Kicking off with UX: GV Design Sprint
Here is the situation: 6 persons without any knowledge in UX design, that did not know each other before, were group together to immerse ourselves in using new methodologies to innovate.
Our first approach in UX was going to be throughout a GV Design Sprint. As it is already known, it spans during 5 days to find solutions and shape them through design, prototyping, and testing ideas with users.
As the main point in agile frameworks is, well, the sprint, we wanted to twist it up a bit and make it in less time, so we did it in 3 days.
While we were on it, some questions came to mind:
- Is this methodology going to be effective if we shorten it up?
- Is this leap in UX a good basis for what is next to come?
Want to know what went down? Let’s take a look!
DAY ONE // research, define & ideate
To kick off the sprint, we were handed off a briefing and a goal: how to make millennials save money.
We were presented with three different archetypes: ‘bit by bit’, those who have in mind that every coin counts; ‘builder’, those strategists who want to increase their money; and ‘hedonistic’, who has high incomes.
As all of the archetypes were complex and pretty different, we gathered some key words, opportunities and findings of each one, and decided to work for the hedonistic. This election was made thanks to a main idea: if I have enough money, I can spend it easily, whereas if I save bit by bit or I build my thoughts about how to get an income, then, I am already thinking of saving money. This would be our first insight.
So, how do we help the hedonistic save money? First of all, let’s give them a face.
May I introduce you to Julia, a reckless young girl who likes to enjoy life and new technologies, and never say no to a plan with friends. She lives in the present and to avoid frustrations, she is used to postpone future duties (like house, family…).
Now it is time to collect ideas from the group.
What we did first was to set our goals and hypothesis, and after, draw Julia’s journey with our app in order to help her achieve the goal.
The next step was to ask ourselves… how might we make this happen? Each of us began to consider some ideas on our own and start sketching its solutions:
- How might we make Julia take an interest about her savings?
- How might we replace her habits of spending money?
- How might we modify her point of view about the future?
- How might we help Julia take decisions about her future?
- How might we associate saving money with gratification?
When we had already something in mind, the next step was to look for inspiration on sites who were close to the topic, and others who were focused beyond that. In this benchmarking we looked into successful apps like BNext, Fintonic, Duolingo or LinkedIn. This helped us do a Lightning Demo of our ideas.
After all this information, we needed to order our thoughts, again, by ourselves. Through a mind map, starting from the main goal -to save-, we matched and sketched each concepts and solutions. Not satisfied with that, each one of us chose our best idea, and did a crazy 8 to develop it further into detail.
We draw our first lo-fi wireframes, and presented them to the group. We even try to understand each other’s ideas ahead of the explanation, because after all, doesn’t it has to be a clear and pleasant design?
To conclude the day, we voted all of our designs by dotmocracy, and ‘Save War’ was the concept that we chose. Time to rest now!
DAY TWO // prototype
New day, new phase! We finished the first day with a concept, so is the time to make it real.
Before starting the prototype, we had to elaborate the concept so we could determine whether the idea had coherence or not, and possible inconsistencies. We polished it through a storyboard.
For prototyping the idea, we established a hierarchy for the team. Each one of us had a job: from designer to copywriter to interviewer. The key for a good work is organisation and coordination, and we had to cover everything!
This is Save War! An app that combines your saving goals with a role-playing game, where you can only advance in if you meet your objectives. The greater your effort, the better results you will get in battles. Besides, through gamification, you can be rewarded with discounts for other services.
While we were doing this, the interviewer was preparing the questions for the future testers. There is no time to waste!
DAY THREE // test
We make it through the last day of the sprint, and here comes the most exciting part: to test it with users.
We had 5 users who were willing to try it out. All of them, aged 24–29, were from different profiles. While our interviewer was asking them questions and guiding him through our prototype, the rest of us were taking notes for future iterations.
We draw, thanks to what they told us directly, and also subconsciously, positive conclusions and opportunities for improvement.
Some of the hints that we gathered are:
- ‘Would be great if the avatar could have more things to customise it’.
- ‘It’s not the typical bank app, the idea of a video-game fuelled with our saving goals it’s really cool’.
- ‘The discount and promotions page is not clear, I don’t understand it’.
- ‘The visual of the app changes a lot in the beginning, it cost me a bit to get there is a game till the world choice’
As we figured, not everything was going to be as good as it looked! We learnt that it is very important to test the prototype with people who are not in the making process to really understand what is missing or is not working the way we wanted. We only needed some hours to do the test, but it has given us a lot to work on and improve the user experience in future iterations.
OUTCOMES
After three days working our fingers to the bone, good atmosphere and enthusiasm for what we were doing, we concluded the sprint with a project, and presented it to real users. Mind blowing!
Going back to the question I asked myself, ‘Is this methodology going to be effective if we shorten it up?’, I can assure you, it is.
Above the results we obtained with this sprint, the real goal here was the process itself. We, that did not have any experience nor did not know each other, created something from zero. Even though we make it shorter, we follow the methodology and it allowed us to come up with an idea and without making any expensive commitment. We learnt how to present our ideas, to critic them and to accept that criticism, and to optimize our time and resources.
So, is this leap in UX a good basis for what is next to come? Definitely, yes again.
UX design is all about making any experience better for the user. Whatever we design, it needs to be useful, usable and desirable, and we can only achieve this when empathising with the user through research, ideating and designing prototypes, and doing usability testing. Processes that we carried out in this Design Sprint.
