This is part of my series on thought leaders in the innovation space. Check out the other articles here.

Born in Cupertino, Diana Stepner is rare in the technology industry as a true Silicon Valley native. Growing up with a love of technology, one of her first jobs out of business school was at Epsilon where she was first exposed to customer segmentation. In London, she gained experience in product management and learned the ins-and-outs of applying customer segmentation practices for clients. Inspired, Diana returned to grad school for a Master’s in Information Management Systems, specializing in Human Computer Interaction.

Armed with a mix of experience in startup innovation, emerging technologies, and new approaches to customer experience, Diana landed at Pearson where she headed up Future Technologies and Innovation Partnerships. She is now Pearson’s VP of Product Management for Learning Applications, a portfolio of innovative products geared toward increasing confidence and improving learning outcomes for college and career success.

More than ideas

Diana believes that success in innovation is more than ideas. “What I often find from innovation programs is their target is around ideas — creating ideas, training, tweaking, refining ideas. In my experience, the trickier bit is actually turning the idea into something real.” Creating something real means bringing an idea to market and giving it the proper resources to get the word out and effectively compete with existing players.

“In market is the halfway point, and then you’ve got just as much work to do to refine it, iterate, and make sure it has legs to stand on.”

At Pearson, ideas are the first step in a product lifecycle approach that covers the full evolution of a concept through the phases: Idea, Explore, Validate, Grow, Sustain, Retire. While some programs hand-off a project after the early phases, Diana finds that people who really believe in an idea often want to see it through. By pairing these individuals with those more practiced in growing and sustaining a product, the lifecycle approach provides valuable learning opportunities for innovators to grow their skill set.

Openness, transparency, evangelists

Diana encourages companies to pursue innovation with openness. “Everybody should have the opportunity to test ideas and find out if there’s a better way to do something.” Approaching innovation in this way helps to infuse innovation into the day-to-day so that it becomes a part of the culture. But Diana cautions against programs used as a symbol of good culture.

“Over the years more and more companies have done incubators and accelerators, and it often comes across as something the company is doing to show that they value their employees and listen to their ideas. It’s almost a checkbox.”

Listening to employees’ ideas is something every company should do and one from which they benefit. “But the culture itself shouldn’t need an innovation program for people to feel that way…If not done for the right reasons, it comes across as the company doing an innovation program to feel better about itself.”

In addition to being open to everyone, innovation programs also benefit from communication and transparency. At Pearson, a group of representatives is sourced from different parts of the company to be future technologies champions. “Champions give visibility everywhere into future technologies.” By establishing a network there is visibility, communication, input, and feedback from day one.

Innovation efforts also benefit from an endpoint. Introducing this constraint provides a checkpoint to evaluate the work product with the business sponsor and determine if there is enough commitment to continue moving forward.

Gauging compatibility

Diana’s advice for innovation programs that partner with startups includes considerations like personality, shared goals, and responsiveness.

“In the beginning we just looked at a lot of technologies that would address the challenge, but if people don’t like each other, the technology really doesn’t matter.”

One way to evaluate compatibility is through colocation, even when it’s temporary. “In the beginning of Innovation Partnerships, we did all of the work virtually.” Learning from early experiences, startup teams were brought into the same location with their corporate sponsors to do their initial planning, to a positive effect. “They formed more of a bond just being together for two days.”

“We did a lot of match-making of startups to other parts of the company so they would get more exposure. We had general sessions so they could voice any concerns and have open conversations so they could talk to us about anything.”

Diana learned throughout the partnership process that responsiveness is key. “Whether in an innovation program or not, when ideas are put forward or startups come forward, oftentimes companies don’t respond.” In these situations people left with unanswered questions wonder if their idea wasn’t good, they didn’t contact the right person, or maybe their wording wasn’t right.

“We’ve learned to be honest, to respond, and to tell the person or startup ‘yes’, ‘no’, or ‘I need more information’ pretty quickly so they’re not left hanging. People were good. Even if the answer was bad, at least they got an answer, then they can move on.”

Companies who leave people with feelings of unease and uncertainty may not have the opportunity to work with that person or startup in the future.

The product lifecycle

To measure innovation efforts, Diana returns to the Idea, Explore, Validate, Grow, Sustain, Retire product lifecycle approach. One positive marker she relies on is whether an idea is moving through the phases. “Does something go from Idea to Explore or do you end up with a whole bunch of things from Idea that don’t get to Explore?” It’s fair to assume there will be more items in the Idea stage than Explore and Validate.

