Design Sprints are a popular element of the wider digital design process, to help organisations define and create effective user-centred service experiences. But as the technique has grown in popularity so have the many misunderstandings around what they can and can’t achieve.

Oliver Bailey, co-founder of Manchester-based digital agency Absurd, debunks common myths around Design Sprints. “We’re big fans of how effective Design Sprints can be for engendering co-creation and for finding solutions to business problems.  By the nature of their structure and intensity they can be extremely valuable to a wide range of business – from start-ups to large established corporations.

But if I had a pound every time I heard a misconception about what they can and can’t do I’d be quids in!

Here’s the five biggest ‘myths’ about Design Sprints we frequently hear which I hope will go some way to explain how we ensure that the investment is a worthwhile one… when done right.

Myth 1: “A five-day design sprint will give me a finished, ready to roll out solution”

Of course, if you read all of the hype around Design Sprints and how they solve business problems in just five days, you’d think that this means that you have a solution to roll out at the end of it. Well, yes – in some cases a Design Sprint can lead to a prototype that’s been user tested and proved viable – but to really get the solution to ‘work’ investment in product or service design doesn’t stop there.

The main premise of the Design Sprint is to get to the point that you have validated the idea or ideas and keep iterating. The Design Sprint is the an element of the larger service design process – where human-centric design involves further validating ideas and service propositions to make good ideas even better and to ensure the organisation invests in the right roadmap.

Myth 2: “As the client we don’t need to prepare; the agency/design team will sort it all”

The most effective Design Sprints are ones that start on Day Zero (or minus five) not Day One.

The very nature of a Design Sprint is that it is interactive and user focused. A solution isn’t handed on a plate – the process is there to facilitate, so the more people can bring to the party the better. And as Design Sprints are about problem solving, so more ground work regarding the current situation means the Sprint team can hit the ground running.  It can save time and frustrating eye rolls if everyone is armed with information from both within the business and the strategists before the process. It’s then true collaboration at its best.

Key to the agency’s role is that all participants are briefed, know what is expected of them and what the goal of the technique is.

Myth 3: “It will require five full days of my / my colleague’s time that I simply don’t have”

There are two issues here. First of all a Design Sprint doesn’t always have to be across five days. This is the standard framework but not the only way.

Secondly, the same people do not have to be active within the process for the entire scope of the Sprint. It’s essential that the group – from across the organisation – begins the process, to identify and agree the goals of the sprint, to map out the challenge and to be part of the exploration into potential solutions. But there are elements in the technique that can be left for a core group to work into storyboards and protype designs that will mimic the final approach to have ready for testing.

Myth 4: “It’s a cheap way to get design work”

This is perhaps one of the biggest misconceptions around Design Sprints. Of course, some amazing results can be born out of the process – but the Sprint is the tip of the iceberg in terms of creating a finished design. It’s not a ‘short-cut’.

Its value is exploring new possibilities and challenging preconceptions, but the true value is then how this prototype is then fully developed and created. Not left sitting on a shelf somewhere.

If you’ve managed to create a super shiny prototype that’s ready to roll out then you’ve perhaps not spent long enough ‘exploring’ and getting to the real issue. Or your design sprint has been a huge success of course!

Myth 5: “I know nothing about design so I will add absolutely no value”

If there is one thing our experience of running Design Sprints has shown us is that often the best ideas don’t come from designers – or even ‘the boss’.

And as with all service design, the priceless aspect is having all key stakeholders involved – each bringing their in-depth knowledge of how a business operates. There is little point in finding a solution that cannot be integrated with existing tech or processes – unless a transformation is the objective.

Just like with all aspects of a service design approach, to solve business problems, research cannot sit in a siloed team. Great service design comes from strategists, designers and technologists working on the ‘problem’ from the start.

For more information visit www.thisisabsurd.com

Oliver Bailey at Absurd, explains how they transformed the digital strategy for Electrical Safety First

Sometimes the only way to facilitate genuine change and become a true disrupter in your sector is to overhaul your digital strategy completely – even when it appears to be working.

That’s exactly what we did for consumer protection charity, Electrical Safety First – shifting a content-led, always-on approach, which was inciting spikes in consumer engagement, to a customer-centric digital product strategy that has not only significantly increased a consistent flow of site traffic and engagement, but attracted a substantial amount of funding for the charity from corporate partners.

