradigm.

Another helpful preparation that aids in the process of training up participants is to set expectations before the workshop. Create an agenda that optimizes the remote attendee experience – set clear objectives for why you are running the remote Design Sprint and what your team needs to accomplish by the end of it. Outline the objective for each day of the remote Design Sprint and the activities participants will be engaging in. Remember to pad your agenda to account for potential technical difficulties, clarification, distraction, and other hiccups.

Send a checklist and supplies list ahead of time so participants know what to order and are ready to go. It’s also incredibly helpful to make sure all participants know what their deadlines and deliverables are from the get-go so everyone can successfully accomplish them. As a facilitator, you demo the expectations and process for everyone else, field questions, and then let them go off and do their individual work. You don’t want to surprise anyone or embarrass them. The goal is to have everyone on the same, productive page. 

Schedule cleanup time after each day is over. This should be in addition to the official debrief or retrospective (which should be held after the remote Design Sprint is over). Purposefully dedicating time for both the “cleanup” and debrief is important to provide opportunities that may be otherwise missed in a remote environment, and also ensure everyone is on the same page for next steps.

4. Pick the right tech

The transition to virtual means choosing the right tools and platforms that best support your goals and needs for the remote Design Sprint. Here are several tools we use and recommend:

Zoom

The virtual meeting platform gathers everyone into a main meeting room. Note: ask everyone to turn on their video! It’s crucial to foster the missing element of physical human connection when working remotely. Zoom also has built-in rooms that you can use to assign participants to breakout rooms. We’ve found this especially helpful during storyboarding. The feature to automatically route participants in and out of breakout rooms and back to the main meeting room makes the virtual facilitation experience much easier. You also have the capability to mute all participants at any time (cancels out everyone’s individual background noises) which is helpful when giving directions or speaking to everyone all at once in the main meeting room. 

MURAL 

Imagine a Design Sprint wall of post-it notes, then make it digital. That’s the essence of MURAL. It is a virtual whiteboard tool that supports complex group work and allows teams to virtually share and collaborate on digital stickies. Miro is another option for virtual collaboration. We prefer MURAL for our Design Sprints because it has the most features to support facilitators. For example, you can use a super lock feature to identify elements that can only be unlocked by users with Facilitator Superpowers. It’s a nice feature so that a curious participant doesn’t accidentally mess up your template and confuse the rest of the team.

When working with a dynamic group, MURAL’s ‘Summon’ feature really comes in handy during all of the different activities within a Design Sprint. This helps the facilitator draw focus and attention throughout the sprint. And if summoning isn’t your cup of tea, MURAL also has a ‘follow’ feature where you can request that participants follow your screen. Get acquainted with how to use MURAL with our MURAL Cheat Sheet. By adding the MURAL app to Zoom, attendees will be able to collaborate without leaving Zoom.

Figma

Just like how MURAL allows our team to collaborate in real-time on a Design Sprint digital board, Figma allows the prototyping team to collaborate in real-time on a digital prototype. Whether you are prototyping a mobile app concept, a website marketing page, a software feature idea, or other forms of digital collateral, Figma allows many designers to rapidly create, assemble, and then present a believable prototype facade that a test user can interact with and react to. One pro tip is that we recommend embedding GIFs into your Figma prototype if you need to create video explanations or interesting animations to compel your test user. 

And to pair well with the Figma prototyping, we built out a MURAL template to help the prototyping stitcher to more effectively coordinate with the team on prototyping day. 

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Pen & Paper

We still like attendees to do some of the Design Sprint activities locally before sharing them on the MURAL board, and we have learned that you cannot assume that they have the basic supplies with them. So, you can either drop ship pens, paper, and stickies to the attendees, or you can confirm that they have something equivalent before the sprint begins. And if you can’t send them supplies and they don’t have any, we recommend discussing digital methods for them to do solo work on their tablet or computer before surfacing it on the MURAL board. 

Finally, we also curated a guide for all the hardware you need to run virtual magical meetings here.

5. Engage a Professional Facilitator

Depending on your specific situation, it may be beneficial to hire an outside facilitator (especially when making big decisions). It’s also beneficial to have an outside facilitator when you don’t feel confident that someone internal can do the job effectively. The facilitator is the key ingredient to the Design Sprint process; it is critical that they be confident in their role and have a deep understanding of the design thinking process. If you are wary or unsure whether an internal facilitator will lead your remote Design Sprint participants to excellence, it may be best to bring in an expert from the outside. This will also allow internal team members to see expert facilitation in action and may give them the insight they need to successfully lead a Design Sprint in the future.

