The sticky storyboard of a Design Sprint
How might we design better
A 3-day design sprint beckons.
At sharp 9 am, we enter a room which is stocked with supplies. Every type of post-it/sticky note imaginable is present at our disposal. Their cousins, flip-charts, are also present in sufficient quantities. Lined up neatly next to them are their eternal counterparts — markers, present in the full array of colours and nib types. A large roll of brown paper, about the height of a child, stands close-by, awaiting the chance to serve us. The surrounding walls, currently in their native paint, wait eagerly to be plastered in the brown paper.
Over the next 3 days, the plot will be a rather formulaic one. The team will understand a problem, define it, diverge again to ideate and converge finally to prototype the best idea. In the literature, this is called a double-diamond approach. It’s the tried-and-tested formula most design sprints run on. It’s like a movie franchise — we know what to expect generally but each specific release has its own idiosyncrasies.
The scene is set
After a traditionally serene start, the protagonists, about 5–12 people, will soon get into action. The wraps will come off the stacks of post-it notes placed on tables. Yellow, pink, blue, square rectangular, small , big — all types of these re-adherable species of stationery are available at our disposal.
Laundry list ☑️
The supply would have been sourced based on the detailed sprint preparation instructions taken from popular books on design sprints. Great detail is often devoted to the specific types and quantity of stationery required. In most cases, a specific brand of post-it or marker pen is also recommended.
Ambiguity is the enemy so everything must be clear upfront, including precise details on how to use stationery.
Time wast…saving revelation ☑️
As a general trend, a highly paid consultant, will soon remind the audience on how to correctly peel a post-it note. This will allow the sticky notes, designed intentionally with an impermanent glued surface, to “stick” relatively better on the brown paper. This innovative peeling technique ironically attempts to achieve a result that is opposite to its original design of having “re-adherable” paper. But let us not let history come in the way of a good story.
The first big action will be to stick the brown paper on the wall. Meters of it, cut with scissors will be put up with a disproportionate amount of sticky dough type material.
Flip charts will soon be extracted, with some effort, from its sturdy and tight-fitting cardboard casing. They will go up on the desks or straight onto the walls. If flip-charts are not self-adhesive, then more sticky dough will be used to stick them up or pin them down on (or usually across) desks.
Markers enter the scene now, grabbed in groups of 2–3 from their cardboard holders. Seasoned participants will stealthily swap green markers, which don’t write well, for darker colours. Purple and Orange will have special aficionados who will also stake their claim early.
Supply has matched demand ☑️
Resources (paper) are of least concern. They will flow freely until the end. Other stationery items, painstakingly detailed in various sprint preparation guides, will be present either on tables or in a box somewhere. Paper clip, glue, stapler, double-sided tape, string and a timer clock will be among other supplies ready to offer their services to this event.
The action starts
The stage is set. The fuel tank is full. All we need is a small spark to ignite the mix and propel this juggernaut forward. 🚀
This comes with the first group exercise of the day. People queue up, discuss, talk, laugh, collaborate, and fill the environment with noise. All senses, seeing, hearing, speaking, touch and to some degree even smell (either food, mints or — adhesive), are engaged. They will write things on sticky notes and paste them on to the wall, which is now fully covered in brown paper. People and groups will reflect individually and collectively.
The action is truly underway.
After this exercise is complete, participants will move on to the next item on the agenda. This will be the general story of Day 1 and 2 of a 3-day sprint.
Of course, like all good action sequences, a short break is often required. Participants will take scheduled breaks. They will have some food, some coffee, some more coffee, maybe tea — and jelly beans by the ton. The basket of fruit will remain largely untouched. All this activity requires ‘direct’ sugar.
Physically, the colour of the room will slowly start to change and reflect the multi-colour mosaic of the various post-it notes stuck. Mentally, the participants will be soaking in various information to generate and reflect on various ideas, while having another coffee, and another coffee. More of the same will continue until we reach the latter stages. As noted before, the plot is largely formulaic.
The plot thickens
We’ve just gone through the ideation stage and the effects are visible. The walls are barely visible now. It seems like the whole room was actually built using just brown paper and sticky notes. Any glass in the room is also covered by paper. The ideas generated are drawn using a variety of stationery items and pasted on the walls. Tables are littered with various stationery items. The floor is un-walkable due to bags etc. being placed there.
The ideation is done. We approach crunch time. All the ideas generated will have to be narrowed down the best ones.
We move from a post-it dominated storyline and set the stage for another key character to emerge — the dot sticker. These stickers are used for voting on ideas. Discerning participants, of course, will use different types of dots for different things e.g. green for supervote or red for risk etc.
The climax
As the sprint nears the end, participants will synthesize the best ideas and develop a prototype.
If a low-fidelity prototype is to be made, participants will now psych up, for the final time in the sprint, to use more paper. All shapes and sizes of paper are fair game. There is no limit now. Glue and scissors will also join the act here. It is a great time to show off artistry and craft skills, or concede the lack thereof. What is produced here will be the collective result of the collaborative exercise everyone has undertaken. This is the minimum viable product or its nearest incarnation. This will be put to further tests to refine it for release but for now, it remains the chief output and outcome.
What started off as ideas are now something tangible. The work has now been done. The sprint is (declared) a success. High-fives abound. Relief is evident on participants’ faces. Photos are also taken.
The end?
The sprint has achieved its goal. But before the participants leave, there is the not too trivial task to negotiate — cleanup.
The end of a design sprint can compete only with kids’ birthday parties or other confetti powered galas for both litter and the general sense of happiness at achieving something.
The brown paper, with barely-sticking post-it notes is taken off first. Some post-it notes inevitably fall — because remember they were never designed to be permanent stickers?!?. These are put stuck back into the brown paper — at the closest or the most convenient place.
- If someone has to scribe all of this — poor person and good luck to them- they will ensure the paper is rolled up neatly.
- If the sprint does not require retrospective transcribing, then the brown paper with post-its dangling is ripped off with considerably less care.
The ultimate destination of the brown paper will be the garbage can. It will be joined there by other the packaging waste, coffee cups, toffee wrappers, used flip-charts and entire packets of sticky-dots because these are so hard to dispense from their flimsy cardboard wrapping that entire boxes are thrown away — it is easier than trying to squeeze measly sticky dots back into that stupid box.
The cleanup is over and people are generally quite disciplined about this. The room looks like a place where something has happened but people have tried to eliminate all evidence to the best of their ability and restore it as close as possible to its original state. The visible exceptions are overflowing garbage bins — either the ones in the room or in the space where the participants are usually seated.
The long list of credits now starts to roll. 👏
Critical reception
Design sprints are a great methodology for solving problems but this love affair with paper must end.
The end result of a design sprint is most likely an online web or mobile application. If it was a strategy/social change sprint, then the output will be used as part of some large report for the bureaucracy to pore over.
The irony cannot be greater.
We’re using paper to produce paperless products or as part of something else that will consume even more paper. The wastage of paper is staggering and disappointing in equal measure. There has to be a better way.
It’s time to redesign the Design Sprint and ask ourselves: How Might We design Design Sprints so that they use lesser resources?
The Double Diamond approach, which underpins Design Sprints, is a robust methodology. However, the superfluous paper-heavy rituals that are built around it require trimming.
It’s not just about stationery use but about more broadly considering How Might We reduce the ‘footprint’ of a Design Sprint?
Figuring this out will be a story truly worth telling and sharing.
