It became apparent after our latest project.
If you’re not familiar with our approach, we use the Design Sprint workshops to build websites.
The decision maker was 100% on board with our process. So what was the mistake?
We assumed that the instructions during our workshops would paint the full picture just as well as a few weeks of sales & onboarding meetings.
They were spot on for each individual exercise, but participants were missing some context. Here’s why.
We don’t prototype a full website
The Design Sprint is a 5-day process that produces a prototype to test with real users. Just saying that wasn’t enough to convey the message.
We got ourselves in trouble, as different members of the workshop team would frequently ask “okay but what about X?”
The answer was always the same: “X is not the part of the prototype.”
Had we explained why that’s the case before diving into the workshops, this would help people focus on the task at hand – not to mention the time savings!
What are some of these “whys”?
Some ideas are just more important to test…
An example of the less important one would be a blog, or a press release page. In many examples, and with this particular client as well, it was non-negotiable.
But as mentioned in the first fail, we didn’t explain that in advance.
There was no need to focus on features that have to be there at this stage. Getting from zero to a functional website prototype in five days is an intense exercise.
It would be a serious waste of time to prototype press releases that:
- HAVE to be there
- Only apply to 10% of the audience
…and some aspects of the important ideas don’t need testing, either
You don’t prototype a conversion page and ask “would you work with this company?”
It’s impossible to accurately imagine these things. That question is worthless.
Instead, you do it to pick up the little behaviours that indicate friction or delight.
And that’s another thing that we didn’t explain. Sure, we mentioned that the prototype is low-fidelity and “not perfect”, but we couldn’t expect people to just accept that.
How we figured it out
During a retrospective with the decision maker, we discussed how the team felt about workshops. The feedback was overwhelmingly positive, but we all observed the struggles originating from a lack of context.
But truth be told, we should’ve known much earlier. On the first of two days of workshops, we always highlight that the exercises might seem “weird” in isolation, but we need to trust the process because it all falls into place in the end.
And it does fall into place.
But it could be clearer on the way there, and a short explanation we gave after the fact would’ve gone a long way. Not only in this case, but even looking back at past workshops.
Lesson learned.