Preparation is crucial for the success of the Virtual Design Sprint. It sets the stage for fast and focused collaboration and avoids time wasting. On the week before the Sprint, I made a Craigslist post inviting others to participate by filling out a Google form. We got about 211 responses. The goal was to find a user as a subject matter expert to be a part of the Design Sprint. I interviewed a total of 10 people in our demographic: 5 prototype testers were needed and 2 to be in the Design Sprint as a Subject Matter Experts. One SME as a coach and the other as a user.
Each testing participant was given a $25 Amazon gift card and $100 was given to the Design Sprint participants. I also used Miro to set up the Sprint board.
As the facilitator and holder of the AJ&Smart Design Sprint certificate, I decided to follow the Design Sprint 2.0 by AJ&Smart. The team needed to be conscientious of the experts time and reducing the Sprint to four days. I decided that we would require experts for just two days for the workshop. Tuesday's agenda would be split into two halves that would start on day one but continue on day two.
On day one, I start in providing an example of what I believe the map should be then the team made modifications to it throughout the workshops. Since everything was virtual, the map is probably the most confusing part for the team in the entire workshop. The team members looked at the map as a journey rather than a concise reminder of how to reach a goal. Due to time constraints we needed to proceed without completely fixing the map but the team had an idea of where to go. The team agreed that clients needed a way to connect with coaches instantly but also added a few ideas to improve that experience.
In the Lightning Demo exercise, after the expert interviews we found many examples on the web that would help solve our 2 year goal.
As noted before, Tuesday and Wednesday in the Design Sprint were combined to one day to reduce the time with the experts since they had a limited schedule. The first set of sketching exercises are meant to warm up and the sketches were not shared with the group.
Part 4 of 4 was to create a Solution Concept. Each member took the time to craft their solutions and this was presented to the group. Below is an example of my Solution Concept, it (sometimes called a "four-step sketch") is a structured, individual exercise where each team member creates a detailed, hand-drawn storyboard for a specific part of the user experience—usually 3–8 panels.
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