But looking at the mix is a signal for Diana on whether efforts have weight. Diana also looks to revenue and competition as a means of measurement. She considers whether an idea is bringing in new revenue or helping fight off competitors to determine what’s worth pursuing further.

Measuring success

The prerequisite to measurement, according to Diana, is a clear, realistic definition of success. “I think the expected return and impact are the types of things that need to be decided up front because that will influence who puts forward ideas and, basically, what the optimal outcome of each phase should be.”

Measurement and executive sponsorship are strategic components of any innovation program, and both can serve as protection against a program shutting down. Yet, Diana cautions that sponsorship is not always a guarantee of longevity.

According to Diana, one way to guard against shut down is having products in the market that are gaining traction, bringing in revenue and customers, or involve partnerships that are significant. “Those types of external factors which are benefiting the company are harder to shut down than just the program itself.”

Startup success

By partnering with numerous startups, Diana has the opportunity to see innovation success stories on a regular basis. “Every couple of months a startup that was part of the innovation programs at Pearson will reach out. Often they’ll tell me about the success they’ve had or the funding they received or that they got purchased by another company, and I love that.” Even startups that Pearson declined to partner with reach out to Diana to share what they learned from that “no”. “So that sense of community continues even after the programs are done.”

For example, Innovation Leader periodically holds facilitated discussions around a specific topic or theme. “I really like that in Innovation Leader’s group discussions can get messy. There are some really down and dirty conversations, which reflect reality. And you learn a lot from the people involved. It’s like a really good dinner party where you’ve got exciting people sitting next to each other, you mix up the group, and the conversations just flow.”

If you want to read my other articles about innovation experts and practitioners, please check them all out here.

The post Ideas Are Only The Beginning appeared first on Voltage Control.

When creating new ideas, most organizations tackle them in the same old ways. Here’s how it usually goes down:

• A team of experts and leaders gather for a brainstorm session.
• Loaded with political and social dynamics, the team manages to reach consensus and a green light from higher up.
• Off go the designers on a journey to return with a brilliant rendition of what everyone had in their minds.
• Review and revise until you can toss the engineering team a file titled: “great_idea_final_final_final_version17.pdf”
• You know the drill: Scope creep, blown budgets, communication breakdowns, dysfunctional team dynamics.

In the end, you’ve built a mutated version of the original idea, riddled with compromises and bloated with features. And we still have yet to learn if the idea works.

In last week’s, all-day Design Sprint Bootcamp in Austin, TX, Jake Knapp led us through each step of the process he details in his book, Sprint. He compared the conventional ways most groups approach new ideas to the process provided by Design Sprints. The comparisons made the painfully obvious distinction as to why Design Sprints are key to creating innovative products.

“Even if you’re wrong the first time, the sprint process will help you light up your future path.” — Jake Knapp, author of Sprint

Here are a few juxtapositions that I took away from Jake’s event:

Conventional: Group Brainstorm

Typically, members of a team gather in a room, with sleeves rolled up, pens and pads in hand, with wide eyes, full of energy and the best of intentions. Ideas are born and prematurely tossed out of their nests with the hopes they’ll fly. Usually, the ones that do survive are because the loudest or highest ranking person favored them.

Design Sprint: Work Together, Alone

In Design Sprints, we work together, alone. Each person in a Design Sprint works toward the same task in silence, jotting down thoughts and sketching thumbnails of their vision. This method allows each person to capture enough detail in their solutions. They show the idea instead of only talking about it, leaving little room for misinterpretations when presented.

Conventional: Endless Discussions

The social dynamics of group discussions can kill the momentum of a team’s progress and drain them of their creative energy. And often the best ideas don’t have a chance of making the final cut.

Design Sprint: Fast & Decisive

Through structured conversations you reach decisions quickly — scrap it or keep it. In Design Sprints there is one decider on the team. Activities like silent voting are conducted where the decider sees which idea the group is leaning towards. The decider considers this insight to make a final call on which idea to proceed with.

Conventional: Build an MVP

If you ask 10 members of a product team to define an MVP, you’ll get 10 different answers. MVPs often start small and lean, with enough punch to enter the market. They rarely turn out that way. Many grow so much in complexity that by the time it’s launched into the market, it’s an expensive, unproven idea, loaded with features that could have been added in phases 2, 3 or 4.

Design Sprint: Fake it ’til you make it

Build a fake version, a facade of the idea. It won’t matter if the inner-workings are absent: the code, the real data. If it looks, feels, sounds or smells like the real thing, you have enough to test with real users.

