Learn how to organize an effective Product Design Sprint to solve chosen problems, make informed decisions and plan further development with ease.
A QUICK SUMMARY – FOR THE BUSY ONES
Step 1: Decide who should participate in workshops. You need a decision maker for the project, a facilitator of workshops and a few experts - e.g. in marketing, design, customer service, tech, finances.
Step 2: Choose a period for workshops and block the entire week in your calendars.
Step 3: For offline workshops, secure and prepare the space.
Step 4: Gather tools adjusted to a chosen for of workshops (offline/online). You need a tool for whiteboarding, prototyping, and gathering knowledge and notes.
Step 5: Set expectations with everyone so that every team member feels ready.
Step 6: Set an agenda.
Step 7: Start gathering data your team may need during the process and elaborating on a problem to solve during the sprint.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
The keys to a successful Product Design Sprint are:
You don’t have to be a trained designer to conduct it.
But since it may seem complicated, we explained the whole process step-by-step below, giving you just the right amount of information to start.
Product Design Sprint is a five-day, structured workshop, during which a team collaborates to solve a particular problem. It’s based on Google Design Sprint methodology, and it covers activities from ideation, through prototyping, to testing with real customers.
<span class="colorbox1" fs-test-element="box1"><p>Prototyping and testing with real users allows teams to effectively validate ideas and solve challenges with little time and money investment.</p></span>
Product Design Sprint workshops help teams to brainstorm effectively, speed up the decision making process, and answer business questions within a short time. The workshop is often used by businesses to reduce the risk associated with bringing a new product or feature to the market.
The whole Product Design Sprint process is highly interactive, experimental, and user-focused. It embraces many of the principles of design thinking - a problem-solving approach focused on people, seeking to understand their needs and coming up with effective solutions.
Design Sprints can be used to:
The most significant challenge around running a design sprint is getting the right people in the room.
After choosing your team:
A Product Design Sprint usually lasts five days. Each day corresponds to a different phase of solving the given problem.
The team usually starts with analyzing a problem and gathering knowledge (day one), then team members brainstorm solutions (day two), analyze them and choose the best one to focus on (day three), build a prototype (day four), and conduct user testing with interviews and feedback analysis (day five).
Each day of the Product Design Sprint workshops belongs to another phase:
Now, let’s investigate what to do during each day of the sprint.
On Monday, you focus on establishing the long term goal. You want to understand the problem and create a roadmap for the whole week.
At the beginning of the sprint, you need to make sure everybody will be moving in the same direction. Day one is about establishing common ground.
Establish your long-term goal:
Then, gather as much information as possible about the problem by making a map of the various aspects. By the end of day one, choose one aspect of the problem (called the target) that your team feels they can resolve by the end of the week.
Establish the main problem to focus during the sprint, create a roadmap for the whole week, and gather necessary information.
On the second day, the team starts to review the existing solutions - you can point out their strengths and weaknesses. Then, each team member sketches their own solutions and develops new insights.
The aim of this phase is to generate as many ideas as possible. Individual brainstorming stimulates many ideas.
Ideate solutions. The focus of this phase is brainstorming, ideating features, and discussing user flows and journeys.
You start the third day by looking at each other’s solutions, talking about them, and voting which one is the best.
Then, it’s time to create a storyboard that details the customer journey. You want to simulate how a potential customer would engage with the chosen solution. The goal is to have a plan for tomorrow's prototype.
Decide which solution is the best and prepare for prototyping.
Various techniques can be used to analyze the solutions you’ve ideated yesterday and select the best one:
Besides that, your team will create a storyboard:
On the fourth day, your team will create a realistic prototype of the chosen solution to test it with users. The key is to build it in one day, but users should perceive it as real as possible.
To tackle the task, you need to assign roles to each team member. Everyone should be clear on what their roles are.
The roles for today are:
Create a rapid prototype of a chosen solution, which will allow you to visualize your idea.
A prototype ready for tomorrow’s user testing.
On Friday, you proceed to testing a prototype with real users. You need to interview five users who fit in with your target customer profile.
During the interview, you ask users questions and they perform chosen tasks. In the meantime, the sprint team watches the recordings.
After gathering all the information and watching recordings, the whole team should gather together and analyze user feedback by the whiteboard. You can create a table divided by the number of customers interviewed and a row for each area or task, and fill the table with information received. Analyze the table and derive conclusions from user feedback.
Gather feedback after testing a prototype with real users.
Conclusions derived after analysing user feedback.
These tools will be especially helpful to facilitate Product Design Sprint workshops conducted remotely.
Time to kick off your Product Design Sprint workshops. Start with choosing a challenge and gathering a team. Then, reserve a 5-day period that suits all. Your next step will be to start gathering all the necessary data.
Focus on users, collaborative approach, and the right tools are a way to succeed with Product Design Sprint workshops.
Need help with conducting workshops?
Our experts got you covered. Tell us about your challenge and we will organize a workshop tailored to solve it.
After the whole process, you’ll receive a report and all the materials used during workshops. Our experts will also suggest next steps for your product.
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Authors
Software development enthusiast with 7 years of professional experience in the tech industry. Experienced in outsourcing market analysis, with a special focus on nearshoring. In the meantime, our expert in explaining tech, business, and digital topics in an accessible way. Writer and translator after hours.
Software development enthusiast with 7 years of professional experience in the tech industry. Experienced in outsourcing market analysis, with a special focus on nearshoring. In the meantime, our expert in explaining tech, business, and digital topics in an accessible way. Writer and translator after hours.
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