3 things I learned from my first design sprint
I recently had the opportunity to participate in a design sprint workshop here in Copenhagen held by none other than Jake Knapp himself. If you’re unfamiliar with the design sprint method, it’s basically an approach for tackling big challenges as a team by combining strategy, creative thinking and user testing. Best of all, it’s designed in 5-day cycles, which means you’re able to test your hypothesis and get answers from users very quickly.
Having recently gotten into UX and product design, the workshop seemed like the perfect chance to take the design sprint plunge and learn from Jake himself along with the brilliant people at the design agency AJ&Smart who put together the workshop.
The workshop was structured around the different phases of the design sprint and in randomly assigned teams, we were given a challenge to work on. Throughout the day, Jake and the AJ&Smart team worked as facilitators that guided us through the different exercises including mapping the challenge, creating How Might We statements, and sketching solutions. It was an intense day with lots of information to process and exercises to get though, but overall an excellent way to get hands-on experience with the design sprint process.
In the days following the workshop, I spent some time thinking about the process and how I could use it in my work as a designer moving forward. Here are three takeaways that I learned from doing my first design sprint:
1. Getting started is more important than being right
When faced with a new, daunting project, it can be difficult to figure out how to get started. There are lots of questions, confusion about what to focus on, and lots of uncertainty in general. In these situations, what often happens is that in trying to come up with possible solutions, we hold meetings, discuss the challenge extensively and go back and forth about how to approach it. Since it’s difficult to make decisions early on in the process, we end up going in circles with the same meetings over and over again and make no progress whatsoever.
The design sprint lets you skip over the hours of meetings and cut straight to the results. Because the sprint offers specific instructions on how to work together as a team and make strategic decisions, the process forces you to make efficient decisions to keep the project moving forward. Since you only have five days to get from identifying the challenge to testing your prototype with users, you’ll feel a sense of urgency throughout the week, which helps you make progress faster.
And that’s often what a project needs: to get started. You’ll always run into questions that you don’t have the answer to right away, but the sprint will help you identify the most important questions to address and provide the structure you need to give you the answers.
2. Assumptions are okay
As someone with a non-design background, I have been reading quite a few books and blog posts to learn how to think and solve problems like a designer. One thing I encountered early on and still hear on a regular basis is: empathy. Before you do anything else, you must spend time doing user research to understand the needs of your user and use this understanding throughout the project.
The design sprint takes a slightly different approach. It actually doesn’t involve users in the design process until the last day when you test your prototype. This means that many of the choices you make throughout the sprint are largely based on assumptions, hypothesis, gut feelings and thus not user research.
Empathy is still at the heart of the process though. Because the team involved in the sprint is made up of people with different backgrounds and roles in the company, everyone will bring a unique perspective on the challenge. And many of the exercises done throughout the sprint are focused on identifying user needs in coming up with a solution to the challenge.
Ultimately, many of the decisions you make throughout the sprint will be based on assumptions. They will guide your team in identifying sprint questions and will be proven wrong or right on day five when you test with users. While it may seem wrong to rely on assumptions throughout the first days of the sprint, they will be validated with users before the end of the process. So embrace the assumptions and keep moving forward.
3. You’re probably wrong the first time
Many design projects start with lots of research, deep thinking, and discussion. We spend time considering our options, critiquing the different solutions we come up with, and try to reach a general consensus before moving on. We do this, I think, because we believe that talking through everything minimizes the risk of being wrong.
The thing is though, we are still often wrong. No amount of research, brainstorms, or meetings will ever help us come up with the perfect solution the first time. And often we need to fail to find the right way to go.
This is the idea that the design sprint embraces. Rather than spending time trying to prevent mistakes, let’s speed up the process and make them quicker. The sooner we learn what doesn’t work, the sooner we can narrow in on a solution that does.
The beauty of the sprint is that it encourages us to take risks and gives us the tools to deal with them. Because the process only takes five days, the time and resources invested are minimal and you are guaranteed to learn something by the end of the week. So the best thing you can do is try not to worry so much about being right from the beginning and focus more learning as you go through the sprint.
The design sprint workshop was a great introduction to the methodology for me. While the book is written in an easy to understand language and provides practical tips for facilitating sprints, the workshop was a great way to get started with a hands-on experience. And now that I’ve been through my first sprint, I have a different view on how to approach solving large problems and experience using the tools that the sprint process has to offer. I’ll definitely be using the design sprint methodology moving forward in my design work and hope that many other designers and companies will join me in tackling big challenges in a more efficient way.
If you haven’t already, I highly suggest you give Jake’s book a read and see for yourself what all the fuss is about. And if you’re looking for more tips on how to run an effective sprint, check out AJ&Smart’s excellent (and hilarious) Youtube channel.
Thanks for reading! I’d love to hear what you think about the design sprint. If you want to collaborate, talk about product design, or just want to say hi, catch me on Instagram.
