Getting from stuck to prototype with a Design Sprint

Today we’re asking a really big question: How do you get from stuck to prototype with a Design Sprint?

The short answer: five days of dedication and collaboration.

The not-so-short answer? Let’s walk through it with an example.

Imagine your team is stuck. You’ve been spinning on a problem for a long time, you’ve done a lot of research and even have some sound insights, but you still don’t have a concrete example of what it is you want to make.

This was the exact scenario my is client — a Fortune-100 retailer — found themselves in. When we kicked off the project they had been spinning around a problem space for more than a year, worked with other agencies, invested in tons of research, but they just couldn’t make progress.

The company wanted to invent a brand new offering to solve a customer problem but they weren’t sure which problem to focus on, or what to offer. With many potential problems to solve and extensive research under their belts, they still couldn’t move forward to define anything concrete.

To get them unstuck, a few critical steps were implemented:

1. Get Clarity.

The first order of business was to help the group clearly define a problem statement to focus on. Without direction, there’s no traction. We assembled a cross-functional team of strategists and designers to help define our problem statement using the following formula. In this case, the customer was in their home and struggling with a broken appliance.

2. Seek Alignment.

After we defined the problem statement, it was shared with key internal stakeholders. This ensures buy-in and alignment, and that the team has the autonomy needed to move forward. To do this seamlessly we had stakeholders from outside of the core team visit during a scheduled reviewer checkpoint to take a look at the problem we decided to focus on and agree on the direction. During these reviewer checkpoints I like to facilitate a quick dialogue to get their feedback using “I like…” / “I wish…” / “I wonder…” statements to help inform how we move forward.

3. Go Sprint!

Once we had the green light, the team hunkered down to complete the Design Sprint. We mapped out the customer journey (what are they experiencing today when they are experiencing this problem?), and agreed on which moment we would focus on when defining our potential solutions. As an extra step, I also built in a couple of rounds of idea generation and heat mapping, which can be useful if the team is working on a new solution and has many different ideas that they want to consider. After we had a sense for the general direction, the team moved into sketching and, finally, testing the prototype on real people to get feedback from potential customers and members of the organization. During the Sprint, we brought the research into the room, spent time coming up with potential solutions, and prototyped a clear vision for the experience they wanted to deliver to the customer. The Design Sprint gave us the clarity needed to finally move the team forward.

Every client I work with has a unique problem statement, but the most remarkable part about facilitating a Design Sprint is the ability to move from stuck to prototype in a handful of days regardless of the specifics, team politics, or challenges.