UX Work Shop & Design Sprints

UX Work Shop & Design Sprints

Running a UX workshop to start a Design Sprint

Getting clients involved in a project is critical.  They have domain knowledge which is key to the design process.  The format of C+UX workshop is that the key stakeholders and our design team sit down around a table and begin to discuss the project.  It starts a the begin:

  • What is the purpose of this product?
  • Where does this product live and what the working environment?
  • What is the first thing a user sees?
  • Why would they want to engage with this product?

We discuss the primary calls to action.  The purpose of the product can define the look and feel of the visual UI.  Does the product have one task or many?  Once we have discussed the purpose of the new product and understand the design challenges we can begin to talk about the screens.

We start sketching out screens in the format of User Flow.  We start at the first screen in that journey.  It might be a call to action to engage with the product.  It is might be a landing page with multiple options.  Either which way we begin sketching out a flow that is deemed to be the most critic action first.  Then followed by sub-actions and alternate flows.  Each screen is quickly sketched out and discussed and linked to the next screen in the activity flow.  Its a quickfire, fun task.  We talk about ideas for interactivity – how to make this product come to life!  How we can include useful design solutions and plan for user engagement.

Once we have a full flow sketched out.  We go back to the start of the flow and run through the “What ifs”.  We then sketch out solutions for these eventualities or possibly alter the screen or flow to cater for this solution.  Having the key-stake holder in the workshop allows for quick design and business decisions to made!  These initial design decisions can be validated by testing this prototypes in quickfire Sketch > Prototype system.  We can test this sketch prototype solution to see if it “feels right”.  If it does we can continue, if not we take it back to the drawing board.

This process is continued until the Workshop has considered all the main flows.  We document out all the sketches in the format of a low-fidelity WireFrame and a create a basic interactive prototype for client communication, usability testing and iteration.

This forms the first day of a design sprint…