Working remotely certainly has its challenges, but it also has great potential. Now more than ever we have the opportunity to connect and collaborate on a global scale. This shift to virtual is shaping the future of facilitation in ways that will benefit us for years to come. Instead of waiting to be in person with your team to reap the benefits of a Design Sprint, adapt it to the virtual landscape and run a (just as effective) remote Design Sprint. 

We offer virtual facilitation services.

Voltage Control facilitates virtual design thinking workshops and Design Sprints, virtual innovation sessions, and virtual transitions. Please reach out at info@voltagecontrol.com for a consultation.

The post How to Run Remote Design Sprints appeared first on Voltage Control.

If your team is considering a Design Sprint, you’re probably also considering if the cost is worth it. It’s not just a small, simple 30-minute status meeting after all. A Design Sprint is a five-day process, initially developed at Google Ventures, used for validating ideas and tackling a business problem. Teams are guided through a design thinking process to uncover insights, prototype an idea, and test it with users. Design Sprints help answer important business questions and solve big challenges through design, prototyping, and testing ideas directly with users. Benefits include team alignment (creating a shortcut to the debate cycle), less risk, and the ability to compress months of time into a single week. 

If you are wondering if your team could benefit from a Design Sprint, first check out our article on 5 times you should run a Design Sprint. If and when you decide this is right for you and your team, you’ll need to consider the overall investment cost. In this post, we outline the considerations to take into account and the factors that contribute to the cost of a Design Sprint.

5 Considerations For Investing:

1) Time

This five-day process that requires careful planning. Note: we believe in giving your Design Sprint the full five days and not taking shortcuts. The activities and workshops take up the full five days, not including the pre-planning time, so you’ll want to factor that in. Consider what that means for your team – the participants will need to focus all of their time and attention on the Design Sprint, so their other projects and tasks will either need to be covered by someone else or put on hold for the week. The good news is what happens in a week can be equal to three or even six months of “regular” work.

“Design thinking research can lead to a 75% reduction in design and delivery time, often reducing an 8-month project to 3 or 4 months.” – IBM

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2) Resources

A Design Sprint team is typically made up of seven people who will provide diverse and critical perspectives on the project (including a Facilitator, Decider, Sponsor, some mix of Experts, Prototypers, Designers, Product and Tech leads). As mentioned above, this Sprint team will be fully focused on the Design Sprint over the five days, therefore their time and salary are factors to consider. In addition to time and salary, any other projects they are working on should also be factored into consideration.

3) Complexity

The complexity and impact of the project will also be a factor in the overall cost. For example, redesigning an existing piece of product functionality will likely be more straightforward than conceptualizing net new functionality from the ground up, and therefore requires less planning, time and resources. First decide on what the overarching challenge or question is that you hope to solve by utilizing a Design Sprint. Then you will have a more informed way to determine cost based upon the complexity of that challenge.

4) Expert Facilitators

Another consideration that will factor into the overall cost will be deciding to hire an expert facilitator or using someone internally. Consider bringing in an expert facilitator when dealing with big or sensitive topics. They offer a non-biased opinion, are removed from office politics, and take care of logistics while making sure everyone stays on track. The facilitator’s role is to increase engagement and positivity in the group, and an outside facilitator is a fresh face who can help to break patterns and promote productivity. Alternatively teams can run Design Sprints on their own, if there’s a neutral leader in the group who is well-versed in the process and facilitation.

Looking for someone to run a Design Sprint for you? We can help!

5) In-Person vs. Virtual

A final consideration and cost variable, especially relevant in today’s environment, is if the Design Sprint will be in-person or virtual. Traditionally, they have been held with all participants attending in-person, but they don’t have to be. Virtual Design Sprints can be just as effective but must be treated differently, as they are in a completely different landscape. If you decide to hold the Design Sprint in-person, you’ll need to consider travel, lodging and event costs if everyone is not located in the same place.

If you decide to go the virtual route, we recommend moving at a slower pace and scheduling a series of mini-workshops as opposed to five full days of activities. These mini workshop sessions are built chronologically one after the other. This sequence could happen over the course of four days, or even eight if needed. Combined, they create the complete virtual Design Sprint calendar. Designing around the in-between times is powerful and an opportunity that in-person doesn’t support. Between each mini-workshop, we assign homework and set the expectation that they will present their work at the next group session. Setting the expectation that the participant will present creates social pressure to encourage participation and ensure the work gets done. It’s easier for participants to get distracted during a virtual gathering, therefore it’s even more important for the Facilitator to pay attention to participant engagement and be proactive in including everyone in each activity.

