Design Sprinting, Flying and Falling
The Vastness of Creative Thinking is Intimidating Yet Rewarding
BrainStation UXI Fall '16
Photograph: Mandy K Yu
Embracing Ambiguity
Rooted in HCD (Human-Centered Design) and Design Thinking Methodologies, "The Design Sprint" is not meant for the prudent, the eggshell walkers, or the close-minded. In a nutshell, it's a 5 day process in which you work with team members to solve a problem using blue sky thinking and leveraging the ideology that two (or three or four or five) minds are better than one.
In the midst of a sprint, there's no time for hesitation, handholding, or for mulling over thoughts – a Design Sprint should always have movement, hence the analogy to a race.
Consisting of rapid everything, including; ideation, exploration, pivoting, questioning, hypothesization, pivoting, prioritization, critiquing, pivoting, prototyping, and testing – and all the in-betweens of frantic scribbling, white-boarding, and silent sticker voting – you run (heh, get it?) into a lot of assuming and uncertainty.
The Crooked Race
Did I mention that there's also a lot of pivoting? And when I say pivoting, it means slightly changing direction, adjusting your path. So in a sense, you and your team will basically be running in a very crooked looking race – it won't be as straight forward as you had imagined, that's for sure. And it shouldn't be either. If you have a narrow vision and can already see the finish line without having started, then you're running the wrong race.
Essentially, you need to be ok with not knowing where you'll end up, and that's where you'll find success.
But gathering enough momentum to exert all of this creative energy can be exhausting, just as much as running – heck, sprinting can be. But that's why athletes train, right? Practice makes perfect. Training your mind works just in the same way as training your body...in a way.
Photograph: Mandy K Yu
Running with Confidence
But why is Design Sprinting so tiring for some?
It's called a sprint because it's fast and short.
For most, this manifests overwhelming and anxiety-inducing micro meltdowns because of many reasons. One being that each phase is rigorously timed so that all the Type A people and controlling perfectionists don't have room to sweat (get it??) the fine details. Some people will fall and some people will fly – it boils down to how well you cope with the unknown.
It boils down to how well you cope with the unknown.
In the end, we're not looking ahead to run towards the finish line, we're focusing on the process and technique to learn how to run to a finish line.
So let your guard down, breathe a little, and also leverage your team member's energy and confidence – it's all about having enough faith to know that if you fall, it's not over – it's just another chance to learn from what happened, let your team support you and continue the crooked race.