While a new content-led strategy, introduced in 2018, drove an uplift in traffic to www.electricalsafetyfirst.org.uk  of around a third – further research into the wants and needs of the charity’s audiences showed that rather than just promoting behaviour change through communication, a more effective strategy would be to solve genuine consumer problems and cut through the noise with tangible and engaging digital products.

And adopting this change of focus transformed the charity’s digital presence.

There were three strands to the process:

Intuitive User Journey

Electrical Safety First is dedicated to reducing the number of injuries and deaths caused by electricity; it campaigns on a number of key issues including the risks of buying counterfeit electrical products, the roles and responsibilities of landlords, the importance of using a registered electrician and improving the product recall and registration process.

With so much campaign information and important consumer advice to communicate, we started by overhauling the charity’s current website, making the user journey more intuitive and maximising the wealth of information that the site hosted.

Central to the product strategy is a new Knowledge Base that invites users to ask Electrical Safety First anything – and intuitively serves relevant information from the 5000+ pages of information on the site. The Knowledge Base has also been optimised for voice allowing users to get answers to common questions easily from Electrical Safety First as a reliable, expert source.

Since its launch, searches on the site have increased by more than 75 per cent and there have been a significant number of repeat visits as consumers continue to turn to Electrical Safety First as a reliable and easy to use source.

Delivering the right things in the right way

Continuing on our ambition to deliver the wealth of information offered by Electrical Safety First in the right and most easy to access format, our next task was to create genuine cut-through when it came to the potential life-threatening issue of electrical product recalls – ensuring that the charity was at the forefront of driving consumer awareness and action.

Research shows that electrical product recalls have a success rate of between 10-20% resulting in a quagmire of hazardous appliances still being used in UK homes. Currently the only way to contact customers about a recall is if they have registered their item when purchased – paperwork that many people ignore. We set about tackling the barriers to getting consumers to take the risk of a recall seriously, with minimal impact to their time and cutting out all unnecessary admin.

With consumers increasingly turning to virtual assistants such as Amazon Alexa and Google Home, especially as they spend more time working and socialising at home, we identified that voice technology could make this process easily accessible and a task that they could engage with at leisure or “in the moment”.

We developed an Alexa app which simplifies the recall process. Asking Alexa makes it easy for users to make ad hoc checks on their appliances whilst carrying out household tasks without having to resort to adding serial numbers into a website. Consumers simply say the item’s brand name and model to check if it is currently on a recall list. It also incorporates other helpful electrical advice as well as a fun ‘How Can It Kill Me’ game, originally developed to target students, which highlights electrical dangers in the home.

The result? Overall searches for product recalls are now up 60 per cent year on year and continuing to rise – increasingly through voice.

Consumer-first approach

Our user research has also helped Electrical Safety First tackle another crucial campaign area – raising consumer awareness around counterfeit electrical goods, especially when purchasing from online marketplaces like Amazon and Ebay. One of the main issues that we identified is that some customers are unaware of how the marketplaces work, not understanding that they are often buying from an unregulated third party.

Again, we needed to make this education process seamless and part of the customer journey – with no additional admin that would take up precious time. The solution was a browser plugin that was launched for Chrome first (as our MVP), and then rolled out for Edge, Firefox and Safari.

Once downloaded, the Check It Out plugin displays a logo and warning when consumers are browsing or about to buy a product from a third party, warning them that they are not purchasing from the manufacturer or trusted retailer. To date, the tool has indexed well over 500,000 products.

Commercial Partnership Funding and increased consumer engagement 

The transformation of Electrical Safety First’s digital strategy has strengthened the charity’s status as a force to be reckoned with when it comes to championing consumer safety around electrical issues.

It has garnered the attention of large national retailers including the Kingfisher Group, Carphone Warehouse and Beko (as well as government bodies) as a result, and ESF has received significant campaign funding to progress this crucial work.

To cut through the noise of the endless content with which we are being bombarded, we have placed the customer at the very heart of digital innovation and the results have spoken for themselves.

• Bounce rate has reduced as consumers find exactly what they need (with a reduced number of pages being visited as the search functionality improves the user journey)
• Sessions have increased and direct traffic has also risen by 15%
• Brand engagement has improved and social referrals are up 200% with consumers much more attracted to the site’s content and functionality

To learn more visit https://www.thisisabsurd.com/