We Think It Is Worth It!

Design Sprints can seem daunting, especially when thinking of all the immediate investment costs. But you also are getting a positive return on investment – lots of ideas and experiments in a relatively short period of time. Think about the long term – what you could be risking by continuing to do things the way they’ve always been done.

Consider these reasons why a Design Sprint is a sound investment:

1. Accomplish a month’s worth of work in 1 week
2. Get user feedback before it’s too late
3. Improve visibility & alignment for your team 
4. Gain speed & momentum for your project
5. Foster a culture of innovation

Learn how we helped IDB Invest’s Technology team improve its customer engagement and experience with a Design Sprint.

The true financial benefit of a Design Sprint is the upfront decision-making and alignment, resulting in a more efficient and simplified future process and product. By helping your company or team find the deep value for the end-user before building anything, and removing potentially useless or time-consuming features, you can save your team months of design, engineering, and development work and costs. You will be able to get your product or idea to market more quickly. Considering that Design Sprints minimize risk, reduce time to market, and accelerate innovation, we believe it’s worth the time and money when done correctly.

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You Don’t Have to Design Sprint Alone

If you want to run a Design Sprint at your company but are overwhelmed by the idea of planning and facilitating it, we can help you. Voltage Control designs and leads sprints for companies large and small. Having a professional facilitator run your Design Sprint ensures that you can focus on the ideas and the work, not the logistics or “doing it right.” Reach out to us at hello@voltagecontrol.com or get in touch with us here if you want to talk about running a Design Sprint at your company.

The post Is the Cost of a Design Sprint Worth It? appeared first on Voltage Control.

You may have heard about Design Sprint by now. It’s a methodology being used by a wide variety of different businesses and corporations when they are trying to solve a problem, expand their customer base, or simply innovate. The beauty of this approach is how streamlined the whole process is, lasting only five days from start to finish. We’ll give you a quick summary of what the Design Sprint is, with a focus on Design Sprint user testing, a critical step in the timeline. 

Design Sprint 101

We’ve discussed what a Design Sprint is before. Basically, it was invented by Jake Knapp and Google Ventures in order to completely authenticate ideas in only five days. This is vital, as we’ve all likely witnessed first-hand how long the process can take from the initial spark of an idea, to actually creating and testing the idea. Then, unfortunately, these ideas sometimes don’t work, effectively wasting any time you spent. The Design Sprint won’t leave a company with a completed product, of course, but it will validate the initial idea. You can then move on to bring the idea to market from there. The process starts with mapping, moves to sketching, to deciding, then to prototyping, and finally testing. This is all done in five days. In this article, we will focus on Design Sprint user testing, which occurs on day five. 

For more information on all of the steps of the Design Sprint see here.

What is User Testing?

Let’s pretend you started your Design Sprint on a Monday. On Thursday you’ll be making a prototype of your initial design. This will not be the finished product, but a realistic idea of your design. On Friday your product will be ready to be presented to users. This is the user testing step of your Design Sprint. You will have a prepared idea to present this day, ensuring the users are given a prototype as close as possible to what you want to eventually create. You’ll also be prepared with a way to gauge their reaction, interest, and overall thoughts about your prototype. Pay attention to any problems they have, or if they are unsure about certain functions. Here’s how to prepare for your Design Sprint user testing. 

Design Sprint User Testing Audience

When you come up with your initial idea, it is critical to consider the audience you’re targeting. Who will be interested in your product? This should be thought about and solidified before you actually start the Design Sprint process. Once you know who this product will be marketed to, you’re ready to recruit your audience. A great step is for your team to create a screener questionnaire. This will help you acquire the type of audience you need for the user test. The type of questions you ask will depend entirely on your product. If your product is a book app for horror stories, for instance, you don’t want to recruit people who don’t read. You also don’t want to recruit people who like the exact same type of book, however, as you want your product to appeal to the widest audience it can. Once you create your questionnaire and a form that people can fill out, you’re ready to post it. 

