Remote Design Sprint Best Practices

5 min readFeb 21, 2023

Design sprints are an effective way to rapidly prototype and test new products or features. However, conducting a design sprint requires careful planning and execution to be successful. In this article, we’ll discuss our tips that we learnt during facilitating our first design sprint.

General Tips

Read the design sprint book — it’s a must. I had been lazy initially but later on after being a helper in my first sprint, I realized this book is very helpful. If you are feeling lazy, ready the book along with conducting the sprint and working alongside on the Miro board template. Look at the Miro board sections and book chapters about a day in advance. So If you are starting on day 1, look at day 1 and 2 of the board and the book to know what is coming and prepare decisions in advance. Also, near the back of the sprint there is a checklist with estimated times to complete each activity, which can be a helpful guide.
Have backups. There are points in the sprint where your progress can be constrained by others. This could be experts to interview canceling, problems with prototyping or finding enough participants. So to avoid this, come with backups prepared. Find people from other teams to do expert interviews on who you can guarantee will be available. Have a backup plan for user testing if the prototype is not finished. Start recruiting outside of your criteria if needed to ensure you can test it with someone, even though it isn’t great.
Competitors Analysis and Secondary research. Look around who the competitors are and how they are addressing the issue you are trying to work on.
Make notes. We remember all that’s discussed but later on you can miss out on certain points. So please make notes, take screenshots where ever needed.
Empathize with the target group. Put yourself in your target audience’s shoes and understand them. Social media and google search helps to understand what others do. Also it’s common human psychology to relate to something you like and feel safer with something familiar. So when creating your prototype, try and not create something very different but stick to the general pattern.
Be a team player. It’s important to work as a team, set clear goals for the team, stay focused and be open to ideas.
Be precise and to the point. Others are giving their time for your sprint so make sure you are well prepared and keep it short and simple.
Handover and task delegation. Try and be consistent with the team and if you are not available do a proper handover and delegate tasks.
Sometimes one has to restart the sprint again if the results are not favorable. Take this positively as it’s a learning journey.

Set the Stage

Make notes about everything, take photos, screenshots, maybe short videos about the process. All week long. Because the only Miro board isn’t enough, someday you will need to refresh all the steps and decisions made on the sprint. Or describe it to someone.

The recruitment process could be easier if it is started from the plan. We divided different platforms between teammates and this way reached more people out. Prepare a non-official script for invitations. After that, I joined WeDance telegram’s channel, and found events’ organizers. You can go to direct messages and personalize every message with name and style of dances (salsa, kizomba) to them. Firstly, ask : “I found your account in a dance event organizers’ group, and I’m wondering if you are an organizer of salsa events?”. After the response, I texted them “ohh that’s great! I know you are quite a busy person, but can I ask you a few questions about how you set up your kizomba events? I’m doing research and your feedback would be sooo helpful for me 🙌 I can call for 30 minutes if it works? on any day”.

Go to the real dancers’ (or dj/artists/etc) profiles in Instagram or facebook. See how they communicate with subscribers. See their photos to better understand them and to empathize with them.

Day 1

Set clear goals and stay focussed. Try not to come up with a decision on the first day, even if it looks obvious. While mapping, focus on current flow only.
Define the problem statement. Before starting the design sprint, make sure to define the problem statement and have a clear understanding of the project objectives.
Ask a lot of questions to understand the driver for the sprint.
Conduct research. Spend time conducting user research
Create a diverse team. Member with variety of skills can make a better team as all have their
Map out the user journey. This exercise will help you identify areas where you can improve the user experience. Get the expert to verify this map.

Day 2

Brainstorming. Lighting demos should be 2 or 3 features only. Not 2–3 services, but features. Try to find not only “pay options” examples, but how other services navigate to payment, what copywriting uses, when exactly it occurs in the flow. This way you will get more examples.
Video recording for remote design sprints. You can use Loom videos for lightning demos, this worked great in our remote sprint if you set a deadline to hand them in by. It means you don’t have to schedule a meeting to present these all to each other at the same time.
Keep biases out. It’s easy to try and impose the idea we like the most. Please be open to suggestions and new fresh ideas
Ideate. Lightning demos should be well labeled and described.
Plan for user testing. I think one should start planning this sooner as recruitment is time taking. Sending personal messages to targeted participants helps get their engagements. Check a simple guide to recruiting research participants.

Day 3

Screen shots vs hand drawn. While creating a storyboard, use screenshots from real services, don’t draw them.
Be open to criticism. Use the feedback from the group critique to iterate and improve the designs. Refine the sketches and begin to think about how you’ll create a more detailed prototype.
Create a detailed prototype. Create and take feedback from your team members and refine accordingly.

Day 4

Set a clear target audience. Clearly describe who you are targeting? Which dance styles do they dance, where do they live, etc.
Create a high-fidelity prototype. Use the feedback from Day 3 to create a high-fidelity prototype. This prototype should look and function like a real product, with realistic content and interactions.
Test the prototype internally. Test the high-fidelity prototype with team members and the decider.

Day 5

Fill your inferences and observations. After each interview immediately make your notes of findings. Start to fill the table as soon as you post the video record of the interview.

Authors:

James Robey, Dancers Design Sprint Leader, WeDance
Dipali Mankodi, Artists Design Sprint Leader, WeDance
Zuriya Dyussebayeva, Organisers Design Sprint Leader, WeDance
Aleksey Razbakov, Founder, WeDance