Crafting a Powerful, Cross-Functional Design Sprint

Last week, I engaged in a powerful design sprint for the no-code startup I work at,? Unqork . A design sprint is an incredible tool to help organizations solve problems through a few days of rapid brainstorming, sketching, and prototyping.

Our company is remote-first, but we came together in-person for this 3-day design sprint. We had four sprint teams, of 5–6 individuals each, assigned to different problem areas in the platform. We started off by reading through previous research to better understand the problem that we were solving for. My fantastic fellow designer,? Kat Stec , put together detailed charts on our users’ journeys & pain points, based on earlier workshop sessions.

The main focus of this sprint was to sketch, decide, and prototype our ideas for a 5-year vision of the Unqork platform IDE?(integrated development environment). Some of our activities included crazy-8 brainstorming, dot voting & heat-mapping on top concepts, storyboarding, and prototyping*. At the end of the sprint, each team delivered a prototype based on the “How Might We” questions they chose to tackle.

I thoroughly enjoyed our sprint, and found it to be such an exciting, collaborative environment. It was so impactful that I found myself thinking about it after the event and wanting to write about it (and here I am!). I broke down my takeaways into 4 key factors that made this design sprint so worthwhile.

1. Sprint teams had a diverse mix of product designers, engineers, product managers, and user researchers from across the platform teams.

We could have easily done a design sprint with solely designers, but I am?so?thankful we did not! It was incredibly important to hear from people with different backgrounds, especially when it came to a complex, technical product like Unqork’s no-code software development platform. Each person brought a unique perspective of our user and platform, due to their role, team, and personal experiences. As a result, the discussions were much more thought-provoking and holistic, than if it only included designers.

Another outcome of this diverse group was the opportunity for non-designers to become aware of the design process! This sprint brought more transparency into the work product designers do. Hopefully, the product managers and engineers can flex their newfound design thinking skills going forward.

2. We had an enthusiastic facilitator, who set expectations and smoothly guided the teams through the design process.

Our design sprint was facilitated by a member of our Design Operations team,? Mike Shelton . He did an excellent job of keeping us energized and engaged, while teaching the various elements of the design process. When we started off the sprint with a rock paper scissors tournament, I knew we were in for a fun week! Breaking the work with enjoyable games, demonstrations, and time to socialize, truly kept us motivated and excited.

Additionally, Mike did a great job of outlining expectations at the beginning of the sprint. This helped mentally prepare us, and give us context on what we were doing. He also set some rules, like “Critique the idea, not the person,” which helped align us.

3. Individual contributors (ICs) were intentionally chosen for this sprint.

I remember wondering why higher-level directors were not included in this sprint, as they might have more knowledge on our platform. After this sprint, I could totally understand why.

For an IC-level engineer, it’s easy to feel a disconnect from the product that they are working on if they are constantly bogged down by implementation details. Including employees at the ground-level built camaraderie and enthusiasm for the platform and its future. People are much more motivated if they have a say in what they’re building. Directors generally have more of a voice in the product vision, so it was nice to be able to bring in that fresh perspective of the ICs. There was also no power imbalance, or individuals with a fleshed out plan for the platform already (which directors might have).

4. We were a part of collaborative sprint teams?in-person.

In this world of Zoom fatigue, working collaboratively in-person was an incredible experience. You get to see more of a person’s full self in real life, rather than their more professional, work-focused, virtual self. For strong collaboration & ideation without judgment, psychological safety is very important. It was much easier to foster that sense of psychological safety, and build stronger bonds between individuals,?in-person.

We spent time sketching on paper and moving around ideas on sticky notes as well. By using physical methods of design, we were not limited by the size of our laptop screens, but were rather immersed in a 3D space that we could use in any way we desired. When it comes to design, it’s so easy to skip right to higher fidelity designs when working on your laptop (I’m guilty of this!). Paper and pencil encourages rougher ideas, because it can never be pixel perfect — and we want rough ideas while divergent thinking. I was reminded of my dependency on digital tools, when I felt uncomfortable with my crooked straight lines and messy handwriting.

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The next step of testing the prototypes is underway, but I can already feel the immediate impact this design sprint has made. It was such an empowering way to contribute to Unqork’s future. I hope that we continue to invest resources towards in-person design sprints, and that other organizations follow too.

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*Check out?Google’s Design Sprints Methodology?to learn more about specific design sprint methods.

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