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Design Thinking Simulation

Design Sprint

Overview:

Design Thinking simulation is developed to help organizations/learners change the way they approach and solve problems. It puts learners in the role of a leader of a business that has been facing severe growth concerns and challenges them to achieve rapid growth and great customer experience in a short period. It helps learners understand the process of design thinking - from understanding customers to ideas & solutions to creating business value - in an experiential format. It brings the powers of gamification to engage, educate and empower the learner to achieve great results, and delivers powerful lessons that can be applied in real life as well.

How it all started? - Conceptually, Design Thinking is already proven and implemented by many organizations but when implemented without proper knowledge it can show negative results.

So our product owners and other stakeholders came up with an idea to imitate these concepts and present them in the form of a simulation which will provide a safe environment for the learners and they can practice these concepts without impacting the real-world situations. A lot of meetings and discussions happened for a month without concrete conclusions.

Finally, they decided to conduct the design sprint sessions. Design Sprint is a 5-day step by step process for rapidly solving big challenges, answering critical business questions, creating new products, or improving existing ones. Read this book to know more about Design Sprints. Myself along with my team started planning for the design sprint sessions:

To understand if it is worth building the product
To validate the idea
To unlock the budget
To avoid endless debates and solve alignment issues within the team
To focus on tangible results in a short time
To build a clear roadmap

Challenges:

Scheduling and managing the team’s time for all the 5-day sessions
Keeping the team engaged, motivated and focused
Managing the team members who are moving in and out between the sessions

Core Team:

Deciders (CEO/Product owner/Team heads)
Sales expert
Marketing expert
Tech expert
Finance expert
Design expert
An expert from customers success team
A Facilitator

Sector:

Business to Business (B2B)

Duration:

2 weeks

My Responsibilities:

Leading the Project
Managing and facilitating Design Sprints

Senior Product Designer

My Role:

IMPACT

After finishing the design sprints, with a clear roadmap in place the product was built and launched successfully.

96.2% participants say that they will strongly recommend the simulation to others.

Methodology used - Design Sprints

The 5 day step by step process includes:

Monday

Create a map and choose target

Tuesday

Sketch

Wednesday

Decide

Thursday

Prototype

Friday

Test

- Before Design Sprint -

To conduct a successful design sprint sessions, planning is very important. So a couple of weeks before the sprint, we started to plan things and decide on:

Whether to conduct the design sprint online, offline or both combined
Gathering all the challenges which we might face before, during or after the design sprints
The team and scheduling the time accordingly to make sure that every stakeholder is available without interruptions in all the 5 days
Setting up the rooms where sessions and interviews will happen (device-free rooms)
Sprint supplies - Sticky notes, whiteboards, snacks, water, etc
Stakeholder interviews before the sprint sessions to understand the product better and be prepared about the idea, target customers, budget and find other important details
Recruiting the target customers/users

Preparing in advance by gathering some information related to the product/idea helped to build confidence within the team while conducting design sprint sessions.

- First day of the Design Sprint (Monday) -

With all the sprint supplies and team members in the room, our Monday started by introducing the team and the role of each individual in the room. Then comes the knowledge-sharing part where we discussed design sprints, what will happen in the next 5 days, everyday goals, what to expect and what not to expect from the sprint. The team was provided with sticky notes and other sprint supplies which will be useful during the sprint sessions. Now the sprint begins by:

Setting up a long term goal - As a facilitator, I asked questions like "Why are we doing this project?" and "Where do we want to be in next 2 years from now?". The team was told to be super optimistic while writing down the answers. After everyone wrote the long term goals, those stickies were pasted on the whiteboard for voting. Though everyone was allowed to vote based on their opinions, the decider is the person who will decide on the long term goal.

Sprint questions - Imagine that we are in the future now and we see that our project is a disaster. So questions like "What could stop us from reaching our long term goal" were asked. The team was asked to be pessimistic while writing down the sprint questions

Generate Map - I started drawing the map (can be a flowchart) on a whiteboard having actors on the left side and the customer objective on the right side then we started filling sequence of steps in between to create a map and know how a customer might find our product and interact with it. A lot of revisions happened.