With a Design Sprint prototype, users get immersed in the story and forget that it’s fake. Remember old Western films? The saloons and sheriff’s office were wooden boards propped up vertically with painted on windows and doors. Audiences were focused on the story, the shoot out at high noon, not architectural integrity. Prototypes are enough to acquire candid and useful feedback.

Conventional: Wait for perfect data,

Companies will deploy research agencies to explore what the market wants. Over the course of weeks or months, barrels of data roll in and are distilled into neatly designed graphs and pie charts. Often the data is unclear and you’re scratching your head, wondering how to make sense of it.

Design Sprint: Quick ‘n dirty

Get the critical, impactful insight, now — The stuff that will quickly tell you where to adjust your idea and its chances of surviving in the market.

On the the last day of a Design Sprints is Test Day, where you take your prototype and test it with five real customers. It might seem like a small group to test, but check out the Nielsen Norman Group on why you only need to test with five users.

You get 80% of findings in the first five interviews.

The 1 on 1 interviews shed valuable insight into how your idea will fit in the market. You’ll have more info on the “why.” Plus, the whole team learns by observing the interviews being conducted. Using this scorecard, we capture data such as:

• Did the user understand the overall concept?
• Did the user find the shopping cart?
• Did the user watch the video? (You know… the one that cost $1.2M to produce?)

Closing

“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” –Albert Einstein

We already know one approach to executing on ideas. We know its risks and downfalls. Yet, companies that crave innovation continue to do things the same old way. A new way to innovate is here. Design Sprints are a faster and better way to launch ideas and build better products.

Jake’s event last week recharged my excitement for innovation by leading Design Sprints. It rejuvenated my mission to help businesses build better products and services that are not just profitable, but turn customers into raving fans.

The post 4 Things Jake Knapp Taught Me About Innovation appeared first on Voltage Control.

At the end of the day, we needed to take some time away from the urgent and focus on the important.

If you’re not familiar with what we do, Favor is an on-demand delivery company that lets consumers get anything they want delivered in under an hour. How do we make this happen? We have a community of thousands of delivery drivers (we call them Runners) who are arguably our most important stakeholders. At the end of the day, happy Runners deliver great service to our customers, so we spend a lot of our time thinking about how to serve our Runners.

We brought in Voltage Control, a company here in Austin that facilitates sprints, to lead us through a structured week of activities to help us improve the earnings (and happiness!) of our Runners. The process was fun, fruitful, and we found that the impact continues beyond the short time we spent in the sprint.

Our Challenge
INCREASE AVERAGE HOURLY EARNINGS PER RUNNER BY 10% WHILE ALSO DECREASING RUNNERS WHO INDICATE THAT RUNNING IS FRUSTRATING BY 50%.

The Sprint

While the ideal sprint length is one week, we only had four days to dedicate, but we made it work in the shorter time span. Here’s what our week looked like and our activities each day…

DAY 1

We started our week by examining our long-term goal. We refined it by asking where we wanted to be in year with this project and noting questions that we hoped to answer. We agreed that we would aim to both increase runner’s earnings and decrease their frustration.

We spoke to key members of the Favor team with deep understanding of a Favor Runner’s journey to discover current pain points and areas of strength. As we listened to experts and identified areas that we needed to improve, we crafted “How Might We?” notes, reframing problems as opportunities.

We each used notation and sketching processes to craft a final sketch of a potential solution. We hung these on the wall to examine individually.

DAY 2

We reviewed each individual’s sketch and voted on areas of promise. We then selected one sketch as a potential solution to prototype and chose features from other sketches that we wanted to integrate. With all of this in mind, we created a storyboard to plan our user’s journey through our prototype.

DAY 3

We divvied up the prototyping work to be done into different roles, with some people gathering content, some building the screens in Sketch, and some stitching the screens together into a usable prototype.

Meanwhile, we worked to create a thorough, scenario-based testing plan of our prototype and recruited real, experienced Favor Runners to come in and test our solution on Day 4.

DAY 4

We tested our prototype with users in a makeshift research lab environment. In one room, the interviewer talked with a subject, while in another, the rest of team could watch the Runner and the prototype, discuss, and take notes. We compared notes looking for consensus and documented these insights to inform our next prototype.