Finding Your Audience

Where you post your form also entirely depends on your product. Given the book example, it might be a good idea to post about your study on social media, using hashtags to reach a community of readers. If you want your participants to be somewhat random, you might consider posting on an online forum. If you want experts on a certain product, you will have to reach a bit wider and farther. Think about professional contacts, past clients, networks, anywhere you feel might reach the audience you’re hoping for. You also might want to consider offering an incentive for participants, as it can sometimes be difficult to find an audience for your Design Spring user test. 

Your Interview Guide

Now it’s time to select your audience and finalize your interview. Create a spreadsheet and select the participants for your interview. Contact them and schedule their test. You should also have a non-disclosure agreement ready for them to sign before their testing day. This can easily be created in DocuSign. Then, create your interview guide. Think about how you want your users to interact with the product, how long each task might take, and what you want them to walk away with. A good blueprint to follow is providing an introduction, context questions, follow-up questions, and a debrief. Another tip to keep in mind is to start broad, and then move on to more specific questions. 

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Design Sprint User Testing Day

Make sure you set up your room, either in-person or virtually, before your audience arrives, ensuring they will be comfortable. If you’re recording the user testing, make sure everything is working accurately and test your prototypes for everything you’re wanting them to accomplish during the test. If you have the time, conduct a test run of how you want the interview process to go. Basically, make sure you’re completely ready before any of your participants arrive. Your team should also be watching the interview process.

For a Design Sprint user test to go as smoothly as possible, make sure you show no bias. Be friendly. Ask follow-up questions. Pay close attention to the time and to nonverbal clues from your participants. Then, show appreciation for the time they spent trying out your product. Now that you’ve completed your user test, analyze the results and determine the next step. Was it a success? Do you have any problems to fix? You’ve completed your user test!

The Design Sprint is a streamlined, effective way to completely authenticate an idea in only five days. The user test is an extremely important component of the whole process, one that has to be prepared adequately in order to be successful. If you’ve recently found your company in a rut, failing to come up with unique ideas, and holding ineffective meetings with frustrating outcomes, Voltage Control can help. We believe in ridding the world of bad meetings, replacing them with productive and inspiring workshops that will lead to creation and innovation. If you’re interested in conducting a Design Sprint, we can guide your team and illuminate the path. Contact us today if you have any questions. We want to help you bring your biggest and boldest ideas to fruition. 

The post Design Sprint User Testing: Why It Works appeared first on Voltage Control.

There are many cases and reasons to run a Design Sprint. Maybe you have participated in a Design Sprint before, or perhaps you are deciding if now is the right time to lead, plan, and run one yourself. In this post, we’ll review what a Design Sprint is, and discuss some of the ideal times to run one. Before jumping in, let’s first cover what a Design Sprint is.

What is a Design Sprint?

The Design Sprint, originally developed at Google Ventures, quickly became a staple in the facilitation and innovation realms. Nowadays, companies of all shapes and sizes are using the Design Sprint method and having great success. Google Ventures has run over 150 design sprints with companies like Slack, Flatiron Health, and Blue Bottle Coffee. 

A Design Sprint is a five-day series of activities and workshops that help answer critical business questions and solve big challenges through design, prototyping and testing ideas directly with users. Design Sprints guide a team through the design thinking process.

For more on the process and benefits of design thinking, check out this post.

The benefits of a Design Sprint are creating a shortcut to the endless debate cycle, and compressing months of time into a single week.

The Design Sprint Five-Day Process

Design Sprints have helped many teams and organizations, both large and small, innovate by rapidly iterating and prototyping new ideas. GV puts it best, comparing a Design Sprint to a superpower: “You can fast-forward into the future to see your finished product and customer reactions, before making any expensive commitments.”

We understand every team and every teams’ needs are different. Depending on your industry, circumstances, and needs, Design Sprints have various purposes. For example, they can align a team around a shared vision,  help tackle vital business challenges, or identify new breakthrough products or features. Design Sprints can and should be used as a tool to help your team identify what jobs need to be done, who needs to do them, what’s important to focus on, and how they will get from point A to point B to point C. 

Top Reasons to Run a Design Sprint

With all that being said, it may seem daunting or overwhelming trying to determine if now is a good time for your team to turn to a Design Sprint. Most teams and organizations likely have a challenge that would benefit from a Design Sprint. But to make this easier for you, we at Voltage Control have identified the following five scenarios as excellent times to consider a Design Sprint

1. When kicking off a new initiative

You’re about to kick off a brand new project or product. Congratulations! During this time, you probably want momentum, excitement, and alignment from the start. Running a Design Sprint can help focus your team going into the new initiative, and also help surface and resolve any debate or conflicting opinion during the process.