Expert Interviews - While I was interviewing all the experts one by one, the rest of the team had to take notes about the challenges/problems they are hearing from the experts. Questions were different for each expert based on their domain. Questions asked were like "What is the overall vision?", "What can be the technical constraints?", "Who are our customers?" Based on the information gathered, long term goals, sprint questions and map were updated

How Might We notes (HMW) - Challenges/problems noted during expert interviews were reframed as opportunities. It starts with writing letters HMW on top left corner of the sticky notes and 1 opportunity/sticky note were written. Every individual was asked to stick all the notes on the whiteboard. All the HMW's were organized and then the voting was done. Selected HMW's were placed on different steps of the Map

Picking a target - Based on the number of HMW stickies pasted on different steps of the map, we together decide and circled a particular area. The circled part is the area which has to be solved on priority. But at the end, picking the target area is completely the choice of the decider.

At the end of the day, there was a recap of what we had discussed and the team was asked if they want to update any data in it. Then we determined our Long term goal, Sprint questions, map and the target area. A snapshot of this information was shared with every individual in the room so that everyone is on the same page.

- Second day of the Design Sprint (Tuesday) -

On Tuesday we started the session with a quick recap on the outcomes of the previous day and made sure that the entire team was aligned with it. Today we mainly focus on the solutions. Every individual got a chance to use their creativity and imagination for solving the problems. Starting with:

Lightning Demos - I asked everyone to bring their devices, search for a list of products or services having robust solutions which can be an inspiration to solve the problems we are dealing with. The list of products/services can be from any company or industry. Everyone with the list of products in hand were asked to present it in front of the team and talk about what they feel good about it and how it could help solve our problem. Duration for each product tour was set to 3 - 4 minutes long. After the demos, everyone was asked to write the information gathered (Product name and the solution) on the sticky notes and paste them on the wall (one product/sticky note). Now that we have the inspiration list of products and their solutions posted on the wall, the next step is to

Divide - In the map, inside the circled area, there were several key pieces we had to focus on getting the solutions. I asked every individual to write down the part he/she is more interested to solve and stick their names on the map so that everyone is clear which part they want to tackle in sketches.

Concept Sketching - All the 4 steps involved in concept sketching were explained to the team. The team was informed that the first 3 steps were private and they can freely scribble without any hesitation. The idea is to work alone but together. The four-step sketching includes:
- Notes Taking (20 mins) - In this step, people were asked to walk around the room quietly and note down what they see on the walls and whiteboards and write other thoughts if any. They had to fill the notepad with long term goal, sprint questions and whatever they felt was useful.
- Ideas (20 mins) - Everyone was asked to fill the sheet of paper with rough ideas based on the data collected in notes taking. The ideas is to convert those notes into visuals, it could be in the form of doodles or diagrams. Once done favourite ideas are circled for next steps.
- Crazy 8's (8 mins) - It is a fast-paced exercise where a sheet of paper is folded multiple times to get 8 frames. The team was asked to sketch a variation of one of their best ideas in each frame spending a minute.
- Solution sketch (45 mins) - All the 3 exercises above were done privately but this is the exercise where each persons solution will be presented anonymously with the team. The idea is to organize the ideas into a clear story using multiple sheets (we limited to 3) by using A4 sheets and sticky notes for further explanations of solutions in each sheet if needed. All the instructions were provided to the team on how to create the sketch. As the presentation was anonymous, every individual was told to create the sketches (no need to be artistic but should be clear) as self-explanatory.

At the end of the day, there was a recap and a snapshot of all the solutions were shared with every individual.

