Design Sprint: How to turn ideas into solutions! (Part 1: overview)
By: Salah Alomari
Tags: Design Thinking, Prototyping, Product Development, Design Sprint, UX

The 5 day process

Image Source: FreshTilledSoil

Day 0. Before the sprint (Preparations)

To start a design sprint you need to have the right team to work on the right challenge in a suitable space and time where interruptions are nearly non existent. The team will be spending a lot of time sketching, writing, conducting interviews and presentations, and that must be prepared for.

Once you have it all set up, it is time to get started.

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Day 1. Understand the problem

The first day of the sprint is all about understanding the problem to reach a shared perspective among the team. In your first design sprints you will be tempted to think of solutions at this stage, please don’t … day 1 is all about the user. At the end of the day, the team should have a comprehensive understanding of the users and the problems they are set to solve.

There is a concept in design sprint that is called start at the end. The idea is to have a future desired outcome, a goal which we aim to reach through our engagement.

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Day 2. Sketch solutions (Diverge)

Next is solutions. This day is all about coming up with ideas that will become the building blocks of the final prototype that you will test on day 5.

At the start of day 2, the team will do some digging on how other products in the market are trying to solve the problem. Afterwards the team will do series of exercises to put ideas into paper and sketch! Day 2 is all about sketching, because sketching will help you take an abstract idea and make it concrete. This will make it easy to evaluate and decide on direction (In day 3).

Each team member will work on their own sketches. Nothing fancy, just enough to express ideas in a clear way.

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Day 3. Decide on solutions (Converge)

This day, the team will come together to decide on the ideas they sketched on day 2. Rather than a decision meeting where discussion flare around the room, it is done in a structured series of exercises where get the time to review the notes and sketched from before then start voting on the ideas they and don’t like.

Afterwards, each team member will have time to discuss and critique to weight in their expert opinions. Then we are left with a filtered set of ideas that we would like to move forward.

These ideas (sketches) will be organized and stitched into a blue print (The storyboard) that we will use to prototype the experience on the next day.

Day 4. Prototype

The fourth day is where all your ideas and sketches will come together to create a prototype. A facade that will make it easy for your customers to experience your comprehensive solution and give you feedback.

Creating a prototype in a single day is not easy and many professionals will tell you its impossible!

All you need to do is build a realistic facade that you can put in front of customers, nothing fancy. You also need to pick the right tools that will enable you to rapidly produce the intended design, and this also depends on the skills you have on the team.

Divide and conquer

The idea is to breakdown the job among the team. You will need a writer, an asset collector who will collect the different stock imagery, icons, and other things you need for your prototype, and a stitcher who puts it all together.

At the end of the day, you will have a working prototype which you will test with the team to correct any mistakes and fine tune the prototype.

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Day 5. Verify

The final day! Today you will put your solution to the test. You have been working hard since the beginning of the week and now it’s time to realize the risks and devise an action plan through empirical data.

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In this day, you will bring in your customers, usually 5 are enough, and you will conduct a series of interviews with customers as they try and experience your prototype. The rest of team will be watching from afar silently taking notes.

As you are done with the interviews, you will put all the notes on the wall and look for patterns to conclude what went wrong and what went right for the prototype.

From there you can devise a robust plan on what to do next. Whether its another iteration on the prototype, or an implementation plan, or design, every situation is different.

The great thing is that in just 5 days you moved from knowing nothing about a problem to having a solid MVP and a plan to build a solution for your customers.

… Final Thoughts

The concepts and values conveyed through design thinking and embodied in design sprint go beyond the 5 day process. If you live and work by these values, your product development will always be superior, and you will find yourself close to the customer being able to serve the best way you could.

In future articles, I will be presenting a detailed case study of a design sprint. Stay tuned!