Using Design Sprint to Accelerate the Innovation Process (Part 1 of 2)

This article is the first part of two articles devoted to our Design Sprint under the auspices of Google Ventures at the SEEK conference. We shared our experience in the hope that, having seen the experience of others in this method, you will be inspired to conduct (and spread) your experiences with it.

Recently, at the SEEK conference, we identified market conditions that are not offered by any of the products from our strategic plan. We assumed that the best way would be to push off from what we have today - in other words, take the path of radical innovation, rather than gradual advancement.

In order to formulate ideas for using this conjuncture and quickly test them, we decided to use a method similar to the Design Sprint method from Google Ventures.
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So, now that we have, in the end, turned out

Why did we choose Design Sprint?

Before telling “how”, we will tell “why”.

We started with a conjuncture - a market segment that is not properly mastered by us or our competitors. We asked ourselves “how best to formulate some new ideas and test them as quickly as possible?”.

Methodology Design Sprint from Google Ventures offers a structured, but quite flexible approach that allows you to tailor it to the task and capabilities of our team.

By allowing a small, task-oriented, multi-functional team to concentrate on the task during the week, we were able to cut back on the usual stage of debate and discussion and squeeze months of work into a few days.

Another reason for using Design Sprint was to train an innovative approach. Innovation is not a process that happens instantly. In this case, practice is important, and we had the opportunity to do just that.

Key components

Component 1 - Time Limits

Our achievement is that we managed to pre-schedule the current testing of our work by real users. Knowing in advance the time when users will come to experience the result of our work, we asked ourselves tough (and frightening) timeframes that had to be met - to prepare layouts on paper in just 3 days! This did not allow us to relax, served as a stimulating factor and forced us to quickly come to a consensus on certain issues.

Component 2 - Relevant Team

Bringing together a group of individuals open to new ideas, ready to collaborate and work as a team is a very important part of the work. The team should be universal, it should include representatives of the largest possible number of activities of your enterprise.

Illustrating this statement, let's say that our team of 12 people included product managers, developers, advertising and marketing managers, representatives of the strategic planning department, designers, the head of the sales department, an employee of the information and analytical department and a business analyst.

Component 3 - Good Coordinator

Without an effective coordinator, even the best team is doomed to failure. If you need to contrive and save on anything, do not save on it. Invite someone who already has experience of similar work, someone unbiased and able to support the motivation of the group throughout the "sprint". This role is best suited person from the outside. We were lucky to invite Michael Stelvinder from Elabor8 to help us in our sprint.

Component 4 - Wall

You just need a big wall. A huge wall! Do not underestimate the amount of material that can generate a group for the week.

Self-adhesive sheets, drawing paper sheets, layouts, cards - all this will take its place on the wall and will remain on it until the very completion of the work. You will refer to ideas that arose on the first day, throughout the week (and even after), so you need to leave it all on the walls.

Component 5 - Materials

There are many lists required for this sprint, including the list recommended by FastCo. Here we list three things that have proven to be necessary, but not included in the aforementioned list.

• Whatman. Stick it onto the wall so that you can sketch and paste self-adhesive “reminders” directly on it. It can be bought in whole rolls.
• Markers out of competition in the creation of nice approximate design sketches. In the next article I will explain why.
• Schematic images of the target device on graph paper.

What is the difference between our approach and Google Ventures format?

Our concept was almost one-on-one taken from the concept of Design Sprint from Google Ventures, and had only 4 major differences from it, which seemed reasonable to us in our conditions.

Difference 1 - Attracting users at earlier stages and using them to the maximum

We have put in the schedule testing by the first group of users on the third day at 13:00. That is, we started testing two days earlier than suggested in the methodology developed by Google Ventures. This meant that we had the opportunity to receive feedback and implement some adjustments to our project at earlier stages of work.

Caption: Rob, a product manager, listens attentively to testimonials during initial testing on real users.
The important point was that all four user tests (each of which involved three users) were conducted on sample layouts depicted on paper. The success of this approach was based on a team capable of presenting generalized ideas to users in just such a form.

The scope, variety and details of the feedback received from users confirmed that we are on the right track and inspired us over the following days. Do not underestimate the value of rough sketches of ideas on paper when testing for real users.

Difference 2 - Testing on users a variety of ideas

Testing with the help of paper layouts means saving time on creating complex beautiful layouts, which, in turn, allows you to spend it on testing a lot of ideas on users to select the most successful.

This is the most significant difference between our approach and the Google Ventures format, since they suggest concentrating on a single design, and conducting user testing only on the fifth day.

We went to immerse users in the process of creating a design much deeper and allow them to help us more to direct product development in the right direction.

Difference 3 - Expansion

Attempting to squeeze into more user testing stages during the sprint meant that we were spending the fifth day working on a single idea with a benefit to the quality of feedback. From this point of view, we decided to spend two extra days next week working on detailed digital layouts and testing them for different user groups.

Difference 4 - Lack of a decisive vote

The procedure proposed by Google Ventures assumes that some members of the team have “more equal” votes, which are of primary importance when making decisions. In our case, all the voices had equal weight. There is no certainty that this will work in any conditions, but, given the culture of relations in our team, this approach turned out to be the right thing. This meant that anyone had the right to put forward a proposal without obstacles, thereby contributing to the process of generating a common pool of ideas.

In the second part, we will talk about the techniques and work that was done during the sprint, with key recommendations that helped us come to success.