DESIGN SPRINT
2022
School assignment - Design sprint - identify user paint points, come up with a solution, create prototype
Team: group of 4 UX design students
Tools: Figma, Miro, Google Meet
Methods: lighting demos, user journeys, interviews, think aloud test, affinity mapping, personas, how might we, crazy 8, 1 big idea, six thinking hats amongst others
Time: 3 days
SOLVING NAVIGATIONAL ISSUES
Introduction
What? - The purpose of the Design sprint is to quickly identify user problems, innovate and generate a solution. During 3 days we made research to identify problems, ideated to find solutions, made a prototype that we tested. Our task was to improve one part of the rental company Hygglos website or mobile app.
How? - We choose to focus on Hygglos mobile app, followed the Design sprint process and quickly came up with an idea that solved a research based problem. The sprint was very effective forcing the innovation process forward and quickly generated a concrete idea that could be more thoroughly iterated later on. With this process we created a new smartphone browsing navigation.
Step 1 - research
Secondary research - looking at Hygglo and competitors, both direct and indirect
For starters we began with exploring Hygglo and what they offered, mapping out potential user journeys associated with renting, looking at direct competitors and other companies in the rental business. We also analyzed which technology Hygglo relies on in order to provide their service.
Interviewing users and testing the current Hygglo app
We then formulated a brief interview focusing on Hygglos value proposition and their app. The interview started with a walk through of the app for the user to form an opinion if they already wasn't using it.
We used Google Meet and asked the test persons to share their screen and click around the app. We also gave them a task to rent something. Afterwards we followed up with questions.
By affinity mapping the data we identified a bunch problems that was similar amongst our test persons.
Step 2 - defining the problem
Most of the problems was related to the home page and its navigational issues finding relevant things to rent. They also though that there was too much advertising supposed to make the user feel safe, so much that it was received the opposite way.
From our identified problems we formulated the following HMW-question:
How might we clarify Hygglos offer and associated navigation on the home page.
To further set our target we choose these three adjectives to summarize our goal:
Easier, Nicer, Quicker
Step 3 - ideation
We switched our focus to ideation, how do we solve the identified problems and answer our HWM?
Lighting demos
We started out by sourcing inspiration and then discuss what we had found.
Crazy 8
Right after this the ideation phase began with a round of quick crazy 8 sketching, 1 minute per sketch. We then pinned our sketches to the wall, explaining and discussed them.
Step 4 - solution
In the next step the four of us was going to sketch one idea each during 20 minutes. Afterwards we discussed these four ideas. It seemed that our ideas was now more similar and a mash up of the previous crazy 8, picking all the best components.
Here comes the interesting part. One big problem we identified in our research was the struggle with Hygglos multiple head categories and subcategories for rental objects, built up in a hierarchy that made it hard for the users to get an overview on the supply offered.
One of my ideas from crazy 8 was to use static icons for each category with a drop down menu to make it easier for the users to see all head and first hand subcategories on the same page, instead of navigating through hierarchies. I had now incorporated that idea amongst other important functions and information that we wanted the home screen to contain.
The downside of the category dropdown icons was that they filled quite large amount of screen real estate. One of my team members had choose to put a swim lane where you could swipe through head categories. Our team discussed which one we preferred the most, but then I got a new idea.
I came up with a mix of the two, a swim lane of icons with swipe gesture navigation, and a dropdown that followed each icon. Enabling good overview of both head categories and first hand subcategories. From what we knew this navigation doesn't exist as a standard. Now we also had a lot of screen estate to convey for the remaining information without making the home screen cluttered.
Step 5 - prototype
Preparing our idea for the prototyping stage we mapped out all the functions and how they were connected. When we had a holistic view over what we had come up with we tested our concept with different perspectives through the method 6 thinking hats. The concept seemed to hold up fine and we had a clear picture of how we wanted it to look and function.
Now it was time for prototyping, we split up and took responsibility for different areas of the prototype to focus on, constantly checking in with each other and syncing the process.
Here is what we came up with:
Step 6 - testing the prototype
To test the prototype we reached out the the same test persons we had during day 1 to see if they could see any improvement. They tested our Figma prototype the check the navigation and commented on our new layout and the information visible.
We gave them a new task to find a bicycle to rent and the new navigation was instinctive and helped them find the right category immediately without having to leave the home screen navigating through subcategories.
They saw the whole concept as an improvement from the current Hygglo app homepage. We also validated it though an ED-score, which was generally good but we also got some feedback on other improvements that we could take in to account if we would make an iteration.
REFLECTIONS
It was rewarding to try out the concept of design sprint and see the outcome. By forcing the process forward following a scheme and trusting the process we found and developed something interesting in a short amount of time. Which is the whole purpose of a design sprint, to foster innovation.
This is a great example on ideating in a team with many brains working towards the same goal. In this project we inspired each other and built upon each others ideas and came up with an innovative solution.