Tips for a Designer in a Design Sprint

My first experience with a Design Sprint was very confusing. I didn’t know exactly what to expect and how my role as the designer would be in a sprint. It was challenging at the beginning to understand the expected outcomes of each phase and exercise and how I could make the most impact on the sprint’s success.

The biggest challenge of the sprint, as a designer, was to work in a team with people that I never collaborated with and create interactive high fidelity prototypes in 1 day.

For the last 2 years, I’ve been part of many Design Sprints with different teams and industries and I’ve learned a lot from each experience. With each sprint, I tried to improve my abilities to adapt to new things, collaborate better, as well as manage and keep track of time.

In this article, I’ll cover the most important things you need to know about the role of a designer in a Design Sprint. I’ll share some insights and tips to try and ensure you become a sought-after designer for all of your company’s upcoming sprints, including:

• How to prepare before for the sprint
• The designer touchpoints in the process
• Storyboard tips
• Prototyping tips

Preparing before for the sprint

From my experience design sprints can be quite intense. You’re oftentimes in a room full of people you don’t know or don’t usually interact with, and work together to solve a problem in 5 days or less. When the sprint starts there is no time to waste. You need to contribute as much as you can, so preparing ahead is always a good idea.

If you’ve never been in a sprint before, the first thing that you should do is to get familiar with the process. There are countless resources online, I suggest you start with the Sprint book, installing Duco, and reading What happens before a design sprint.

As the designer, there are some important touch points in the process where your input is needed: User Journey Map, Lightning Demos, the Storyboard, and the Prototype. Make sure you review the agenda and the structure of the sprint with the facilitator and clarify how you’ll collaborate together.

The first day of the sprint includes the understanding phase. A lot of information will be shared and discussed. What I suggest is to try to get familiar with the challenge your team is attempting to solve within your design sprint, before starting the sprint. It will be easier to digest the information and to contribute with input and questions.

You are in the Sprint, now what?

In my opinion, Monday is the most difficult day of the sprint. Don’t worry if you feel confused and overwhelmed. To survive it, try to stay focused, take notes from every discussion and ask clarifying questions when needed.

The User Journey Map is the most important exercise of the day, depending on the challenge, the most valuable contribution is brought by the stakeholders or the sprint team members who are most familiar with the subject.

As the designer, you can use your skills and help make this process go smoother:

• Help the facilitator while they coordinate the discussion by creating the map on the whiteboard and capture what is being discussed
• Make sure the map has no gaps and has a cohesive flow
• Make sure the map doesn’t have too many steps or is too generic

The map will help the team get a clear overview of all the people involved in the process and what steps they take in their current experience until their goal is met.

Don’t be afraid to draw and redraw the map as the discussion unfolds, just make sure you have a clear map at the end of the day as it will serve as a guide for the rest of the sprint. Write the steps on Post-its. It will be easier and faster to reposition them.

Being the “Artist”

The second day of the sprint is my favorite day, the day where every designer should feel comfortable because it’s all about creativity and ideation.

The day starts with inspiration: Lightning Demos. In this exercise, everybody gathers inspiration and shares their findings with the group while the “Artist” captures everything on the whiteboard.

Usually, the designer in the room has the role of the “Artist”. The secret behind this process is improvisation. The demos are very short and sometimes there are a lot of ideas per person, 1 to 4 ideas in 3 minutes, so you have to come up with some visuals very fast.

To make things easier I usually prepare the whiteboard before the exercise starts and create around 20 empty squares with enough space to add a title and a note.

Capturing ideas from “Lightning Demos”

Tips for speeding things up:

• Prepare ahead and do some timeboxed sketching exercises
• Don’t over design it, use geometric elements and standard symbols
• If the ideas are repeating themselves, don’t draw them again, just add a heart next to the already sketched one
• If you get stuck, write down the title and source and go to the next one, you can do it at the end while the next presenter is preparing
• If there is something you don’t understand don’t be afraid to simply ask: ‘How do I capture this?’ The presenter and the facilitator will both help out with ideas.

The sketches will serve as inspiration for the next step when everybody comes up with solutions.

Time to get creative

After the inspiration session ends it’s time to draw your solution. The beauty of the sprint is that by the end of the day there will be 5+ different solutions.