- Third day of the Design Sprint (Wednesday) -

On Wednesday we started the session with a quick recap on the outcomes of the previous day and made sure that the entire team was aligned with it. Having the stack of solutions stick to the wall, today we decide which solutions are best to focus on to achieve the long term goal. At the end of the day, all the decided solutions will be weaved to form a storyboard. The day starts with:

The sticky decision - To make the sprint decisions as efficiently as possible, we follow these 5 steps to decide on the solutions:
- Art museum - Just like paintings in a museum, all the solutions were stuck to the wall in a long row.
- Heat map - Now it's voting time, every individual was asked to silently review the sketches. Each were provided with dots and were asked to place them on the ideas which they like the most. By the end of this step, clusters of dots are placed on the ideas.
- Speed critique - This is a kind of group discussion where we select a solution sketch and critique one at a time. I started reading out the ideas which had more number of dots stuck to it. A volunteer from the team wrote those ideas on the sticky notes and they were placed on top of the solution sketch. Once all the ideas were pasted, the creator of the solution sketch speaks up and updates if we are missing something and where we went wrong.
- Straw poll - In this step other than the decider each individual will look at the solution sketches and note down which concept is better or if some part of the concept is better to prototype and test. Each one has to take a sticky note and write the concept title explaining the reason why they chose that concept. Then the dots are provided to the team (not to decider) to vote at the same time on the concepts. And finally, decider is the person who will decide on the concept or multiple concepts. The team members one at a time read the concepts they like the most which helps the decider to decide on the concepts to prototype and test.
- Supervote - Here the decider is provided with the dots and asked to vote on the concepts which he thinks should be prototyped and tested. Deciders vote is the final vote. The prototype will be planned based on the supervote.

Before the storyboarding, all the sketches with supervotes were moved together. We decided on combining all the ideas and present in one prototype.

Storyboarding - We started by drawing 10 boxes on the whiteboard. We thought of a flow on how customers will come across our product and we started drawing it in each box. When needed, we reused the existing sketches to fill the boxes. Once the flow was ready with enough details, decider will make the decisions, update anything if needed and then we were good to start with prototyping.

At the end of the day, we had enough details to begin with the prototype. A recap of the session and a snapshot of all the solutions were shared with every individual.

- Fourth day of the Design Sprint (Thursday) -

On Thursday we started the session with a quick recap on the outcomes of the previous day and made sure that the entire team was aligned with it. Having the storyboards on the whiteboard, today we will turn them into realistic prototypes. We decided on:

Tools - Choosing the right tools was very important as we only had a day to prototype.
Roles - To get the most out of the session, we assigned different roles like maker, stitcher, asset collector, etc and asked them to finish their tasks on time.

As the work was split into parts, the stitcher made sure that the quality was not compromised and all parts together would make sense. Once the prototype was ready, a trial run happened where the prototype was tested with the stakeholders to get the valuable feedback. Based on the feedback provided, the prototype was updated and was ready for the User testing.

The day ended by thanking everyone for being productive and spending their valuable time spent in all these days. A recap and the details about scheduled interviews on Friday was shared with the team.

- Fifth day of the Design Sprint (Friday) -

On Friday, roles of each individual were explained and how to take notes during the session. We set up the room and invited 5 customers for the testing purpose. Before the interview was started we drew a grid on a whiteboard, creating a column for each customer along with adding rows for different sections of the prototype. Once the interview started, the team started taking down notes (on sticky notes) observing the customer behaviour. All the results, positive, negative or neutral were captured. Then with the help of the team, I pasted all the sticky notes in the respective columns and rows of the grid. At the end, we reviewed each note and looked for patterns. Once the list of patterns was ready we labelled each as positive, negative or neutral.

Long-term goal and the sprint questions were reviewed and were compared with the patterns we saw in the interviews. Based on this data, the decider will be having the decision power to end the sprint here or to conduct another sprint. Another Design Sprint was conducted and in the end, all the information gathered during the design sprints were documented for future reference.

- Learnings -

Design Sprints work well with a good team.
Being patient is important when facilitating a Design Sprint
Everyone gets heard
Saves time
Preparing myself before the Design Sprint helped answer the questions from the team
Multiple deciders in the room is a big no

Thank you for reading

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