Let’s Sprint 🏃️💨 –  How to build a prototype in 5 days

As part of my master's degree, I focused more on the topic of design sprints and developed and taught a workshop on the topic of design sprints together with a fellow student. A total of 18 students in four groups took part in the 7-day workshop. Each design sprint focused on the topic of the university.

The following content reflects one of the four sprints as an example. The topic of this group was FHP Jobs, a possibility to post and apply for jobs on the internal organization tool of the University of Applied Sciences Potsdam.

Project duration: 1,5 weeks - October 2023

Type of project: Project week - Master tutoring for other design students

Focus: Design Sprints, University of Applied Sciences Potsdam

Tools: Figma, Miro

Methods: Presentation design, User research, Sketching, Wireframes, Screen flows, Visual design, Interaction design

Team: Aline Sawalsky

Sprint Planning
Roadmap for the design sprint workshop

Introduction

Sprint day 1

Sprint day 2

What are design sprints?

Overview of design sprints
Organizing teams + their roles
Finding topics for the sprint

Sprint day 5

Test the prototypes

Test your prototypes
Evaluate results

Outlook

Understand the problem

Define goal & sprint questions
Create a sprint map
Interviews & "How might we"
Finalize target group
homework lightning demos

Sprint day 4

Prepare the testing

Prepare interview script
Trial run of the testing
Recruit test person
Prepare material for note taker

Decide

Brainstorming ideas
Crazy 8 & solution sketches
Hypotheses
Storyboard

Sprint day 3

Prototyping

Tools to build a prototype
Prototyping

Show your results

What are your results of the sprint?
Feedback design sprints
Feedback workshop

Introduction
What are design sprints?

The first day of the workshop began with an introduction to the topic of design sprints. On this day, we gave the students an overview of what design sprints actually are and how the method came about. Over the course of the day, we addressed the following topics and questions:

What are possible outcomes of design sprints?
Different approaches to design sprints
Advantages and disadvantages of design sprints
Remote design sprints
Design thinking vs. design sprints

Assignment of the roles of the design sprint

In contrast to the actual roles for a design sprint, we have adapted the roles for the student sprint.

Decision makers

Expert

Sprint leader / moderator

Interviewer

Maker / Designer

The problem the team wanted to tackle

Before the actual design sprint began, a topic had to be chosen on which the students would carry out their sprint. The criteria for choosing a topic were testability, relevance, suitable complexity for 4 to 5 days, a clearly defined problem and room for innovation and creativity.

The following design sprint is dedicated to the problem of finding a job for students. Design students often have no concrete contact points for jobs or internships. A first, small step in the right direction is the internal notice board in Incom (picture on the right).

Entries of any kind can be posted on the notice board by anyone. Jobs are also rarely posted here. However, due to the wealth of information, these are usually lost.

notice board "Schwarzes Brett" Incom FHP

Notice board 2.0
The focus of the group was to rethink the notice board and focus more on job advertisements for students. Employers can register on the site and post their jobs. In addition, work can be shown using the portfolio function.

The main goal was to simplify the job search for students and give employers the opportunity to find motivated employees through their projects.

Design sprint day 1
Understand the problem

Sprint goal & sprint questions

The first official sprint day starts for the groups with the task of defining the sprint goal. Why are we doing the project at all and what do we want to achieve with it? The goal should be defined as clearly as possible without already thinking in terms of solutions. Each team member then had time to vote using sticky dots and stick two dots each on the sprint goals that were strongest for them. The expert from the group then voted with another dot.

Sprint questions were then derived. The groups were asked to think about what could cause them or their project to fail and what their fears were. Once the questions had been collected on Post its, they were again voted on by dot votig.

Dot Voting

Goals were noted on post its and voted for via dot voting

Sprint questions were noted separately and voted

Create a sprint map - the roadmap for the sprint

The sprint map formed the basis for the rest of the sprint. The entire map is made up of four parts:

Target group: Who was my target group? Who is the sprint aimed at?
Discovery: How does the target group discover your product?
Experience (core section): What is the core experience or the most important experience?
Outcome: What is your outcome of the sprint? What goal do you want to achieve?

Sprint map with the different sections

Expert interviews & how might we?

In the next step, the groups spoke to the experts of their problems. To do this, they conducted interviews with affected students on campus to find out more about their pain points and needs.

Beforehand, we explained to the students the most important steps and tips for creating an interview script and conducting the interview with the experts in the best possible way. This included the structure of an interview guide and the formulation of open questions (When, What, How, Why, Who).

After the expert interviews, the results were evaluated and "How might we" questions were derived. The most important questions were again determined by dot voting. It is important for each group that the
"How might we" questions always include the target group, the context and the goal.

At the end of the day, each group checked once again whether the target group was still correct or whether it needed to be revised.

How can we simplify the complicated and time-consuming job search for design students?

How might we give employers access to young, qualified workers?

How can we highlight relevant jobs for design students?

How might we make the notice board 2.0 on Incom more visible for job seekers?

How might we best highlight the work of design students?

Lightning Demos - prepared as homework

Lightning demos are a method for inspiring possible solutions. The focus is on being inspired by an idea or concept that is already working well. This does not necessarily have to have anything to do with the actual design sprint topic as long as it can serve as inspiration.

