Design Sprints with Sean Van Tyne on Portofino Media

I joined host, Armond Merhabian, and co-host, Daniel Spencer, to discuss how Design Sprints can accelerate Product discovery and development.

We discussed how Design Sprints take the five stages of Design Thinking and do them in five days. This is not done in the Development phase, but earlier in the Portfolio phase, to determine if you want to even invest into an idea or in the Portfolio phase to help define the requirement.

Start with putting together a multi-disciplinary team based on the problem that needs to be solve. This may include a Product Owner, Engineer, UX Researcher and Designer and other subject matter experts that understand the market, business or customer needs.

Day One – understand the problem you are trying to solve – get everyone on the same page. Having a good facilitator can make or break the whole process.

Day Two – sketch possible solutions – get everyone involved. It is revolutionary to see non-designers express their ideas and evolutionary for the organizations to get everyone involved in Design Thinking

Day Three – determine the final design to test – the “hypothesis” or “experiment.” A Design Sprint is great to solving small problems – like a feature – but not for larger issues like determining a strategy or objectives. That is where you would want to a fuller Design Thinking exercise.

Day Four – build out the high-level prototype for testing. This should be an iterative process, too, that involves all the key stakeholders all along the way.

Day Five – test your prototype with real live target customers! Get the right people in your test that match your persona that you decided on Day One. Test your test script and prototype before testing it with your target to ensure that the test questions are make sense that the prototype works the way it needs to.

The test results may reveal that it is feasible – you can make it – but not viable – your target audience doesn’t want it. This is good to know early in your product lifecycle so you don’t waste time and resources defining, developing and delivering something your customers don’t want. You may realize that is a great idea but belongs in another solution in your portfolio or that is much bigger effort – more than just a feature – it may be a whole new module. And that is exactly why we do Design Sprints…