Real Results

In only four days, we were able to find a new direction for the next iterations of our Runner app. We’re looking forward to bringing some of the best ideas we came up in the sprint to life. More importantly, we’re thrilled to know what Runners DON’T value so we can focus our energies on the pieces of the app that matter. Here are some of the key outcomes our our Design Sprint:

INSIGHTS: We revealed 35 individual insights into what our Runners value, need, and expect out of the next Runner app.

ALIGNMENT: We got cross-functional buy-in by assembling a diverse sprint team of Favor employees from 5 different specialties.

VALIDATION: We tested out new features and UI elements prior to sinking development time and money into building them.

“We started with all these ideas about what our users wanted and needed in the next version of our app. The design sprint made us rapidly validate these assumptions instead of getting months down the road and realizing we were designing things our users didn’t want or need. In one week, we were able to build a solid foundation for our redesign from real user feedback..”

-Meg Nidever, UX Designer, Favor Delivery

Lasting Change

One of the coolest things about our Design Sprint is that its effects are lasting far beyond the four days we spent. It reminded our team how valuable prototyping and early user feedback can be in building great designs. It also helped expose some of our top performers in other departments to the product design process.

If you have a high performing team with a big project that needs a jumpstart, I can’t recommend a Design Sprint enough.

The post Favor Improves Employee Experience & Earnings in a 4-Day Sprint appeared first on Voltage Control.

All successful Design Sprints have one thing in common: solid planning. Design Sprints are fun and exciting, so it’s easy to get intoxicated by this excitement and jump in too quickly. I’m consistently hearing from teams that have tried Design Sprints and admitted that things could have gone more smoothly. I’m sharing the resources and tools that I use with my clients in an effort to ensure more successful Design Sprints.

Sprint Planner

The Google Ventures(GV) team put together this awesome Sprint planner to help you answer the important questions. If you are unsure why they are asking some of these questions, I suggest that you dust off the Sprint book and re-read that section.

Download the GV Sprint Planner here.

The Book

Now that you have the basics out of the way, it’s important to ensure that the team knows what they are about to embark on. I encourage my clients to buy the book for the entire team. Reading the book is the best way for team members to full get up to speed on the process.

Buy the book here.

Sprint Intro Video

If having the entire team read the book is not an option or if they need some convincing, the 90 Second Intro video by GV is great. They do a fantastic job of distilling down the process such that folks can quickly grasp how the process works at a high level and the types of outcomes that might be possible.

Sprint Team Email Template

I use the following email template to invite the Sprint attendees. This is when I share the 90 Second Intro and start to set expectations. Typically this email is followed up with in-person conversations, planning meetings, and an official kick-off the week prior to a Sprint.

We are conducting a “Google Ventures Design Sprint” to get clarity around {{YOUR PROBLEM HERE}}. The workshop will run from 10am-5pm Monday to Thursday and 9am–5pm on Friday. The process is both collaborative and participatory, so come prepared to engage and contribute. Please send me confirmation that you’ll be able to attend (accepting the calendar invite is sufficient) and if you have any questions feel free to reach out as well.

In the meantime, here are a few resources that may provide more perspective:

A 90-Second Intro Video explaining the process
– https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K2vSQPh6MCE

A story I wrote about Twyla’s journey into Design Sprints
– https://sprintstories.com/twylas-design-sprint-journey-e5404d9c426b

The official website for the Sprint book
– http://www.thesprintbook.com/

Supplies

Don’t forget to order all the recommended supplies. You can check out my Sprint Supplies post where you’ll find a detailed overview of all supplies and saved Amazon lists so you can quickly purchase all the necessary items.

Facilitator Checklists

Jake and the GV team put together a checklist pdf, that is a really handy reference when facilitating a Sprint. They’ve organized the document by Day and provide all relevant details and timings. I personally like the Key Ideas and Facilitator notes that they provide after each daily checklist. Don’t forget to write the checklist/schedule on the whiteboard at the beginning of each day.

Start our Design Thinking Foundations course today!

Learn and practice Design Thinking to help your team solve problems and seize opportunities.

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Monday Morning Slide Deck

The Monday Morning Slide Deck is another handy way to set expectations and remind all Sprinters what they are about to do for the next 5 days. I like to use this during kick-off sessions a week prior to the Sprint as well. This is a great time to answer any last-minute questions and ensure the team is all set for the big week! Sometimes I’ll return to the deck at the beginning of each day as well if I feel that the team needs a bit of grounding.

