So 2020 Made Us Run a Remote Sprint Relay!
By: Hazel Cyril
Tags: Women in STEM, Teamwork, Women In Steam, Design Sprint, Remote Working

My current listen is Make Time: How to Focus on What Matters Every Day by Jake Knapp and John Zeratsky on Audible. Struggling to find the divide between office and home, I needed to find a way to help me manage work at office, academics, that guitar solo and the sweater project which was meant to be a Christmas gift for Mum, well, now maybe an Easter gift. But as someone who rarely reads self-help books, and just likes to “carpe diem” and wing it, what actually drove me to this book was another one by the same duo, Sprint: How to Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just Five Days. I’ve worked in sprints at work before, ones where we picked things off the backlog and polished them into executables at the end of 2–3 weeks. What about a Design sprint where you Map out the problem and Decide a Target, Sketch Solutions, Decide on a Solution, Build a Realistic Prototype aaand Test with target customers in 5 days? Bit of a stretch? That’s what I thought too. But having executed a Design Sprint with an amazing 5-member team, the Sprint book now seems to be more than just another ‘How-To’. Make Time might work just as well.

Who were we and what were we sprinting towards?

As a team randomly put together by the instructor of the Interaction Design Project module of the Masters in Interaction Design, Alfredo from Colombia, Anu from Switzerland, Ivo from Portugal and Ozge from the Netherlands and yours truly from India took on a design challenge and the challenge of running a remote sprint (remotest sprint rather, 2020 being the year of remote work, among many other things it turned out to be).

The focus of the sprint was on designing a system/product/service that fosters the participation of women in the STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Math) workforce. Part of me used to believe that women counterparts in the Western Hemisphere had better opportunities and support. Nevertheless, as we went through the “understand phase” with a brief literature review and spoke to experts across the globe on Monday of the Sprint, I realized that problems women face are universal and there are always, everywhere, “jobs meant for men” and “jobs meant for women”, with the COVID pandemic marginalizing women more than ever .

According to the module schedule, each day of the sprint spanned two weeks, but the intensity never faded, partly due to the fact that we tried to keep group work as synchronous as possible. Our team pored over the notes we had taken while listening to each Expert Interview and played a quick routine of HMWs and in the fullness of Monday, we realized what we wanted in 2 years’ time — to have more conversations and discussions on girls in STEAM fields through a support system of family, educational institutions and companies engaging and working together to ensure equal conditions between men and women. The laser focus was on how to make life better for female high school students who were looking for guidance regarding STEAM fields.

Monday’s Customer Journey Map

Tuesday had us reflecting on Mafalda, Colombian Network of Scientists Women, Mentor To Go and She-board among other carefully curated inspirations and an intense session of sketching solutions.