UX Design

Every Thing You Need to Know About Design Sprint

Design Sprints:

Design Sprints is to solve a critical design challenge through designing prototyping and testing ideas with users

We use design sprints to answer questions, define product directions, figure out cross-team strategies and even build team culture.

Design sprints generally include five phases:

  • Day1: Understand 

  • Day2 : Ideate

  • Day3: Decide 

  • Day4: Prototype

  • Day5: Test

Design Sprint Benefits:

  • Save s time: with a sprint your team can cut the decision making process down from several months to a single week.

  • Create an effective path to bring a product to market.

  • Sprints prioritize the user putting their needs front and center.

  • Test product before lunch: sprints allow you to fast forward into the future to test your product and get customer reactions before making any expensive decisions.

When to Sprint:

  • Are there many potential solutions to your design challenge

  • Does the design challenge require people from cross-functional teams to weigh in 

  • Is the design challenges scope wide enough for a sprint.

Understand:

The Understand phase sets your sprint on the right track and helps your team get a clear picture of the design challenge. Your team takes time to learn from experts and engage in creative discussions with a lot of different people from other departments and industries. These conversations help you more clearly understand the design challenge. But what’s the first rule of ux design the user comes first this means everything your team does during the sprint.

Ideate:

Some solutions to get the creative juices flowing you start this phase by coming up with ideas and building off of them to create solutions once you’ve got the team thinking. Each participant takes time to sketch and present their ideas don’t worry about your drawing skills here the idea is what matters

Decide:

Which solutions you want to build together your cycling app team discusses each possible solution and eventually decides on the one solution that is most likely to excite users.You’ll wrap up the day by creating a step-by-step blueprint for your prototype.

Prototype:

You’re now ready to build the first version of your new app feature at the end of this phase. You don’t need a finished product just something realistic enough to test with users by focusing only on what the user experiences on their screen your team creates a working prototype of the new customized roots feature way to go during this phase you also finish prepping for user testing by confirming the test schedule

User Testing:

You’ll have a diverse group of people test your product and provide feedback to be able to do this you need to start recruiting users that fit your target profile. As users test your prototype you observe how they react and then interview them about their experiences. Your team gains critical insight about changes that need to be made before you launch the new feature.

Benefits of design sprint:

  • It’s all about the user sprint participants make sure the design challenge is always focused on the user and their needs

  • Second sprints value every person in the room from the office intern to the senior stakeholder including people from lots of disciplines and experience levels is a key part of the process why because considering all angles of the problem in the solution

  • The best ideas will rise to the top

  • Time to focus solely on design challenge

  • Lowered the risk of an unsuccessful market debut because the team gets feedback from real users and can make critical adjustments before the product launches

  • Sprints are versatile because they can be scheduled at any point during your project

Plan a Successful Sprint:

  • Research should focus on the user problems you’re trying to solve during the sprint you don’t have to detail out a specific problem right away but getting a rough idea of what your sprint will focus on will help you decide which research methods make the most sense.

  • Call the experts if you’re planning to sprint it’s up to you to schedule short talks with colleagues or industry experts you’ll listen to these info-packed talks during the understand phase of the sprint a good talk helps clarify the problem your sprint is trying to solve keep in mind the more experts you bring in the more schedules you have to accommodate so start planning early we promise it’ll be worth it.

  • Find the right space sounds a little obvious right but trust me booking the right room can make all the difference it’s important to ensure that the space allows all employees equal opportunities to perform their job.

  • Gather supplies if you’re planning the design sprint it’s your job to make sure everyone has what they need.

  • Establish the rules of the sprint if you want this to bea gadgetless distraction-free zone now is the time to say so figuring out the ground rules in advance sets the tone for the sprint gets everyone on the same page and helps your team stay focused.

  • Planning introductions can be pretty important since sprints involve cross-functional teams that may have never met before we all know.

  • Post sprint planning that means thinking about what will happen after the sprint wraps up like how your team might use what you’ve learned to achieve other goals to do this you need documentation make sure you enlist a few people to help document the design sprint by taking pictures collecting sticky notes and jotting down ideas.

  • Sprint Brief: is a document that you’ll share with all your attendees to help them prepare for the sprint.

Design sprint Brief Document:

  • Design sprint challenge this introduces your team to the sprint objectives
  • identify the key deliverables meaning what your team actually wants to create by the end of the sprint
  • Logistics first everyone participating in the sprint needs to know where the sprint will happen and when it will be held you also want to list who’s attending and the name of the sprint master
  • Approvers got some higher-ups that need to sign off on the product before launch
  • List of resources for short-term sprints there’s probably a team already assigned to this project for long-term sprints you may need to create a plan to secure additional resources
  • Project overview where you should explain the current state of the project call out roadblocks that stand in your way state early winds if you have any and outline the estimated launch plan
  • Sprint schedule an hour-by-hour schedule of the five-day sprint including break times this lets people know what to expect and gives them time to prep so you can keep things moving along during the sprint

The Retrospective:

 Is a collaborative critique of the team’s design sprint

We usually do retrospective meetings immediately following the sprint so that everyone’s thoughts are fresh retrospective meetings don’t have any particular agenda. The goal is to make sure everyone who took part in the sprint has a chance to give feedback. The two key questions we aim to answer in the meeting are: what went well? and what can be improved?

Check out my behnace or my portfolio for examples.