Phase 1 — Understand
The first phase of the Design Sprint is Understand. The goal with this phase is to create a shared understanding of the problem space across all sprint team members. There are a number of different ways that this understanding can be captured and shared, but we’ll focus on just a few in this course.
You’ll want to set up inputs that highlight and demonstrate different viewpoints and perspectives across a multitude of dimensions. You can do this using the following techniques:
- Lightning talks
- User research
- Business goals/needs
- Technology
- and more
- Interviews
- User interviews
- Stakeholder interviews
- Expert interviews
- Competitive analysis
You’ll guide the team through responding to these inputs and capturing their responses through the following methods:
- How Might We
- Rose Bud Thorn
- Affinity Mapping
- and more
Topics and Learning Objectives
In this lesson, we’ll cover the following topics:
- The Understand phase of the Design sprint
- Creating inputs to get a deeper understanding
- Responding to inputs through design thinking methods
- How Might We
- Rose Bud Thorn
- Identifying themes and related ideas through affinity mapping
At the end of this lesson, you’ll be able to:
- Describe the Understand phase of the Design Sprint
- Describe how lightning talks can be used as an input during the Understand phase
- Describe how interviews can be used as an input during the Understand phase
- Describe how competitive analysis can be used as an input during the Understand phase
- Use the “How Might We” method to identify opportunities
- Use the “Rose Thorn Bud” method to classify things as positive, negative, or opportunities
- Use Affinity Mapping to identify thematic insights
Glossary
Here are some of the terms we will be covering in this lesson:
Lightning Talk
A lightning talk is a short presentation, usually about 20 minutes, focused on a specific topic.
- User research
- Who is the user?
- What are their needs and goals?
- Why does this problem matter to users?
- Business goals
- What are we trying to solve?
- Why does it matter?
- What have we tried in the past?
- What’s worked well and not so well?
- Technology
- What are our technical capabilities?
- What are the limits and constraints or limitations on our existing tech?
Interviews
Interviews allow you to gain perspectives from a number of different vantage points. There are lots of types of interviews you can set up including:
- User interviews
- Build empathy for users
- Get a deeper understanding of user needs and pain points
- Stakeholder interviews
- Dive deeper into some of the reasoning, rationale, and context of why this specific problem is important to solve
- Topics can include any previous efforts to solve this or a similar problem
- Expert interviews
- Provide specialized insights around a specific problem, population, or technology
- Can be either internal or external
Competitive Analysis
Get a better understanding of the competition and other solutions that exist in the problem space by:
- Doing research, including checking out websites and press materials
- Reading reviews
- Using the product and recording your experience
Keep in mind…
Just because a competitor built something a certain way doesn’t mean it was the right thing to build or that it was built the right way.
Things to Remember
- Lightning talks are short presentations, usually about 20 minutes, focused on a specific topic.
- Interviews allow you to gain perspectives from a number of different vantage points.
- Competitive Analysis helps you understand other solutions or ideas that might exist in this space
Lightning talks, interviews, and competitive research provide helpful inputs for expanding the team’s understanding of the problem. In the rest of the Understand Phase we’ll use design thinking methods to respond to these inputs.
“How Might We” is a method that allows you to reframe problems and insights into opportunities. Remember that “How Might We” statements should:
- touch on user and/or business goals/needs/problems (ideally both at the same time)
- be open ended and support multiple solutions
- not be too broad
How Might We Further Research
- How Might We
- HMW statements
- Create HMW statements by reframing your problem statement or insights.
- HMW template: How might we (intended experience) for (primary user) so that (desired effect).
- Example problem statement: Our research showed that kids love getting ice cream from a truck, but on hot days there’s trouble with spillage as kids get back to their families.
- Example of a good HMW statement: How might we redesign the ice-cream buying experience for kids so that it can be more portable and less messy.
- Check your statement isn’t too limiting — a good HMW allows for a variety of solutions. E.g: “How might we create a cone to eat ice cream without dripping” is too narrow.
- Make sure it isn’t too broad — a good HMW helps you come with solutions that have a clear focus. E.g “How might we reimagine dessert” doesn’t focus on the problem that users have.
- You can start with multiple HMWs and decide on the one you want to go forward with.
Make variations of your HMW. As a team, come up with as many as you can and refine these until you have a list which combines both business and user problems, as well as addresses an opportunity
Considerations
- It should be human-centered — speak to a real need so that you can brainstorm meaningfully.
- Try not to use boring or safe HMWs as they might lead you in the wrong direction and waste time. For example:
- “How might we redesign our website?”
- “How might we make our app more fun?”