Prototyping Tools

These are the usual prototyping suspects: Marvel, InVision, Keynote, and Keynotopi. If you want to use a different tool, then knock yourself out! In fact, please email me and tell me how well it worked. I’m always interested in non-standard Sprints, in fact, I’m actively looking for new ways to apply Sprint and that typically requires new prototyping techniques.

Research

Day 5 is always the most exciting day for me and aside from storyboarding, it is the subject that the book spends the least amount of time on. There are several crucial elements you need to consider, for example, you need to identify who will recruit your users and get them started recruiting Tuesday morning. Here are five tools, provided by GV, to help you better understand how to recruit and prepare for you interviews.

1. The Five-Act Interview: Michael Margolis, GV Research Partner, demonstrates how to conduct a customer interview.
2. GV Research Sprint Guide: Instructions for running your own customer test.
3. Customer Screening Worksheet: Fill this out to start creating your recruiting screener survey.
4. Example Customer Screener: Sample of the form you’ll create to screen potential customer participants for Friday’s test.
5. Example Craigslist Ad: We often use Craigslist to recruit customers. Here’s a sample ad you can post on Craigslist in your city.

Conclusion

I hope these tools and resources help you stay organized and align your Design Sprints for success. If you have other tools or ideas to share please let me know and I’ll update this list. Happy Sprinting!

The post Design Sprint Resources & Planning Tools appeared first on Voltage Control.

A few months ago, I started my new company, ZenBusiness. I founded it with the belief that insights from our potential customers would be absolutely fundamental to business decisions. For this reason, I became interested in the methodologies behind the Design Sprint process, as made famous by the folks at Google Ventures. I did my research, read the book Sprint by Jake Knapp and then asked around for advice on hosting my first Sprint.

I serendipitously ran into Voltage Control’s Douglas Ferguson as a part of my regular networking “rounds” in Austin and we started chatting about what he’s learned from facilitating Sprints for numerous start-ups. From reading Knapp’s book, I knew that it would be important to have an experienced facilitator for our first Sprint, so I asked Douglas to help. He also recommended a fantastic designer as his co-facilitator; together they made an amazing combo and covered everything in terms of brain power—from marketing and branding expertise to deep knowledge of software and user experience.

Here’s a few of my top learnings from our first Design Sprint with Douglas:

1. The process helps you identify the right question to answer. One of the first things we did in our Sprint was map out the customer journey and every key touchpoint. It’s a deceptively simple task, but putting this flow into a visual form allowed the team to really hone in on which question we should answer through our Sprint. As a new company, it can be overwhelming to know where to focus our energy. We decided that we would spend our time looking at the initial customer sign-up experience because it would give us the most “bang for our buck.” Being new to the market, our most pressing problem is, naturally, the top of the funnel and acquiring first-time customers.

2. An outside facilitator allows the team to focus on outcomes, not “doing it right.” One of the benefits of doing a Design Sprint is that all of our critical team members were together in one room, focused on solutions, not just talking. With Douglas leading us through the process, our team was free to work on the tasks at hand—fleshing out our targeted customer segment, building a prototype and testing it with real customers. Douglas gave us the structure and leadership we needed to fully engage in the process. With his help, we had no worries about doing it right; we only had to worry about getting our ideas right for our customers.

3. We learned enough to lead ourselves next time. ZenBusiness’ first Sprint was a great success.The basic assumptions we tested —Does anyone want to buy our product? Do we have a market?—were answered with an overwhelming “yes.” At the end of the week, Douglas left us with some very actionable product changes to make. The cherry on top was that we had learned the Sprint process enough to give it a shot ourselves next time. Soon, we’re embarking on our second Design Sprint and, this time, we are comfortable facilitating ourselves. It is a testament to Douglas’ guidance and leadership: the students can now take care of themselves.

My parting advice is this: Don’t think twice about using an expert to help with your first Design Sprint. It will undoubtedly save you time, money, and by the end, your team will have learned this transformative process so you can lead yourselves in, and into, the future.

Don’t think twice about using an expert to help with your first Design Sprint

The post The importance of an experienced facilitator for your first Design Sprint. appeared first on Voltage Control.

When talking with potential customers about Design Sprints I always spend some time explaining how to properly conduct the interviews on Day 5. I still encounter quite a few entrepreneurs and proprietors who are not familiar with this style of user research and confuse it with focus groups or usability studies. Without proper context on how to prepare and conduct these interviews, the outcomes are flawed and not reliable. In an effort to help you dive into your first interviews, I’ve compiled a list of common mistakes and pitfalls.