The students' homework was for everyone to look for inspiration for themselves and bring it to the next day. The next day, all the Lightning demos were then discussed and analyzed in more detail.

Examples of the lightning demos (Left to right: Designerdock, notice board "Schwarzes Brett" Incom FH Potsdam, Indeed job portal)

Design sprint day 2
Brainstorming & decision

Day two started with the homework of the Lightning Demos in the respective groups. One by one, each person in the group was able to present their Lightning Demos, while the other team members took notes and made sketches.

Important ideas were outlined during the presentation of the

Lightning demos

Crazy 8 - Sketching, sketching, sketching ...

The Lightning demos were followed by the "Crazy 8" method. In this method, a sheet of paper is divided into eight equally sized fields. The task is to draw 8 different sketches within 8 minutes. The team member has 1 minute for each field. After each minute has elapsed, the next sketch follows within one minute.

Fold paper

Set timer for

1 minute

Draw!

Repeat x8

1:00

Develop solution sketches

After each team and each individual had created various solutions using Crazy 8, each team member sketched an initial solution for the final result.

After a short speed review, this exercise was again voted on using dots. If several favorites emerged from this exercise, the entire team then had to discuss whether a prototype should be developed from all the suggestions or whether several small ideas/prototypes should be tested.

Set up hypotheses

With the hypotheses that followed, students were asked to figure out why the prototype was being tested and what would happen. What was the big idea behind the solution that can solve the problem or overcome the risks?

Storyboard

With the storyboard, the students thought about the steps BEFORE using the final idea. How do users get to their product? What are the first steps of the product? What is the entry point before the product?

Design sprint day 3
Build prototypes

On the third sprint day, we discussed the topic of prototyping and gave a rough overview. In addition to possible prototyping tools, the students also gave tips on what it takes to build a real prototype for a product in a short time.

In addition to choosing the right tool, the students were also asked to independently assign roles to each other so that the prototype can be created as realistically and quickly as possible within the team.

Design sprint day 4
Prepare testing

Create interview script for testing

While the prototype was being created, one person from the team took care of the script for testing. The script serves as a kind of guideline for testing the prototype. This was to ensure that each test ran in roughly the same order, that the interviewers could concentrate better on the testing and that the testing could be better evaluated afterwards and any pain points could be better analyzed.

Trial run for practice

Once the prototype and the script for the usability testing had been completed, each team was able to carry out an internal trial run. The pre-trial testing was intended to give the students a feel for how the final testing would proceed.

Recruit test subjects and prepare note taker script

The day before testing, the students were asked to independently find possible test subjects for testing the prototype on the following day. In addition, the team prepared the materials for the notes during the testing. Here, too, we gave the students tips on how best to take notes during the interview in order to be able to better evaluate the testing afterwards.

Design sprint day 5
Test prototypes

On the fifth and last official day of the Design Sprint, the prototypes were tested. After each group had tested their prototypes on at least three people, we then turned our attention to evaluating the interviews. Here, too, we gave the students tips and hints in advance on what to look out for when evaluating their testing. For example, where did problems cluster, what patterns or anomalies emerged and what positive or negative quotes were noted?

The group was able to draw the following insights from the testing:

Key learnings from the testing

Students have a need and interest
The layout of the site is clear and structured
Browsing portfolios is helpful
The filter function is very useful

Next steps

Make "Find the job" more present
Standardized filters
Make the presentation of portfolios more present and adapt it (thumbnails)
Ask for the employer's view
Icon in the menu bar
Highlight sent messages
Presentation of job advertisements

Outlook
Results

The last day of our workshop was used for the results of the sprints and feedback on the actual method. At the end, each team created a presentation with all the important findings from the last five days of the sprint. We also talked about what the students liked and didn't like so much and how things can continue after a sprint.

Personal learnings from the Design Sprint workshop with design students

Adapt target group to level of experience
When planning the sprint, we deliberately wanted to leave the level of experience open. In hindsight, I would narrow down the levels more so that all participants have a similar level of knowledge.
Analog or digital?
Both the analog version and the digital version of a sprint have advantages and disadvantages. For the next sprint, I would think through both options more carefully. If I decide to use the analog version again, I would test the materials in advance. Due to the large number of post its, some of which did not stick well to the whiteboard, post its fell off in the meantime. This is more of a disadvantage for the documentation.

Define the time frame more individually
Due to the different topics, the groups worked at different speeds and sometimes had to wait for each other. I would rethink the timing for the next sprint.
Coordinate timing for tasks more
The groups also took different lengths of time to vote on the results. Here too, I would make the timetable more individual so that individual groups determine the sprint at their own pace.

Make content even more compact if possible
When planning the workshop, we tried to adapt the content to the students as much as possible. Nevertheless, there was a lot of content on the various topics. Instead of 8 hours in the original sprint, we tried to reduce the content and tasks in the sprint to around 4 to 5 hours a day. The feedback from the students was that a little more time to process the content would have been even better.

All in all, the Design Sprint workshop was a great experience and I learned a lot.

Let’s Sprint 🏃️💨 – How to build a prototype in 5 days

Let’s Sprint 🏃️💨 –  How to build a prototype in 5 days