- If you’re having trouble coming up with variations, divide a wall space into 3 sections — business problems, user needs, and opportunities — and ask your team to write the important points into each section.
- 10–15 user needs or frustrations that you’d most like to fix or meet.
- 10–15 interesting business opportunities or insights.
- Once all sections are filled, pick a point from each to create your new HMWs, keeping the main HMW statement in mind.
Signals
IT’S GOING WELL WHEN:
- Each team member is contributing
- Team members feel inspired by the HMWs
- You get a few wild and far-fetched ideas during brainstorming
- The brainstorm feels focused and meaningful
WATCH OUT FOR:
- HMWs that are too broad or narrow
- Safe or boring HMWs
- HMWs that don’t spark ideas — this is a sign that it
Rose, Bud, Thorn
You can use the Rose, Bud, Thorn method to classify aspects of a topic and visualize good aspects, opportunities, and negative aspects.
Roses are positive things. For example roses could be things that are going well or seen as a successful. Roses can also represent things or parts of a product that people enjoy.
Buds are things that could turn into roses, if given the right attention. They represent areas of opportunity.
Thorns are negative things. For example thorns could be problems or shortcomings. They also can represent broken product experiences.
Things to Remember
- Write One thing per sticky
- Use different colored stickies for roses, buds and thorns
Grocery Store
Rose Bud Thorn Further Research
Rose, Thorn, Bud
“Rose, Thorn, Bud is a technique for identifying things as positive, negative, or having potential.
Members of the Boy Scouts of America are taught to be thorough, methodical, and analytical about each situation they encounter. In turn, scouts are routinely encouraged to identify one positive experience (Rose), one negative experience (Thorn), and one new goal or insight (Bud). Adapted for use as a design method, this structure provides an opportunity to analyze a set of data or help scope a problem by revealing focus areas, allowing you to plan next steps.
This is a simple and versatile method to employ. You can frame your ensuing activities by documenting observations or opinions on sticky notes as positive, negative, or having potential. Alternatively, you can code various items that are represented on posters or diagrams by tagging them with sticky notes as Roses, Thorns, or Buds. In all cases, the use of different colors for each note helps you see and consider emergent patterns later on.
Benefits:
- Helps you codify research data
- Invites input from all team members
- Facilitates productive discussion
- Helps you identify issues and insights
Affinity Mapping
Affinity mapping is a way to visually sort related ideas together into categories and themes. You’ll go through each idea/insight, quickly discuss, and then place onto the board. As similar or related ideas are discussed their respective sticky notes should be placed next to each other. Over time you will see that clusters of related sticky notes have started to form. Make sure to label each cluster. Once all sticky notes have been placed on the board and you have a couple of different clusters, look to see if any of those clusters are related. Related clusters will create themes If so, rearrange those clusters so that they are next to each other. Draw a circle around those clusters and create a label for the theme that you discovered
Solution: Grocery Store Affinity Mapping
Things to Remember
- It’s an interactive process. Make sure to leverage the group
- Place related sticky notes next to each other in clusters. Label each cluster with a name that represents that category
- Make sure to have an “Other” category. This is helpful if an idea doesn’t fit with other sticky notes. No need to try and force everything to fit into a category.
- Don’t be afraid to move things around. The first categories you come up with probably won’t be your final categories.
- Once all the sticky notes are on the board, check to see if any of the clusters are related. If so group them together as a theme with a label.
- Make sure to take photos, especially at the end with the completed affinity map
Affinity mapping is a method that allows you to take ideas and insights and group them into related categories and themes. This is a great way to take a large amount of information and visually represent it in a way that is much easier to parse and will inform the rest of the sprint.
Affinity Mapping Further Research
- HMW Sharing and Affinity Mapping
- A Beginner’s Guide to Affinity Mapping
- Affinity Mapping
- Affinity Map Examples
RECAP:
eached the end of the Phase 1: Understand lesson. We covered the following topics:
- The Understand phase of the Design sprint
- Creating inputs to get a deeper understanding
- Responding to inputs through design thinking methods
- How Might We
- Rose Bud Thorn
- Identifying themes and related ideas through affinity mapping
At this point, you should be able to:
- Describe the Understand phase of the Design Sprint
- Describe how lightning talks can be used as an input during the Understand phase
- Describe how interviews can be used as an input during the Understand phase
- Describe how competitive analysis can be used as an input during the Understand phase
- Use the “How Might We” method to identify opportunities
- Use the “Rose Thorn Bud” method to classify things as positive, negative, or opportunities
- Use Affinity Mapping to identify thematic insights
