Remote Design Sprint in the middle of a pandemic in 2020
By: Anu Ylänen
Tags: Women In Tech, Interaction Design, Remote Design Sprint, Design Sprint, STEM

I think we can all agree that year 2020 has been a challenging year, but for many of us, the show had to go on — just not always face to face.

For me personally, it has meant a lot of work, studying and grinding my way through it. As an Interaction Design masters student in the joint programme offered by Cyprus University of Technology and Tallinn University, one of the courses this semester was focused on Design Sprint. And not just in that familiar workshop style with post-its flying through the air in a room full of participants and one facilitator as a cheerleader, but a remote design sprint. We were all in different countries and in several time zones, which made it both challenging and interesting.

So, what are we doing exactly…?

The topic for our Design Sprint was given to us by the lecturers of the course, and can be summarised as:

Design a system/product/service that fosters the participation of women in STEAM workforce.

During the ‘understand’ phase it became clear that the topic is big, has many dimensions and opens up various rabbit holes to follow. We needed to narrow it down, but before that, we combined our findings into a mini literature review and problem statement. The topic surely is very interesting and current, and not as simple as one might think. Even in our small group all team members had different kinds of experiences, depending on what kind of culture they come from.

And who are we?

We are from all over the world — and it means that scheduling a meeting so that the time is convenient for everyone is CHALLENGING.

Our multicultural team consisted of five students from 3 different continents and 5 different countries:

Hazel Cyril (India), Alfredo Espitia Beltrán (Colombia), Ivo deCarvalho (Portugal), Anu Ylänen (Switzerland) and Özge Öztürk (Netherlands).

We were assigned to the same team quite randomly, so kicking off the sprint also meant getting to know each other. Teamwork is not always easy, but when the team members are in different time zones, it’s even trickier.

However, we polished our team dynamics throughout the sprint, and in the end it really felt like we’re all in the same room together. Positive attitude and supporting each other made it a really pleasant experience. Defining clear roles and responsibilities also helped.

My role for most sprint days was the role of the decider — when something needed to be decided, I appeared like a genie from the bottle and made a wish come true (slight exaggeration). We also tried out a funky new system to change the facilitator for each sprint day! Hey, if it’s never been done before, we’re up for it. And it seems like we can even write a research paper about it. Win-win!

This is just 0.0000001% portion of our massive Miro board!

Where did the process lead us?

The early-mid stages of the sprint were our decisive moments, and it was intense, but the team was quite unanimous on which direction to take. As a decider, I felt like most of the time we were aligned and I didn’t have to make any hard decisions. We were a democratic team.

However, looking back at that phase now, I feel like we should have kept our sprint goals and sprint questions more focused and clear on our minds, and narrow down even more — or even adjust them on the fly. But on the last sprint day (Friday) everything came quite nicely together and the ‘circle of the sprint’ closed, so no regrets. :)

Isn’t this nice? Who wouldn’t want to work hard with a team like this, awww!

Online — the best and sometimes only option in 2020

Running a remote Design Sprint is completely different than what I imagine a sprint to be when it’s done on site and everyone in the same room. However, this was my first experience of a design sprint, so I cannot really compare. It definitely took some time to get used to the virtual whiteboard (we used Miro). Also, spending several hours on a Google Meet staring at the screen was an exhausting experience.

On the other hand, remoteness provided some flexibility — I was able to be at home in my work-at-home outfit, lounge around and get comfortable. The intensity level was still high, with most sprint activities involving strict time limits. We were aiming for a pressure cooker environment, to be able to produce a diamond in the end — and I felt like in the end we managed to accomplish that.

A couple of screens from our prototype — we got very encouraging feedback from user tests!

Diversity is the key

I have always appreciated diverse and inclusive teams, and I think it can only be a benefit to have a gender balanced team, with people from different backgrounds, cultures and countries.

That’s exactly what our team composition was — and there was a great deal of useful things to learn from it. I feel like our topic was definitely examined from various different angles and viewpoints — we learnt (first hand) for example that the topic of women working in STEAM is approached quite differently in more ‘macho’ countries. We might have missed that kind of insight, if we were all from the same kind of backgrounds.

In a similar fashion, we all have different work experience and education: we had the ‘pro’ who already had a lot of experience in design sprints to guide us, and we had the product management angle covered as well. Some of us were more visual, some less, some where thinkers, some were tinkerers. With all this variety, I would say our team was a wonderful example of a diverse team.

When the anxiety kicked in — and was resolved

The most difficult part was the process we went through to get to the storyboarding phase. When everything was still quite vague, and when we were not sure what direction to take. That’s a tough task: to produce something concrete, something that can be transformed into a working prototype. However, once that phase was done, it felt easier and easier. It was all worth it in the end, and made sense. I needed to remind myself several times throughout the sprint, that we need to trust the process. Everything will make sense in due time. And it did.

I wonder what they think about our prototype?

The most rewarding moment was definitely the user testing. We all did interviews with selected participants, and it felt good to see the response from them. They had not been involved in the sprint, and had not seen the process that led to them testing the prototype. It felt nerve wrecking and exciting at the same time. But good feedback kept coming in, and we were relieved to discover that our app generated a lot of opinions, feature ideas, comments and encouraging feedback. It resonated with the users, which was great to hear. Phew, now I can breathe.

It’s worth mentioning that we didn’t do this sprint in one week. The purpose was to learn — so we worked in two week intervals, each sprint day spreading into 2 weeks. I definitely feel like I got a grasp of design sprint facilitation, and am feeling comfortable in doing it again.

Thank you 2020, the year of the remote design sprint! Let’s see what 2021 has to offer. :)