Design Sprint

Hello I am Heemesh Burhooa, in this blog I will talk about Design Sprint and I will show you the work I did for the past four weeks.

Firstly, what is a design sprint?

A design sprint is a rapid process for product development, normally design sprints are an intense four-day process where you/your team tackle a particular design problem. But for my particular assignment i will tackle it on a weekly basis. For better understanding of design sprint let’s take my situation as an example, I will tackle the problem of UniLodge app, they have a problem where students struggle to find the right roommate. Hence, I will tackle the problem through design sprints for four weeks, and each week the work will be divided.

Week 1: Mapping

The first week, I will analyze and understand the problem and I will do a user journey map on a whiteboard. But before proceeding directly to it, small activities are done such as Identify the goals, how could it fail, Sprint questions and how might we question. The purpose of these activities is to quickly give the problem a good thought, to think about the problem and ask questions, in so doing, solutions automatically come to you.

Week 1: SKETCHING

The first week is not yet over, after the user journey, the exciting part is to Sketch. It comes in 4 small steps, take a few minutes check all your previous works and note the important things on a piece of paper for example, the primary goals. Next take 5 mins to make rough ideas and select the best, remember that it is OK if its ugly. Now the fun part is to do your sketches which is called the crazy 8s. Fold your papers and draw the different features you want to put in your application/prototype.

And lastly the three-panel storyboard, here you should select a screen of your choice and elaborate on it. Take 3 A4 papers, tape them together and draw your chosen screen, write relevant notes on your sticky notes and put it next to each other.

WEEK 2: DECIDE AND STORYBOARDING

Now after the sketches, we must decide which one are the best so that we can prototype it. No need to debate on it, here we simply put red dot or green dots on rejected and good ones. But there is an important step before doing the storyboard and it is the USER TEST FLOW (UTF), you should think in terms of what you will test on week 4 or day 4 then narrow it into six steps. Your UTF will always start will log in and ends with confirmation then complete the middle steps. Note that it depends on you and your problem you are solving. After the UTF, it’s time to do the storyboard, now you elaborate more on what you will have in between your steps.

WEEK 3: PROTOTYPING

Now it’s time to prototype your sketches by using Figma. Prototyping is very fun but time consuming so you better plan everything from the start, create a folder and download all icons you will implement. Before getting started, there’s a few considerations, firstly depending on your problem, you will have to do research, which color palette you will use and keep in head that so many designs have been done with millions of apps on the market. So, make sure you don’t create the same design patterns. Also, as a designer you should be aware of design principles in order to implement it in your work.

WEEK 4: USER TESTING

The last week it’s SHOW TIME, you will be testing your prototype with other people. It is important because designers can’t find problems in their own work. Since we are in lockdown the situation has changed, 1 v 1 interview will be impossible, so we have decided to do it via video calling. Interviews were conducted with 5 different people. During the interview, I asked questions and observed their reactions carefully. TIP: Ask them to think out loud, make them feel comfortable, tell them beforehand that you are not here to judge him/her. Through testing you will then improve your prototype.

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