5 + 1 Design Sprint facilitation tips for newbies
Some things you will only learn by doing. In some other cases, this might be helpful.
After running my first Design Sprint a few weeks ago (you can read more about it here) I thought I’d put together some tips that I hope will help you facilitating your own.
1. Be prepared and checklist all the things!
Might sound stupid, but make sure you have all the materials ready a few days before the sprint starts and don’t underestimate the importance of drinks and snacks!
I made the mistake of not having enough snacks in the sprint room, because I thought it would be ok for people to quickly go to the kitchen and grab whatever they felt like. But beware: this can easily break the rhythm! You’ll be having breaks every 60–90 minutes, it is important that people stay completely focused during that time, so make sure they have everything they might need in the room.
Besides this, something that really helped was to have a pocket-size checklist of the materials that were needed for each day. It makes it quicker and easier to check that everything is there, and you’ll want easy and quick.
2. Interview with external experts
The first part of the sprint is crucial for the success of it. You’ll need to make sure people get and share as much knowledge as possible during the interviews. If not, you’ll be running blind, trying to solve a problem you don’t fully understand or people understood differently.
For my last design sprint at GUTS, we invited 3 external industry experts to join us during our interviews. Having a firsthand view of the issues they were facing and their ambitions was crucial to decide the direction (goal and questions) we would take for the rest of the sprint.
Don’t lock yourself in a room with your team and try to conquer the world. You might have finance, marketing and tech experts, but nobody will give you better insights than those who are currently dealing with the issues you’re trying to solve.
3. Key notes for the different steps of the process are super useful
As any other noob, the design sprint process won’t be part of your DNA the first time you run one. Having some notes for each activity will allow you to focus more on what’s going on at that moment rather than having to constantly think what’s coming up next.
For my first design sprint, I wrote the key things I had to keep in mind for each step: approx duration, process, important things to take into account… Having these reminders made me feel way more comfortable and in control as a facilitator.
4. Make sure people know what they’re doing and why at every time
As a facilitator you will have to assure the team is always “rowing in the same direction”.
Before the sprint, people should know what they’re getting themselves into. If it’s their first time, having a short presentation a few days beforehand really helped me on setting expectations and having a shared basic understanding of the process and the reasoning behind it.
On the other hand, once the sprint has started, you’ll need to find a way to always have the long term goal and questions visible. Having them on a whiteboard or wall is definitely useful, but you’ll have to do more than that.
Keep reminding the team why they’re doing what they’re doing: before an exercise, during an exercise, during lunch, every morning before the get in the room… send them a push notification if they go to the toilet if needed!
5. ”Just enough” detail on your storyboard should actually be enough
Building a prototype within one day is doable but also quite a challenge. Don’t leave things for “the makers to decide while prototyping“, everything should be defined enough so when the building day comes, the people responsible will only have to follow the storyboard.
This was one our biggest mistakes during our sprint. We didn’t realize the day before because we were all exhausted, but our storyboard wasn’t defined well enough, which translated into a bit stressed out designer the day after. Luckily we could get it back on tracks, but we could’ve avoided those hiccups if we had made sure our storyboard contained “just enough details”.
+1 Extra
- Make the timer visible at all times -> This will help you a lot when it comes to stop discussions without them thinking you’re a party pooper.
- Keep the energy and positivity up -> It’s gonna be intense and it’s your job as facilitator to motivate people and maintain the energy levels up!
- Be cautious with people joining half sprint -> They’ll miss context and make the process harder.
- Be strict but fair during discussions -> You don’t wanna spend unnecessary time on them but neither wanna cut off useful insights.
Did I miss anything? Please, add it to the comments!
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