Poor Recruiting

Recruiting 5 users in 2–3 days is often a challenge. First, be super careful that you are talking to the right people; take the time to prepare a proper screener. Ask yourself what fundamental research questions you need to answer, then work backwards to determine who you need to engage. Otherwise, you risk tainting the experiment by talking to people, then challenging the recruit. Be explicit up front.

Consider the following:

• Are you looking for a new or existing user?
• Are they people who fit your Sprint target?
• Whom should we exclude?

Ask yourself what fundamental research questions you need to answer, then work backwards to determine who you need to engage.

Insufficient Interview Preparation

Build an interview plan. Start with a reminders section of important logistical things that are often easy to forget when in the heat of the moment, i.e. clean up desktop, turn off notifications, turn on caffeine app, etc.

The most neglected part of an interview is the ice-breaker. The next section of your plan should include your chit chat and warm-up questions. Think of your interviews as a flow or story arc. How will you transition and slowly guide the conversation into the topic that is at hand, without them realizing it? It is often helpful to review the recruiting screener answers for specific details about each user. Using these user specific details can help you build rapport and put them at ease.

After the warm-up questions, include a section per prototype/site you are testing. These should include your Sprint questions and any additional questions you now have, after building the prototype. Remember to challenge your assumptions.

Not all the links in the prototype will work. Spend time to familiarize yourself with the prototype so that you can assist this user when they get confused or lost. This will ensure that the interview keeps moving fluidly. Sometimes I will mock interview one of the other Sprint participants or my wife so that the first interview of the day runs without a hitch.

If you are conducting an in person interview, remember the breath mints!

Not building Rapport

Building rapport is important. When your user arrives for the session, pay close attention to your tone and body language. Smile and do whatever you can to make sure they are comfortable and feel taken care of. It is tempting to jump straight into hard questions, but if you do, you’ll come across as a lawyer and your user won’t likely open up to you. If you are conducting an in-person interview, remember the breath mints!

Pitching Your Ideas

Founders are habituated to pitching their ideas. They are pitching to convince investors to fund them, employees to join them, other companies to partner with them, and customers to buy their product. This makes it really hard for founders to switch to a listening mode, as they are in a different mode. They are pushing, not pulling and aren’t truly open to the candidates feedback. It is critical that the interviewer not present or show things, but instead simply setup the environment and begin to observe and listen.

Taking Your Own Notes

When taking your own notes, you are distracted and will miss much of the nuance. With a dedicated notetaker, you can concentrate on subtle cues from the user and dig deeper to extract more insights from them. Likewise, your notetaker will take better notes, as they can concentrate on simply capturing all the details, without having to concern themselves with the conversation.

Don’t reject feedback simply because you don’t hear what you want to hear.

Confirmation Bias

Most people are afraid of being wrong. We are taught from a young age to always know the correct answer. Because it is uncomfortable to be wrong, our brains skillfully steer us away from discovering we are wrong. As a result, it is tempting to discount or explain away evidence that doesn’t match our assumptions. Don’t reject feedback simply because you don’t hear what you want to hear.

A simple way to avoid confirmation bias is to craft your interview questions such that they attempt to disprove your assumptions. Ask yourself, what are you afraid of hearing? Keeping referring back to Sprint questions. If you truly got pessimistic, then those questions should guide you away from confirmation bias.

Stakeholders Not Watching in Real-Time

When stakeholders don’t watch the interviews in real-time, it is impossible for them to empathize with the user. If they rely on a summary from the team or are simply reviewing a previously recorded session, they will inevitably rely on their prior assumptions and will be skeptical of anything that doesn’t align with their current opinions.

Rambunctious Observation Room

Interviews are often exciting, as they can lead to both cheerful and heartbroken moments. Similar to a sporting match, it is easy to fall into a mode of cheering and booing. When this happens it is extremely difficult for anyone in the room to take objective notes. These moments are usually followed by more nuanced reactions or comments which are usually lost in the chaos. If your team, like many, are susceptible to this behavior, consider having everyone use individual headphones. This reduces the temptation to speak out and when someone does, they are less distracting to the others in the room.

Jumping to Conclusions

It is important to remain objective throughout the entire day. Don’t extract meaning from what one individual user tells you. Instead, wait for the patterns that emerge after interviewing all 5 of the users. Also, remember that at the end of the day, you are susceptible to recency bias. Your memories of the last interview are more vivid than the first. Provide ample time to digest all of the interviews and adequately synthesize the learnings. I advise my clients to meet the following week to discuss their insights and key takeaways.

