It’s no secret that sprints have radically changed the way we work with our clients. This is the same for many teams the world over too, and the beauty of the design sprint in particular is the flexibility to be able to make it your own. Our ‘Kyan flavour’ isn’t too far away from Jake Knapp’s original, but just enough to make it work for us.
Design sprint and problem framing workshops have been part of our events calendar for almost two years now, and we’ve been able to easily adapt them to a new online setting. In fact, they’re now easier than ever to attend, taking just an hour out of your day from the comfort of your own home or office. So what’s it all about and why should you attend?
‘Problem Framing’ – our secret weapon
Going into a design sprint can be a little daunting. What do you focus on? What’s the problem at large? How do you ensure everyone in the sprint is on the same page? We’ve got that covered.
‘Problem framing’ is our pre-sprint recipe for success, which we developed through experience. With one particular project, we encountered scope creep, and it quickly became clear that the idea we were pursuing perhaps wasn’t market-ready, nor was it solving a real user problem. If we’d known this before the sprint, we could have saved time and money. You know what they say – fail fast.
The framing process allows us to validate whether a real problem even exists in the first place. By doing this, we can define it via a kind of ‘root cause analysis’. Put simply, you’re ensuring you put your energy and resources into solving the right thing.
Whilst a design sprint is typically a week long process, a problem framing session can be done in just one day. So it’s easy to bring in stakeholders whose free time may be scarce, such as CEOs, department heads and so on. Once complete, you can take your ‘problem statement’ into the sprint for an easier ride.
So what about design sprints? What are they?
A design sprint is a five-day group collaboration with the ultimate goal of validating a digital product. That validation could be a thumbs up, or a thumbs down – and that’s okay. Essentially, you are trying to find out if your idea is market viable.
During the process, you will only include key stakeholders and you’ll ensure they cover the right business areas. Part of the sprint is design and testing, which means by day five, you’ll have a good idea of whether to move into a production sprint, or head back to the drawing board.
We’ve really enjoyed sharing the design sprint process with our clients—including Deloitte, DWF, Zurich, and some really exciting startups—not to mention the energy and productivity it’s brought to projects.
If you’re new to this, don’t worry.
We kick off every workshop as if it’s your first, explaining the what, why and how of design sprints. We explain the concepts of rapid prototyping, MVPs (minimum viable products) and the kind of people you should be including in your sprints. We’ll show you the various steps of the sprint, such as ‘how might we’s’, ‘lightning demos’ and ‘solution sketches’, we’ll introduce you to online collaboration tools, and we’ll also leave plenty of time for questions and answers.
A perfect match
We wouldn’t run one session without the other, and the same can be said for our workshops too. If you’re considering attending our Design Sprints Workshop, we recommend that you come along to our Problem Framing Workshop as well. The learnings you take from each will complement one another, and will arm you with all you need to know to run problem framing and design sprint sessions in your startup, agency or business.
These sessions are via Zoom with our Head of Product Strategy, Harry Ford. They’re an hour each, and the recordings will be made available to attendees afterwards. We’d love to see you there!
Problem Framing Online Workshop, Thursday 22nd October, 11am
Design Sprints Online Workshop, Thursday 26th November, 11am
We are Kyan, a technology agency powered by people.
