A Design Sprint to Level up Education
Design Sprint
How we got started
The faculty of Law from the University of Amsterdam came to us with question to support defining a new offering. The university has a vision and strategy for Life Long Learning, resulting in a Bachelors program and Masters program. However post graduation there was no offering for alumni. The cool thing about this Design Sprint was that the team of professors and lecturers were open to apply a new way of working and learning to themselves as well. They were happy to bring in focus and speed versus many meetings without much progress.
Armed with "How might we create a unique Executive Education offering for our Faculty of Law alumni?" the team was ready for a Design Sprint. They cleared their agenda for a week and we got to work!
Our approach
This called for a classic Design Sprint approach, one that we've tweaked over the years. We've taken all our experience from 200 Design Sprints and tailored the best process. You can compare it to the Design Sprint 2.0 with a fifth day to focus on 'whats's next'? Because we all know that the Monday after the Design Sprint is back to business as usual (whether we like it or not) and without a concrete plan, things slow down. This is what the Design Sprint with Orange Minds looks like:
A solution without a good understanding of the problem is risky. For this reason we always start with a kick-off with the entire Design Sprint team to take step back and properly define the challenge and its underlying problems. Only then will we look for a solution in the Design Sprint.
Through research and expert interviews the team reframed their challenge. By the end of the Design Sprint they ended up with a different solution then they first had in mind. And luckily so, because through testing the team invalidated their first idea, while the new solution provided real value (and was much easier to implement too!). At day 5, we were all happy. Imagine that the team had invested time, money and resources in their initial idea, only to never be used.
The Results
Before the Design Sprint: you need to understand the basis before jumping in. This is why we always do a half-day kick-off about 3 weeks before the Design Sprint with 3 goals:
Get the team into the Design Sprint mindset
Scope the challenge: who is the customer and what problem do they have? Where is the proof?
Based on the above we divide tasks for preparation.
If a team needs help in customer interviews before the Design Sprint we can help with customer discovery, on request. But usually the team takes this on themselves as we believe that speaking to customers help you step into the customers' shoes and is the most valuable preparation for the Design Sprint.
With all preparation done, the team is ready to rock and roll together with us. The overview the Design Sprint week:
Day 1: Monday
The team aligns on the goal, updates the map, and looks outside for inspiration.
Day 2: Tuesday
Everyone sketches their ideal solution individually and then decides as a team the most crucial things to test.
Day 3: Wednesday
The team works together with our prototyper to bring the ideas into a realistic prototype.
Day 4: Thursday
The team dots the i's and crosses the t's and gets feedback from real customers.
Day 5: Friday
Friday is about reviewing assumptions, insights and deciding on a concrete plan forward. The team shares their progress with key stakeholders.
The impact…
What happened in the end?
By the end of the week, we obtained a clickable prototype for (in this case) two distinct customer groups. The insights from customer interviews showed the team what customer group to focus on to continue the development of their program.
6 months later, the Faculty gave their first course to one of the customer groups. How cool.
The team makes the magic
The sweet spot for a Design Sprint team is 4-6 people, excluding the prototyper and facilitator. Less means too little diversity (= similar ideas) and more means slowing down (= too many opinions and post-its).
Who did UvA bring?
Customer expert(s): someone who has regular customer contact. > Program coordinator
Product expert(s): someone who knows the process, product, or service inside out. > A professor and lecturer
Marketing mind: someone savvy with texts and the brand. > Communications
Outside perspective: someone working on the boundaries of the team, or completely outside of them but who has relevant experience to shake things up. In this case it was a business analyst
Decider: someone who is responsible for the outcomes of the Design Sprint and will drive the project further. Can be one of the above people.
Who did we bring?
One Master facilitator with 100 Design Sprints to their name: Margriet
One rockstar prototyper: Liza
