The second phase of the design sprint is all about synthesizing research and information collected in the Understand phase into usable models. Usable models could be of various types like Personna Cards, Scenarios, and Task Analyses.
Throughout the Define phase, you should be working on creating usable models based out on the research and understansing of the problem statement. The team should be vigilant of the business process of the client, and should be able to model the process, as well as identify where the solution at work fits in the process. The team should be able to synthesize the outcomes of interviews with clients and consolidate them into creating multiple personas which reqresent various client segments.
The team should also advance the understanding of the job at hand into defining scenarios that would cement use cases of the solution.At the end of Define phase, the team should have developed concrete user scenarios, personas, and strong task analyses.
As you work through the Define phase of an engagement there will be a lot of discussion regarding scenarios and personas that encompass the entire domain of the client use cases.
Explore scenarios and embrace an open mind to appreciate all aspects of client tasks that shall be touched by the outcome of the design sprint.
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Notes from Interviews: The team should revisit knowledge from client interviews so as to build robust definitions of client scenarios and strong personas.
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Assumptions and Key Take-aways: The team should be mindful of assumptions and key take-aways from client interviews. This shall provide ability to better develop user scenarios and personas that address a wide range of possibilities and use cases.
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Personas The team should develop personas, based on the problem definition and client interviews. Multiple personas should be created so that various client and user traits can be addressed during designing the solution. Personas clearly outline user traits and help develop user scenarios.
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User Scenarios The team should hash out scenarios in which the solution that the engagement aims to achieve shall interact with the users. Determining user scenarios would better help the team to design a truly usable and viable solution to the problem at hand.
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Task Analysis The team should perform detailed task analysis to clearly determine aspects of the business process that the design engagement aims to address.
Creating personas help categorize and segment various aspects of the problem and their desired solution. They aid in providing personal caracteristics and attributes to multiple viewpoints of the problem that the team as well as clients could easily relate to. Creating personas should be a comprehensive task that takes all outcomes of interviews with the client and assumptions, bundled into a relatable use case.
An empathy map is a collaborative tool teams can use to gain a deeper insight into their customers. Much like a user persona, an empathy map can represent a group of users, such as a customer segment. The empathy map was originally created by Dave Gray and has been gaining popularity with the agile community.
An organization chart helps the designer clarify the relationship between different personas/roles within the client's organization, and provide a baseline for prioritizing needs or grouping information. It is especially helpful when many personas or multiple business functions are involved in the Understand phase.
Card sorting with the client helps categorize and prioritize features, ideas and different concepts so that it is easier to understand the problem. It is useful for working through user flow, moving features to the back burner board and merging similar ideas.
Identifying the problem will help to determine if there is a problem, if that problem is solvable, and how to solve that problem. This step will be the first step to answering this question: What is this solution, and is it useful?
A user scenario is a detailed narrative that focuses on one persona. By typing it out, the team thinks throught the details and tell a compelling, easy-to-understand story about the user's needs.
Storyboards illustrate the how the user interact with the solution, and what the user does, thinks, or feels in the process.
A user journey map demonstrates the flow of user experience, and highlights user's goals, actions, and emotions along the way.
Task analysis is the process of learning how the users perform their tasks and achieve the intended goals. It helps the designer decide the tasks the solution needs to support and define the navigation and workflow.
User stories are brief statements (1 or 2 sentences each) regarding the requirement of the solution from the end-user's perspective. It is a very simple method to document design requirements and it helps the design team communicate with both the client and the develpers.
A use case describes a list of actions or event steps that a user takes to achieve a goal or accomplish a task. It is also used to document requirements, in a much more elaborated manner compared to user stories.
The team should make efforts to model the business process that serves as the basis of the problem at hand. This shall help determine any missing aspects or loopholes in the understanding and could also help realize potential risks.
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