Design sprint day 2: Explore ideas
On the second day, you’ll be coming up with ideas to solve your specific challenge. The first part of this day revolves around deep, independent reflection to generate as many ideas as possible. The second part is about sharing those ideas and choosing the one you’ll prototype. Here are some techniques you can use to start thinking:
Lightning Demos
Get everyone on your team to make a short list of products or services that solve a problem similar to yours. In our lemonade stand example, one person could mention the strategies used by girl scouts to sell cookies, or by ice cream vendors to signal their presence in a neighborhood, etc. Each person will then be given 3 minutes to present 1 or 2 examples. This will give you enough time to spot good ideas but won’t take up the whole day. Lightning Demos can include ideas you’ve come up with in the past. However, they do not include original ideas you’ve come up with on the spot. That’s the next step.
After the demos, sketch!
For 20 minutes, sketch potential solutions. If you want, you can take a few minutes before this to take notes on what you’ve covered so far: the long-term goal of the project, the map (see day 1), and ideas from the Lightning Demos. This revision exercise is especially useful for teams who have never worked together on the project at hand. Once you’ve done your 20 minutes of sketching, filter your ideas by doing Crazy 8s.
It’s Crazy 8s time!
This is my personal favorite. For this activity, take a standard sheet of paper and fold it so that you end up with 8 different sections (like the illustration below). Then, make 8 new sketches in 1 minute. Yes, you read me right. That’s 60 seconds. This time constraint will force you to draw without judging your work. You’ll be letting loose and thereby being ultra creative.Your sketches can be 8 versions of the same idea or 8 completely different solutions. After doing Crazy 8s, take 30 minutes to draw a very detailed sketch of the best idea you’ve come up with. Tell everyone to hang up their sketches on the wall when they’re done.
Let’s go to the museum
Your wall now looks like an art gallery. Your next task is to carefully analyze each piece and decide what to build tomorrow. During this decision-making phase, it’s important not to pitch your ideas nor to enter into heated debates. Decisions must be made objectively, not based on who can make the best case for his or her idea.
Go through what Knapp and co. (if you’re wondering who this is, read the last paragraph) call the Sticky Decision. Here’s how it goes: allow everyone to take a good long look at each sketch. Then, ask your teammates to place dot stickers next to the ideas they like best. The decider gets to cast more votes than anyone else (and usually takes forever to do this… But hey, this will give a great opportunity to go grab a coffee. Silver lining).
Next, go around the room and ask each person to say where he or she placed dots and why. At this point, people can explain their sketches and answer questions. If these explanations are real game-changers, you can vote again. When you start creating your prototype tomorrow, you’ll try to incorporate the most ‘popular’ ideas into your work (e.g. Going back to our lemonade stand example, if everyone votes for using posters, flyers and tasting stations in strategic spots of the neighborhood, incorporate all three ideas in your prototype). If some of the ‘elected’ ideas are mutually exclusive, ask the decider to pick one over the other. Voilà! Day 2 over.
Here’s what happens on the next day →
You’re reading article #3 of a series. Want context?
I was first introduced to design sprints by my colleagues at Central. They use 4-day design sprints to help their clients create and improve digital products. This series of articles is a short, Centralized version of what you’ll find in Jake Knapp, Braden Kowitz, and John Zeratsky’s Sprint: How to Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just Five Days. If you’re serious about doing sprints, buy the book! In the meantime, read on…
Intro: Speeding up your projects with design sprints
Day 1: Define your challenge
Day 2: Explore ideas (you are here)
Day 3: Build your prototype
Day 4: Test on real users
Thanks for reading folks!