The post Common Sprint Interview Mistakes appeared first on Voltage Control.

We immediately began validating the market through conversations with individuals in the health, fitness, HR and employee wellness communities. This research made it clear to us that there was an appetite for this type of program.

…the timing could not have been better when Douglas reached out to us with an interest in serving on our board.

Our goal was to produce an event in April that would encourage the community to become more active and live a healthy lifestyle. The resources to establish the necessary technology were beyond the means of our nonprofit, even with “non-profit pricing” from long term tech friends.
Time was running out; it was Thanksgiving and we hadn’t secured resources or a plan to get them. Things were not looking good. Needless to say, the timing could not have been better when Douglas reached out to us with an interest in serving on our board.

After an initial meeting with me and Will, Douglas asked if he could meet some of the other board members. Several of our board members and I met Douglas for lunch the day after Thanksgiving and walked through our programs and structure in more detail. We couldn’t have been more pleased to hear Douglas say, “I like what you guys are working to accomplish; I’d like to help you out”.

Douglas promptly got to work and delivered us a Christmas miracle. After a thorough audit, he simplified and organized our concepts, recruited technical talent who practically volunteered their time and helped oversee development of the product. Due to these efforts and my delight, we launched Million Mile Month on April 1st, 2014.

With Douglas’ guidance, we expanded HealthCode from one annual event to 4 quarterly events, amassing over 4.7 million miles of activity with estimated healthcare cost savings approaching $1 million. HealthCode programs now host over 36,000 participants, representing all 50 states, 30+ countries, and 150+ organizations. None of this would have happened without Douglas.

Douglas brings a unique perspective to building technology that I had never previously witnessed. He possesses an invaluable practical sense of technology along with an eye for business economics and financial realities. Douglas increased user satisfaction and improved engagement by first identifying and then addressing the key components for success.

I am continually amazed by Douglas’ ability to see the art of the possible, to cut through the crap to ensure we target cost effective, consumer engaging solutions that align with business objectives. From recruiting and coordinating the tech team to leading our product strategy, Douglas has been invaluable. I only wish I had known Douglas 10 years earlier.

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An outside facilitator, especially an experienced expert, is often the critical ingredient needed to position your Design Sprint for excellence. Jake did a great job of codifying the process in enough detail that anybody inside your organization will have what they need to run a Sprint. Because of this detail, it is not a surprise that many organizations decide to use an internal facilitator. This typically leads to less than ideal results. I recommend you find a skilled external facilitator to guide you, especially on your first Sprint.

Unbiased & Objective

A skilled facilitator will provide a fresh perspective that is unbiased and objective. An outsider will not be aware of your status quo, will not have heard all of the usual internal debates, and will not be encumbered by your office politics. This vantage point will allow them to ask critical questions and hold everyone accountable to the truth, sometimes helping you embrace the harsher realities. They will ask genuine “dumb questions” that help achieve shared understanding across all Sprint participants.

Focus & Confidence

A professional facilitator understands the importance of deferring to participants as the experts in solving the problem, while they are the confident expert in the process for finding that solution. Internal facilitators typically struggle with relinquishing their role as an expert in solving the problem. This makes is difficult if not impossible for them to focus on their role as an expert in the process.

Internal facilitators typically struggle with relinquishing their role as an expert in solving the problem.

Since most internal facilitators are stakeholders in disguise their input is valuable and often critical to Sprint success. If they are a facilitating it is hard for them contribute and still remain unbiased. Sometimes this can lead to negative tensions that drag down the rest of the Sprint team. An external facilitator can remain focused on facilitating without other distractions.

“Without Douglas we would have kept introducing new ideas and tweaking things which would have prevented any real learning” — Boundless sprint participant

Periodically throughout a Sprint, the team will begin to doubt and question if things are on track, and sometimes even begin to wonder if they are wasting their time. An experienced facilitator will assure the team, as they go, that the process is working as intended, they are right on track, and they are doing great. Professional facilitators are naturally enthusiastic and their enthusiasm empowers the team.

Expertise and Situational Awareness

An expert in the Sprint process provides confident and fluid guidance through each exercise and activity, ensuring you stay on track and on time. They will encourage you to rephrase your statements as questions, nudge you to be more pessimistic or critical of goal, and so on.

When prototyping, it is important to target the appropriate level of detail and do so in a way that is easy to test. Having an expert who can coach your designers towards what has worked best in the past will help ensure that your interviews go as smoothly as possible and generate the most learnings.

