Personal Design Sprint

PROCESS FOR A ONE MAN DESIGN SPRINT!

I was reading Google Ventures' notes on conducting Design Sprints.

Here are my summarised notes and a game plan for the future.

http://www.gv.com/sprint/

Why use a Sprint?

• According to knapp, "shortcut the endless-debate cycle and compress months of time into a single week"
• Find actionable goals for projects that seem to be stuck

DAY 1

• start at the end, determine the long-term goal.
• make a map of the challenge.
• ask experts to share knowledge.
• pick a target: an ambitious but manageable piece of the problem that you can solve in one week

• Why are we doing this project?
• Where do we want to be in six months, a year, or even five years from now?
• Write the long-term goal on a whiteboard.
• Get pessimistic. Ask: How could we fail?
• Turn these fears into questions you could answer this week.

• Reframe problems as opportunities. Listen carefully for problems and use “How might we” phrasing to turn them into opportunities

• Always be capturing. all parts of the process must be documented and noted down for future reference.
• Ask obvious questions. Pretend to be naive. Ask “Why?” a lot.
• Decide and move on. Slow decisions sap energy and threaten the sprint timeline.

DAY 2

• review existing ideas which need to be remixed and improved
• sketch out possible solutions

DAY 3

• with a stack of solutions, you need to critique each solution and decide which ones have best chance of achieving the long-term goal.
• in afternoon, take winning scenes from the sketches and weave them int oa storyboard: a step by step plan for the prototype

DAY 4

• "fake it" - realistic facade is all you need to test something with customers, so just make a prototype of it.

DAY 5

• with the prototype, interview customers and learn by watching them react to your prototype.
• At the end of the day, you’ll know how far you have to go, and you’ll know just what to do next.