Pro Tip: Consider hiring an outside facilitator when dealing with big or sensitive decisions. They are removed from office politics and help to increase engagement and positivity in the group throughout the Design Sprint. An outside facilitator is also a fresh new face and personality who can help to break old patterns and create new ones for optimum productivity.

2. When looking for new breakthrough features for a product

Design Sprints are an excellent way to push through confusion and inertia to come up with new ideas, and find out quickly if your customers will respond positively to them. Because Design Sprints help you accomplish months of work in a week, they will be especially impactful in this scenario.

3. When you need to switch gears or iterate on a current product

The need to pivot is especially common in fast-paced industries or organizations. You are likely often iterating on your business or product model, and now want to explore the right way to go next. This also probably means various team members from across the organization need to be involved, to ensure the outcome is both feasible and successful. Design Sprints can be most effective when the problem is big or meaningful enough that different teams need to work together to find a solution. It’s not just an engineering challenge, or a design problem, but something larger that requires subject matter experts from different areas to truly work together and move the project or product forward. Onward and upward! 

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4. When you haven’t talked to your users enough

Too often, we’ve seen products being built without the proper or full understanding of the customer (or the job the customer expects the product to do for them). If this sounds familiar, or even if you simply think there’s room to improve, now may be a great time for a Design Sprint! The Design Sprint process can help unpack the problem space and zero in on the cause of misalignment. In this case, a Design Sprint will help refine your understanding of how to address your customers’ needs.

5. When an A/B test can’t answer your questions

Consider whether an A/B test would be an appropriate method of answering your big questions. If not, a Design Sprint may be a better idea. A/B testing is great for testing incremental changes, but Design Sprints (and similar research-based discovery processes) are much better suited for more strategic initiatives and exercises.

If this is your first time planning a Design Sprint, don’t worry! We cover everything you need to know for that in our post here. We also understand various circumstances – such as the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic or having employees located in different cities –may result in the need for virtual events, therefore we’ve also adapted our tried-and-true Design Sprint model for remote work.

Finally, whenever you do decide to run a Design Sprint, don’t forget the essentials that come after the Design Sprint. Some tips and tricks post Design Sprint include:

• Debrief: Recap the Design Sprint and define what you learned with the group
• Communicate: Also let your larger organization or team know what you learned from the Design Sprint
• Align: Ensure everyone is on the same page following the Design Sprint regarding next steps (and with clear task owners)
• Read: We have seen so many companies struggle in the post Design Sprint world, so we wrote an entire book about it! You can find more information in “Beyond the Prototype: A roadmap for navigating the fuzzy area between ideas and outcomes”

Good luck and happy Sprinting!

You Don’t Have to Design Sprint Alone

If you want to run a Design Sprint at your company but are overwhelmed at the idea of planning and facilitating it, you’re in the right place. Voltage Control designs and leads Design Sprints for companies large and small.

Having a professional facilitator run your Design Sprint ensures that you can focus on the ideas and the work, not the logistics or “doing it right.” Reach out to us at hello@voltagecontrol.com or get in touch with us here if you want to talk about running a Design Sprint at your company.

The post 5 Times You Should Run a Design Sprint appeared first on Voltage Control.

Perhaps you’ve experienced a Design Sprint as a participant and are interested in planning one of your own, or perhaps you’re completely new to the Design Sprint from every angle – either way, we’re excited to share with you our tips for planning your first sprint. Let’s start with a little background about what exactly a Design Sprint is.

What is a Design Sprint?

Design Sprints were originally developed at Google Ventures but have since become a staple in the worlds of facilitation and innovation.  They’re essentially a five-day series of workshops and activities that guide a group through the design thinking process. This can help them solve big problems, overcome challenges, explore new ideas, prototype an existing idea, and even test a prototype with users.

Depending on your industry and the needs of your team, Design Sprints can have a variety of purposes. They can align a team around a shared vision, tackle critical business challenges, find new breakthrough products or features – the list goes on. An experienced facilitator can craft a Design Sprint around nearly any objective that could benefit from design thinking problem solving.

Design Sprints are a tool to help your team find deeper value for the end-user. They help a team find what jobs need to be done, who needs to do them, what’s most important to focus on, and how they will get from point A to point B to point C.

Who should be invited to a Design Sprint?