Jake and the GV Design Sprint team actively work with GV portfolio companies and mentor Design Sprint facilitators. Relying on an authority who, has been trained directly by the GV team, who have run hundreds of Sprints, will ensure your Sprint runs smoothly and allow you to focus on the rapid results you seek.

Planning & Preparation

Facilitators who have previous experience running Design Sprints ensure a more thorough planning process. They will provide you counsel on proper attendee selection. They will assist you in educating your participant so they are properly primed for the activities and level of participation required. Their perspective and expertise during planning will give you peace of mind that you aren’t about to waste 5 days of valuable resources.

Other Relevant Experience

In addition to expertise in the Design Sprint process, a Design Sprint facilitator will certainly have other experience and skills that will enhance their perspective and efficacy. Throughout my career as a CTO, I’ve lead Product teams and am experienced in software development, product design, and business strategy.

When selecting a facilitator, study their background to see what additional skill and perspective they might be able to contribute to your thinking.

Often, a professional facilitator has studied other co-creation techniques and practices. This knowledge and experience can be helpful if you get stuck or the problems you are facing require adjustments to the exercises outlined in the book. When selecting a facilitator, study their background to see what additional skill and perspective they might be able to contribute to your thinking.

Documentation & Synthesis

It is critical to document and archive all assets generated from a Sprint. These are relics provide a treasure trove of future inspiration and innovation potential. A dedicated facilitator is constantly photographing the team, capturing conversations on whiteboards, and organizing all at the end of the Sprint. Without this attention to detail, much of your Sprint content will be lost as memories fade.

While it is entirely possible to run your own Design Sprint, if you want to increase your likelihood of success, consider hiring an expert. Design Sprints require a substantial time commitment for participants and a non-trivial amount of upfront planning and preparation to organize a Sprint. Smart operators choose to hire a professional to protect their investment and ensure their Sprint is executed flawlessly by someone who has done it before.

Voltage Control specializes in Design Sprints and we facilitate Sprints in Austin, Houston, San Antonio, and Dallas. Please email Douglas at douglas@voltagecontrol.co if you are interested in having him facilitate your Sprint, coach your team on how to run an effective Sprint, or are curious to learn more about how a Sprint might help your company or product.

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Usually when I hear someone talking about a minimum viable product (MVP), they are thinking of it in terms of a beta or simply conducting initial testing to validate their concept. Once they are done with this phase, they are back to business as usual. My economical software development philosophy assumes that you never stop asking tough questions and validate everything with real customers prior to writing software.

You should continuously ask yourself, “Do we need to build this?”

Innovation workshops such as the Google Ventures Design Sprint are a great example of a way to conduct validation in a constructive and collaborative fashion. These workshops can help you understand if your idea is worth building or if there are tweaks required prior to writing code.

Not all companies are the same and neither are their problems. It is important to consider all context when designing a workshop. While the Google Ventures Design Sprint is versatile, I often modify the process. Sometimes my modifications are as simple as compressing some portions and expanding on others. Other times I draw from other systems such as Liberating Structures and Gamestorming.

I’ve written some helpful posts regarding Design Sprints. I encourage you to check them out. If you are in Austin, come join us at the monthly Austin Design Sprint meetup where local Austin companies share their experience and learnings.

What is the simplest way to deliver your solution to the customer without jeopardizing the user experience?

Regardless of your technique, once you validate your idea and determine the best solution, it is time to build the software. Now you are once again confronted with tough decisions to make. Most early stage founders I speak with are in need of a trusted advisor to help them establish how to execute on their ideas. My advice is to seek the path of least resistance. You should continuously ask yourself: “What is the simplest way to deliver your solution to the customer without jeopardizing the user experience?”

This is a quality I look for when interviewing for any product team. Some engineers are enticed by technical elegance and beautiful technical solutions. If they are too intoxicated by their craft that they are blind to the customer needs, you will experience a painful misalignment with business needs and the software they deliver to you.

Always stay committed to learning about your customer’s needs and priorities.

In closing, consider how you might align business concepts and marketing goals with software development that is affordable, effective and allows your organization to smartly grow over time as your budget grows. Never take your eye off the customer. Always stay committed to learning about your customer’s needs and priorities. Never over-build.

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I wrote a story, Twyla’s Design Sprint Journey a few weeks ago and the Google Ventures design team graciously agreed to host it on their Sprint Stories publication. I can’t say enough good things about those guys and they continue to impress me with their generosity and focus on building community around the Design Sprint process.

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