Before hearing from Giant Leap, let’s have a quick walkthrough of the Design Sprint process. A Design Sprint is a 4-day workshop where teams go from hypothesis to usability tested prototype, reducing risk when taking feature improvements, new features and products to the market. 

What makes the Design Sprint process so powerful, is how it allows teams to really focus and work together, learning from experts as they define the optimal user journey, sketch together, create a prototype and learn from users through usability tests. It’s a very efficient way to both get creative and get closer to the customers!

If you want to learn more about Design Sprints, or would like support with running one, you can find more information here.

For this product, Giant Leap is working with several user groups and therefore wanted to run several sprints. First we focused on the citizens applying for the permits, then based on the results and prototype from that sprint, we ran a sprint with the focus on application handlers. In the end we went back to iterate on the applicant interface, and since we were continuing with the same scope, we could reduce the sprint to 2 days.

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We created a parallel experience with digital/physical flexibility

We identified that the municipalities’ current process seemed unorganised with a lot of back-and-forth through the process for both user groups. This meant that users might start the application but have to stop because they became aware of something they were missing. Similarly the case handlers experienced that they would often have to require additional information, and because they had no way of pausing an application or communicating with the applicant, they would have to deny an application altogether and wait for a new one to start over.

Apart from creating a simple process in logical steps, with clear expectations, we concluded that it was important to create a parallel experience for both applicant and case handler. In addition, we found it important to create a flexible solution working with the reality of handling both digital and physical applications.

At the end of the sprints, we evaluated the sprint success by looking at the sprint scorecards, and the results from the prototype- and sprint questions. It inspired a lot of confidence in the team that the product was close to market-ready.

After running two sprints with an applicant focus, we saw a clear sprint success, where applicant’s found the steps of the process clear and intuitive, and felt confident that they could be self-reliant.

The applicant-handling sprint also showed sprint success, with clear improvement from existing solutions, but it also left us with some question marks and specific opportunities to follow up with some more research to further improve the product.

For this story, we have spoken to Kejsi G., Customer Experience Director at Giant Leap.

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How was your team’s overall experience with the Design Sprints?

I had been in some sprints before so I knew what to expect, but I think for the rest of the team it was a completely new way of working.

In general we were very impressed by the efficiency of the process and to be able to get to some results in a much quicker way than usual. In faster time but also to better results, more insights and generally I would say a very positive experience.

How did design sprint speed up the time to market for you?

I would say in a normal setting we would have spread the whole process out over a long period of time. I think it would have taken us at least 3 months compared to the 1 week that the design sprints took.

It was challenging to say that we're all only going to focus on this for a week, but now - seeing the results - I think everyone agrees that we wouldn't have changed that approach to the other approach of spreading it over a longer period of time.

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What have you learned from doing Design Sprints that you will take with you?

It should be something that we don't treat as something extra, but as a necessity in all projects. We might not always have the same amount of time to allocate or the same amount of resources, but still to think of all the different steps that we went through in the Design Sprint and try to incorporate a bit of that in all projects that we do.

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What stood out to you as especially effective from the Design Sprints?

The fact that we actually tested it with users in such a short timeframe. Of course we have tested with users before, but I wouldn't say in such a systematic and traceable way. Often time is always the limiting factor, so if you get something out fast then often it's easiest to just cut out the interviews with the end-users.

But in the end, that is what leads to better results, so just being able to see what works and what doesn't work for them and then doing the changes based on that…I think led to better results or at least more accurate results.

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Are there any positive effects you have experienced after the Design Sprints?

I think it has definitely broken down some silos. I've noticed that the group of key persons that are involved in product development is bigger than before.

Back then we would only involve the developers, designers and maybe customer success, but now we involve a lot more roles with different perspectives.