Learn to develop better products using the Design Sprint — Day 2: Decision-Making

This article is the second part of our series on how to learn to develop better products using the Design Sprint.

A design sprint is a framework for solving problems, validating product ideas and building better products, services and business strategies. It was developed by Google Ventures and is used by everyone from small startups to Fortune 500 companies.

The design sprint answers to some questions such as:

• What problem does this product look to solve? Why does this problem matter?

• Who will benefit from solving this problem? (Think about what their current state of mind might be like.)

• What do they need to know or do because of this problem? (What steps can they take in order to move forward with their lives?)

If you're not yet familiar with this approach or want to better understand what we're talking about, we recommend reading Part 1 first, where we explain what a Design Sprint is and go into detail about what happens on the first day.

Now, on the second day of a design sprint is a time for your team to synthesize what they have learned, clarify any unanswered questions, and show their ideas. The goal of the day 2 it’s to decide which is going to be the final solution while avoiding unneeded discussions. 

Before coming into the Design Sprint room on day two, make sure your team has done their homework. (We finished day one with the Individual Sketches).

On the Miro board in the work area each member were working on, there should be all of their ideas and features ready to be discussed. Since everyone will see the answers to the first activity, these solutions should be clear and anonymous.

The final result should resemble this:

We start with Exhibition and Heatmaps

Its purpose is to choose the most important ideas of the previously outlined solutions. The process it’s really simple: 

Each member reviews and comprehends all the ideas that were elaborated, remarking interesting ideas using stickers as they go. As they do so, each member uses post-its with questions to indicate those parts of the flow that are still unclear.

At the end of the process, the team must have: all the proposed ideas, all the notes waiting for clarification and a heatmap with the stickers of the most interesting parts of each idea.

You should also evaluate the potential of each idea by asking two questions:

1. Does this idea address our goal?

2. Is this idea feasible?

   
   

If you don’t feel confident in either answer, then it might not be worth pursuing further.

It's time to begin the presentation and Voting

The facilitator presents each idea using the post-its that support said ideas, paying special attention to those zones with higher number of stickers. If there’s any question, the facilitator reads it and tries to answer it. If the facilitator is uncapable of answering it, other members can do it. All ideas must be presented, and all questions must be answered.

To vote, every member (excluding the decider) must take a post-it explaining their decision with their initials and put them on the ideas they support.

All team members must place their votes on the board once they are ready or time runs out. Every member presents their votes and explanation (a maximum of 2 minutes are given to each member).

The decider takes 5 minutes to analyze the ideas and votes. At the end, the decider must put a sticker on the idea or part of an idea that will be used as part of the prototype, or a prototype if it’s a complete idea.  

The end outcome ought to like this:

Once you've narrowed down your list of possible solutions, it's time to put them into action.

User Test Flow

The user test flow is the process of how a user interacts with your product. It's a diagram that shows all the steps of this interaction. By analyzing how people will use your product over time, you can determine what works best in terms of functionality as well as conversion rates.

For example, if you were designing an alarm clock app, a user might set their alarm in the morning and then turn off their light at night before going to bed. These steps would be shown in your User's Test Flow diagram as two separate actions that happen sequentially within two different screens of your application. 

We start this activity by making each member take a series of post-its and write the names of screens that must pop up in order to accomplish the user experience map and decider’s votes. 

Then, the decider has 5 minutes to choose the flow to outline to make the story boarding process.

Storyboard

On this day, we'll finish working on our storyboard. 

Storyboarding is the process of creating a visual representation of the decider’s chosen flow. It gives everyone on the team an idea of what will happen when someone uses your product for the first time. Remember, this is not just a project for you to work on by yourself—it's a team effort! We all need to be open-minded and considerate about changes or additions that others propose during their time speaking up about each screen.

Everyone gets a chance to discuss their problems and proposed solutions before you move on to changes/additions for the next screen, etc. For example: —“Maybe we could make this icon bigger.” Or —“This text is too small to read from afar, so let's move it closer to the object it describes.” However, the facilitator it’s in charge to avoid unproductive discussions. 

Once everyone has had an opportunity to share their thoughts, discuss with your team if there are any further changes or additions necessary to the storyboard. The goal on day 2 is to create something we can all agree on before moving forward on day 3 with prototyping.

The story boarding process is as follows: 

And by finishing this activity, we are done for day 2.

In conclusion:

Day 2 of a Design Sprint is about deciding with clarity and focus which solution will be turned into a prototype.

• Synthesize learnings: Review all the information from the previous day and gain a solid understanding of the problem to solve.

• Showcase and evaluate ideas: Analyze all the proposals, ask key questions, and highlight the most promising parts.

• Vote with intention: Collectively choose the best ideas, with active participation from all team members.

• Decide on the way forward: The decider selects one or more ideas to build the prototype flow.

• Create the storyboard: Clearly outline the user experience step by step to guide the prototyping phase.

We hope this article has helped you understand how strategic decisions are made on the second day of a Design Sprint, and how this prepares the team to start building a real, testable solution.

The next step

The next step in the process involves testing prototypes with real users, who will give you valuable insights about what works for them and what doesn't. In order to do this effectively, however, we first need some user interface (UI) mockups from which they can interact with our designs. This is where prototyping comes into play. 

Prototyping comes on day 3 and 4 of the design sprint. We’ll discuss the process in part 3 of this Design Sprint Series. Stay tuned! 

If you have any questions about how we use design sprints at Novateva or want more information on how they work, please don’t hesitate to reach out!

Novateva is a software development agency. Our main focus is to combine cleverness and creativity in order to turn our clients’ needs into solutions and their ideas into technological products. 

Follow us on Social Media: Instagram and LinkedIn.