Clients often come to us with ideas they want us to build. Of course, we can do that, but the challenge is that they need to figure out where to start, the most important features to build, or how the product should function. Rather than simply taking on the client and billing countless hours, we prefer to see the ideas become products, and to do that, we have created an internal method that ensures a successful launch. It begins with our MVP Design Sprints.
This is the second of five articles on our process of planning an MVP Product Launch. At R&Y, we run our Design Sprints before building the software because they clarify the needs and goals of a new product idea and validate (or invalidate) our theories. The designs created and the information gathered describe the initial phases of development. This will inform our engineers of the project's goals, scope, and priorities. The result of an MVP Design Sprint is a prioritized roadmap based on user flows, testing, and business needs.
A design sprint at R&Y Labs is typically a week-long process (give or take) for rapidly solving big challenges, creating new products, or improving existing ones. It compresses potential months of work into a few action-packed days. The first two days of our sprint are spent with the client and their team, nailing down the biggest challenges we need to address and ideating on potential solutions.
This article will cover the steps we take on day one to devise viable solutions to the problem we’re trying to solve.
The first day of our sprint has two objectives
Expert Interviews + “How Might We” Statements
We start the day with what we call the “expert interview.” The “expert” might be the business owner or someone with the most involvement in the main topic of the sprint. The expert interview involves interviewing the “expert” on the subject. The sprint facilitator will ask the expert questions about the business, its current state, and the challenges they’re dealing with.
During the expert interview, the other participants are listening. As they hear different problems, they are tasked with writing “How might we…” (HMW) statements where they take the challenges and reframe them into thoughtful questions.
It may come out that the business is struggling with bad reviews on Yelp; this is the problem that the expert is stating. The other participants will then take that problem and transform it into a statement that encourages solutions — an “HMW” statement.
For example, a problem statement would be, “We keep getting poor reviews on Yelp.” An HMW statement could be, “How might we make our customers feel heard… how might we expand the ways our customers can contact us to resolve issues before going to review sites?” These HMW statements are then collected and organized by category. Everyone then votes on the HMW statements they feel to be the most impactful to focus on.
Everyone has two votes, while the “decider” of the group gets four votes. The number of votes can change based on the group, but the “decider” always has more votes. The voting process is mostly the same for all the exercises we do throughout the day.
Long Term Goal
Now that we’ve identified the key challenges, we focus on the two-year goals. This is about your ideal solution and imagining where you’d like to be in a few years. For example, a dream outcome could be “In two years, we’d like 99% of all orders placed to receive positive feedback”.
“Can We” Sprint Questions
By now, we’ve identified and aligned our team on our biggest challenges and two-year goal, but the real question remains, “Can we deliver on this?” This step can look pessimistic, but that’s exactly the point. This is where we look at our needs through the critical lens of feasibility.
The goal is to ask tough questions and look at our needs honestly. We’ll use these questions during the ideation and testing phase and attempt to answer them via user tests.
We now have HMW statements, long-term goals, and “can we” or Sprint questions.
Mapping
We’ll then map out the current state of the system. The mapping process provides a clear grasp of how & where challenges arise. Collectively we’ll go through the high-level journey of the current state with a clear beginning and end.
Once we map this process out, we’re in a much better position to produce a mass of solutions during the second half of the day.
The facilitator then takes the most highly rated HMW statements and places them into the corresponding category on the process map. We now have a target area to focus on.
Lighting Demos
The second half of the day is when we produce a mass of solutions. The first exercise we complete is finding relevant examples of solutions and presenting them to the rest of the group. It is referred to as “Lightning Demos” because one of the goals is to present important information in under two minutes.
Lightning demos are meant to demonstrate examples of a “big idea” that’s relevant to the problem that we’re focused on solving. This usually means an idea (in another app/website) the presenter thinks would be beneficial to solving our problem.
Each participant presents their idea to the group. During the presentation, the rest of the team will write the following on a sticky note: what the big idea is, the company that implemented it, and any additional notes.
Four-Part Sketching
In this portion of the day, we employ four ideation exercises that help us gather our thoughts and create various solutions. The exercises are Note Taking, Doodling, Crazy 8s, and 3-step Concept; we’ll get into them below.
These exercises are to be done individually, only the 3-Step Concept is shared with the group anonymously (we will go into this in the next article). Following the principle of “working together alone” allows” everyone to freely brainstorm & ideate without the pressure of showing their work or being influenced by others.
By the end of day one, we’ve clarified the most important challenges and produced many potential solutions.
As mentioned in “How to Know You Need a Design Sprint,” the main objectives that we cover in this phase are to identify key challenges and prioritize solutions.
The activities described here on day one of the MVP design sprints firmly send you in the right direction. Next, we will decide collectively what we believe is the most valuable option and create a plan to test our theories — keep an eye out for our next article on day two.
Want help breaking these steps down? Sprints are always more fun together; contact us!
[This is a high-level overview of the steps that we take. For more information on the principles and exercises that our process is based on, refer to the book “Sprint” by Jake Knapp.]
