How 3 Design Sprints Transformed a Company and Sparked a Creative Revolution
Product
Skills
Miro, Figma, Maze
My Role
Design Lead
Timeline
November 2022
Design sprint faciliator and execution of strategy after design sprints. My goal was to fuel innovation and shape the product's direction with the user at the center of the outcome.
How do you Transform a Feature-Driven Company into a Growth-Oriented Powerhouse: A Design Thinking Challenge
Despite having valuable JBTD (Jobs to Be Done) research, the company struggled to translate these insights into tangible product improvements. Main problems were:
Feature-driven development instead of user-centered design
Difficulty in prioritizing user needs over feature requests
Lack of a systematic approach to innovation
Risk of losing market share to more user-focused competitors
To address these challenges, the company needed a method to rapidly innovate, validate ideas, and implement user-centered solutions that would drive double-digit growth and improve overall customer satisfaction.
Finding the right solution
With the JBTD research concluded, key areas of pain are highlighted to the team based on customer effort scores.
With Product's help, they identified and grouped JTBD steps into three key projects to focus on, aiming to improve the current experience.
This is where I stepped up and used my experience as a consultant. I suggested we run three ambitious sprints to get market more quickly. I knew that if we ran 3 sprints we could quickly unite the team, have an MVP to show and validate an idea which we could guide us to a better tool to get the job done. As one of the few team members who had facilitated a design sprint, I partnered up with a product manager who had also had experience running these. She use to work for IBM as a consultant so she was very use to the process and could help me run these more effectively.
Using tools I developed as a consultant, I quickly helped the team plan a virtual sprint.
As Covid-19 was ongoing, I had initially designed this methodology for in-person sessions. However, I quickly pivoted to effectively plan it remotely without overwhelming participants with Zoom meetings.
This resulted in a Trello board where we could prioritize activities, deciding which ones to focus on more and which ones participants could complete before, during, and after the sprint.
Resulting in 75% faster execution of design sprint planning.
What used to take me a full day (8 hours of work) to plan a sprint, we were able to accomplish in 2 hours by keeping the format flexible to achieve better results.
Now that we had the right project and plan, it was time to find our participants.
As with most startups, time was always against us. With busy schedules and ongoing projects, we were given a 3-week timeline to complete all the sprints.
Using the trello board and Miro we quickly invited a team that would help us get to an initial solution. At the time we decided that one product person would be the decider on what the outcome of the sprint would be.
Every sprint began with a 20-minute "Ask The Experts" or "Expert + How Might We (HMW)" session. I would interview an expert, and everyone would write HMW statements during the interview.
Below is a concise summary of each sprint and its outcomes:
Week 1 Sprint - Project Pulse
Challenge:
Access insights to gain a holistic picture of the success of customers, identify friction points and better align training programs to their needs.
Problems to solve:
Help customers improve the education by providing valuable insights
The issue we have today we need to Identify the signals we can use in and our of our platform to provide insight
With so many data points that we already have lets identify a MVP
Time Frame:
Sprint Outcome:
30 minute interview with 1 experts that resulted in
94 HWM ( How might we statements )
4 Key Themes with a group vote on 2 key themes to work on.
1 short and 1 long term goal
15 Relevant examples of Competitors/non competitors solving this relevant problem (AKA lightning Demos)
1 Map representing a user’s flow through the product/service.
Placing the 94 HMW on the map to see where to focus.
5 different wireframes/ Ideas by sprint participants.
Dot Voting on the best ideas on the wireframes
Overall vote on the best Solution Idea.
Another Sprint was necessary to find an expert on reporting for the education. We had to pivot on initial idea for guidance on solving the right problem.
Week 2 Sprint - Project Merlin
Challenge:
Create customer training in the optimal format easily and instantly through templates and guided flows.
Problems to solve:
Help customers identify the optimal format to deliver the learning experience
Offer guidance and best practices in the authoring flow
Enable users to build content more easily and quickly in our platform
Time Frame:
Sprint Outcomes:
40 minute interview with 2 experts that resulted in
118 HWM ( How might we statements )
6 Key Themes with a group vote on 2 key themes to work on.
1 long term goal
33 Relevant examples of Competitors/non competitors solving this relevant problem (AKA lightning Demos)
1 Map representing a user’s flow through the product/service.
Placing the 118 HMW on the map to see where to focus.
8 different wireframes/ Ideas by sprint participants. 1 from the CEO.
Dot Voting on the best ideas on the wireframes
Overall vote on the best Solution Idea.
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