Distributed design sprints
How can we make them work?
Designs Sprints are awesome. At Nordnet, we run them to kick off almost every new product we create.
When we need to bring an idea to life, we Sprint. Our Head of Product Design, Marcus Castenfors has already talked about how we run co-located Sprints in a great article called Design is a team sport. If you aren’t already familiar with how Sprints work, or need a refresher I highly recommend popping the kettle on and reading that first. Actually, no, I’ll pop the kettle on and take five whilst you catch up.
As a remote worker, I have faced many challenges when trying to make Sprints run smoothly in a distributed team.
Now I’d like to share some tips, tricks, and handy tools for successful Sprinting no matter where your team are.
Before we dive in, let’s take a look at the Nordnet Design Sprint structure. It differs slightly from the Google Ventures version.
Distributed design sprint essentials
Alongside the tools and setup suggested below, it goes without saying that it is essential everyone in the sprint is aware of the distributed setup and process. That they have access to all team accounts such as Dropbox, Trello, and meeting software. (obviously other services are available).
The toolkit
- Smartphone / scanner — For transfering paper sketches onto your computer and even uploading directly to the Trello board or Dropbox.
- Webcam and mic — For communicating with the team!
- Pen & paper — For sketching ideas and prototypes. Also useful for making notes.
- Trello — For organising the sprint.
- Google Hangouts / PukkaTeam / Meeting software — For communicating, presenting ideas, and generally hanging out with the team during the week.
- Dropbox — To host files and share them to the team.
The Trello board
Monday
Analytics, research, and insights.
Google Hangouts or PukkaTeam are your best friend today. We follow the same structure as a regular Sprint, so today is full of Lightning Talks and Stakeholder interviews.
Speakers can use Google Hangouts to present to the group, or screen share documents. Trello can then be used to upload anything they wish to make available for the group to download. Which might include research findings, or documents outlining business goals.
Everyone is encouraged to make notes and try to find patterns. We can then add observations to Trello cards, useful for grouping insights.
We use these to create Job Stories in another list, easy to refer back to later in the week once we start to prototype.
Tuesday
Ideas, sketching, and prioritising.
Today we let the creativity flow. We use crazy 8’s and story boards to generate ideas and then explore them in more detail.
Tuesday is the most challenging in a distributed design sprint. So I’ll go into a little more detail than before.
Sketching is normally time limited. So it’s best if the Sprint Master takes the lead here and “Presents” to the team over Google Hangouts. When everyone is ready to begin, they can then set the timer as normal and the team is free to sketch away as if it were a regular sprint.
Once complete the team can use smartphones or scanners to copy and upload their designs to the Trello board. They then assign themselves to their card so the team know who owns an idea.
We do two rounds of this to get the creative juices flowing freely. Then take a look at our own ideas and each choose two to develop further into storyboards. These storyboards are then uploaded to Trello and presented to the team.
As with the crazy 8’s, each storyboard card on Trello is assigned to its creator. Then using Hangouts each member of the group can present their idea and talk through what they have designed.
Once everyone has spoken we vote on the best ones to prototype in order to meet our job stories (or business goals etc… ) from yesterday.
Voting is done by each member of the team also assigning themselves to the storyboard card they wish to vote on. Three votes each.
It also helps if there is a brief overview in the description to help jog memories when it comes to casting a vote.
Wednesday & Thursday
The sprint finish! Time to prototype.
And in the blink of an eye we arrive at the mid-week design push! Our designers divide and conquer the workload using Sketch and Invision to create rapid prototypes.
During these intense two days we chat regularly on HipChat or Hangouts, discuss ideas, and share our Sketch App files on Dropbox.
Over-communication is key during this time. It’s great to know exactly who is working on what feature. What’s already been done, and what still needs doing, etc…
Before the end of Wednesday someone normally takes the lead in creating an Invision project for the prototype and at the end of each day (at least!) we all check in with the design researchers who will conduct the usability tests on Friday and make sure our visions are aligned.
Friday
User testing.
There are so many ways to test prototypes I won’t go through them all. At Nordnet we try to record all of our sessions (remote or otherwise) and a service like https://www.usertesting.com/ is very handy for distributed teams. You can get creative though, a simple Hangouts session will do fine!
It’s important that you can see the reactions of your users to the prototype. And have a way to document and review the results.
Above all though, it’s finding what works for your team.
What we’ve learned
With a little planning distributed design sprints can run perfectly smoothly. As always with our industry, the process I’ve described is constantly evolving. It can, and will be improved! (Just wait until VR really takes off!).
We would love to hear about how other teams run Distributed/Remote design sprints, and some of the tips-and-tricks they use to ensure they have a successful week designing.
Cheers for reading & happy sprinting.
The Nordnet Design Studio