I noticed that most of the time people tend to remain safe or stay with familiar things, especially if the members of the team are not used to be part of ideation processes. My advice here for all designers is to always embrace wild ideas and be creative.

The pressure is high, so you might feel tempted to prepare a solution or even a prototype before the sprint. I advise against this since this can limit your creativity or get stuck on your idea instead of focusing on the real problem discovered in the sprint.

The entire team is responsible for creating the final solution, the pressure it’s not on you as an individual, so don’t worry if your solution isn’t voted. In a sprint team, we all contribute with ideas and inspiration that lead to the final solution.

Keep in mind that you won’t have the opportunity to pitch your own solution, so it needs to be detailed and self-explanatory:

• Use real language for messages instead of placeholders
• Help the viewer by naming your steps
• Use arrows and sticky notes where more clarity is needed

Art Museum

Tips for creating a clear story

After the final solution(s), is voted it’s time to create the foundation for the prototype and create a storyboard. A storyboard helps you visualize the entire flow from start to finish and connect everything into one cohesive story.

It’s a very difficult step in the process and lot of things could go wrong and make you end up with a disruptive flow or lose focus from what you really want to test with the user.

Here are some tips to help you and the team create a valuable storyboard:

Do’s:

• Create context for your customer’s first interaction with the product or service
• Cover all the steps of the story.
• Fill in the gaps with screens from other solutions
• Leave no room for interpretation, use notes to describe the screens and message
• Present the whole story to the team out loud to spot the missing links

Don’ts:

• Create new solutions on the spot
• Engage in endless discussions
• Create steps that are irrelevant for what you want to test
• Forget the purpose of your prototype and what is it helping you find out
• Lose time discussing details that can be covered in prototyping day

Think about what you want to learn from the users, and create scenarios to get the answers needed. List out the assumptions to be tested with the user to help you keep focus during the exercise.

Keep in mind that the entire storyboard needs to be implemented the next day, so try to avoid creating too many screens. I usually try to stick to around 10 screens, especially if I’m the only one designer in the sprint.

Building an Effective Prototype

Depending on the challenge of the sprint, a prototype can take various forms. The most important thing is that people can interact with it in a natural way.

What makes an effective high fidelity prototype?

• Build with the user in mind
• Build just enough to learn, not more
• It must appear real
• Allow the user to complete his mission

Building the prototype

Staying on track

The prototyping phase gets very exhausting. All team members will contribute while tackling different roles in a very short amount of time.

Things can get tricky as the time flies and people can easily get stuck, become frustrated, and miss finishing in time. The secret to keeping everything under control is to make a plan at the beginning of the day. Work with the facilitator to give tasks to each member of the team and write everything on the whiteboard.

What works for me is to set some milestones during the day and try to be aware of the time spent. For example have the most important screens ready by lunch and the rest around 2:30 — when we have a full review with the entire team. After implementing the feedback, have a trial run to make sure everything goes smoothly.

The prototype needs to look real for the user in order to have genuine, valuable feedback. Try to make it high fidelity from the start, building just enough to learn, while using placeholders wherever possible. Make sure the content is consistent throughout the whole story.

It’s very difficult to design full speed and be aware of the time and others working with you, so what I suggest is to align with the facilitator — they should be making sure everything goes according to plan and provide help and guidance where needed.

Here are some tips to help you build your prototype faster, and collaborate better:

Do’s:

• Prepare some UI kits and use existing components and placeholders
• Create a project folder and share it with everyone at the start of the day
• Establish a channel of communication and feedback for everyone; e.g. Slack
• Estimate and manage your own time; use a time timer to keep track
• State your needs! Ask for feedback and assets whenever you need them to avoid getting stuck
• Update as you go to make everything available to the team
• Take small breaks after finishing big chunks of work to save your energy
• Ask for help if you feel overwhelmed

Don’ts:

• Use new tools that you haven’t tested before/are unfamiliar with
• Create new solutions on the spot
• Spend too much time on small, irrelevant details
• Leave all the complex/difficult parts at the end

Final Thoughts

In a Design Sprint, everything is fast paced and time-boxed, so it’s very important to be aware of your capabilities and understand the exercises and the expected outcome of each phase.

By the end of the sprint, the biggest responsibility for the designer is building an effective prototype that gets tested with the end users.

It all comes down to how good you prepare ahead, how you collaborate with the team and other designers, how you estimate and manage your time.

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