Design Sprints are most successful when there is variety in the voices, perspectives, and experiences in the room. Be intentional about who you invite, but don’t limit yourself (or your team).

Be sure to include team members who understand the logistics of the project. This could include engineers, operators, programmers, etc. This will insure that the team does not waste time testing things that are infeasible or impossible to scale. They will be the filter to prevent the group from wasting time on impractical ideas. On the flip side, they can also give less logistically-minded team members the confidence to explore ideas that they might otherwise lack the knowledge or confidence to pursue.

If your Design Sprint is entirely comprised of logistically-minded team members, however, it may be difficult for them to go beyond the status quo and think innovatively. Adding creatives to your sprint is a great way to introduce new or hybrid perspectives and challenge team members who get so caught up in logistics that they struggle to entertain new ideas. Creative team members are great at moving past the how we do something and getting to the why we do something.

Can I run a Design Sprint virtually?

You sure can. Virtual Design Sprints must be treated a little bit differently than traditional, in-person sprints, but they can be just as effective.

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Firstly, the pace of the sprint must be slowed down for a virtual setting. As many of us have learned, remote gatherings come with a unique set of challenges; thus, it is crucial to allow for extra time and patience to tackle these challenges. Trying to bulldoze through them will only hurt the process (and the participants). Physical separation can make it difficult to read nonverbal cues, so it can take a bit longer to notice if participants are distracted, confused, or otherwise falling behind. It can also be more difficult for participants to fully grasp tools and instructions when they are not given in-person, so there may be more questions as well as lower levels of confidence, both of which can slow down the room. Be sure to pad your agenda to account for technical difficulties, clarification, misunderstandings, distractions, and other hiccups.

Speaking of distractions – it is incredibly easy to get distracted during a virtual gathering. From ZOOM fatigue and important emails to household responsibilities, children, and pets, staying focused online can be challenging. When leading a virtual workshop, it will be of extra importance to prioritize agenda items that maximize participation. Facilitators in virtual Design Sprints need to pay extra attention to the engagement of each participant and be proactive in including everyone in every activity, discussion and debrief.

What do I need to know to run my own Design Sprint?

The first thing that you need to decide when planning a Design Sprint for your team (after the reason for the sprint in the first place) is who will facilitate. The facilitator can be internal or external to the organization, but they must be neutral and unbiased to the challenges, decisions, and projects being tackled during the sprint.

The facilitator, beyond being unbiased, needs to excel at generating engagement and positivity from a group. It is also important that they are an expert in the design-thinking process, at this is the backbone of the Design Sprint.

Next, you or your facilitator should choose the facilitation framework that will best serve the purpose of your sprint. Experienced facilitators may want to mix and match various frameworks across the agenda, but if you or the facilitator are a beginner to the Design Sprint process it may be best to stick to one framework. We recommend our guide to facilitation methods and modalities if you are not yet familiar with standard facilitation framework options.

Once your framework is chosen, it’s time to craft an agenda. Without a clear outline of what will be discussed and for how long, what activities will be undertaken and to what purpose, and when participants will be given time to reset their brains and bodies, you risk the room becoming scattered, unproductive, and/or completely derailed. Activities and discussions should be added to the agenda based on the Design Sprint’s purpose. We recommend beginner facilitators pull all of their activities straight from the facilitation framework they have chosen.

When should I hire an outside facilitator?

When in doubt, call in an expert. The facilitator is the key ingredient to the Design Sprint process; it is critical that they be confident in their role and have a deep understanding of the design thinking process. If you are wary or unsure whether an internal facilitator will lead your Design Sprint participants to excellence, it may be best to bring in an expert from the outside. This will also allow internal team members to see an expert facilitation in action and may give them the insight they need to successfully lead a sprint in the future.

Additionally, if the nature of your sprint’s ultimate goal makes it impossible for an internal team members to be unbiased, it is time to call in an expert from the outside. Professional facilitators from outside of your organization will be completely removed from office politics and will have no stake in the decisions your group comes to outside of successfully fulfilling the sprint’s objective.

If you’d like to hire a workshop facilitator for your next meeting or training, consider our services at Voltage Control. We offer a range of facilitation and innovation workshops that can help your company to get to the next level of employee engagement, growth, and innovation.

Check out our upcoming workshops & events!

We host regular meetups, boot camps, summits, and virtual workshops–from Professional Virtual Facilitation Training to our annual Control the Room Facilitator Summit. Learn more: https://voltagecontrol.com/events

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