Weeknotes: design sprints

My reflections on the week

Happy December – I am keen to share my reflections each week, so from now on, I will be sharing week notes on the progress of My Best Life.

What did I get up to? What have I learnt?

This week i have been working behind the scenes to ensure our design sprints are run effectively and our partnership is confirmed. We are currently grappling with what type of legal agreement allows us to have both accountability and the flexibility and shared authority across the collaboration.

We started with a memorandum of understanding but felt it was too much like a subcontract. We are now exploring using a grant agreement, which is much more flexible. Alongside this, we will have a non-legal partnership agreement which outlines more about the programme, the principles we are following and the roles we are going signing up for across the partnership.

What questions, thoughts or ideas did I have this week?

• How much should we involve young people in the design sprints process? We are in the process of creating our user involvement strategy. We have been thinking about: How appropriate is it to engage them throughout the whole process? Is it helpful for both themselves and the development of effective tech solutions?
• How to engage young people effectively in design sprints? At a recent Design Sprints London meet up, I learnt about the importance of ice breakers. This is especially important when design sprints are a new experience for those involved. Review a few tried and tested icebreakers.
• How do you share the design elements you choose NOT to include? We can’t include every idea or functionality, but the knowledge of things you choose NOT to include in a product are just as important. Design work is about all prioritisation. This prioritisation is useful, both for future development ideas of the product/service and for the knowledge of why, in order to inform future design work.

What have I been reading?

Jake Knapp with John Zeratsky and Braden Kowitz from Google Ventures, the sprint book, was created to share their experience of running design sprints and give others the ability to become reproduce design sprints too.

How has your week been?

I am really keen to hear what you are working on and any key resources you have been reading!

P.S. Have a lovely winter break 🙂