 Hi everybody, I'm Brittany from AJ & Smart. In this video, I'm going to walk you through exactly how we guarantee design sprint success every single time. Let's do it. In this video today, I'm going to share with you guys the secret of how we guarantee that every design sprint we run with our clients is a successful one. This video is going to be really, really helpful if you are currently running design sprints, if you're interested in selling the design sprint, if you actually want to introduce design sprints into your organization, or if you're just curious what the heck it is that here at AJ & Smart we do all day. The design sprint is a week-long process where you go from a broad challenge or idea to a user-tested prototype. It's basically a way to either validate or invalidate an idea very, very quickly. If you want a little bit more information and background on the design sprint, you can definitely click this card above and that'll give you a lot more detail into how that looks. So if any questions come up throughout the video, we'd really love if you put them in the comments. We answer every single question, so throw them down there and we'll definitely respond. At AJ & Smart, we've run over a hundred design sprints with some of the biggest companies in the world. So we've run so many design sprints that we've really learned what it actually takes to ensure that you're having a successful outcome from your sprint. Now before I actually dive into what that actually looks like, I'd like to preface a couple of things. So first of all, what do I mean when I say successful? What is a successful design sprint? In reality, the whole purpose of the design sprint is actually just to invalidate or validate an idea within a short period of time. So you don't actually put something into full production mode, waste a lot of time, a lot of resources into something that actually might not even work. In sort of a very broad sense, a successful design sprint is when you actually do either of those things. You either validate or invalidate. However, I will say that it's kind of a tough sell, whether it be to an external client or an internal team, if the potential outcome of the design sprint is that you've invalidated the idea. That's really difficult to get people on board and get the buy-in to run design sprints. So another thing is we have been running a lot of design sprints before we actually shifted the way that we package them to what we're doing today. And what we found was we'd be running these design sprint weeks, right? And we go through the whole week, we build our prototype, we would test the actual prototype with users, we get all of this data and feedback and feel kind of like we wanted to do more. We wanted to iterate on the idea really quickly while everything was really fresh in order to actually get a little bit closer to what the user would actually want from this product or service. So what we decided to do is introduce an iteration sprint that would be done right after the first sprint week. So we would take what we learned from the first week, we would iterate on it and we would get even closer to a product that's ready to throw into development. So not only that, but we also introduced a kickoff research week as well as a delivery week. So at this point in time, we are selling the design spread in a four week package here at AJ & Smart. Okay, so in this section of the video, I'm now going to go on a little bit more of a deep dive on actually what happens during every week of our four week design sprint package. So we have week zero, we call this the pre-flight. This is a week of research. This is when we're actually looking into the industry that we're working in. We're actually going to look and align on what their business goals are. We have calls with the client as well. We're figuring out what their target demographic is, who are we going to be testing with. And at this point in time, we're actually already starting to figure out who our user testers are going to be and we're kind of coming up with the tactics on how we're going to recruit them. So it's a really important week. We didn't ever do this before. You know, we were running design sprints for a really long time before we introduced the week zero and this really like changed a lot for us. We felt much more prepared going into the week one. We felt like we were aligned really well with our client before we actually started the design sprint. And it was just a really nice way to make sure that we knew what was going on in that specific industry, right? We could check out the news around what's happening, what are the new innovations in that space. And it just really helps you kind of have a better hold on what you're going to be working on. Then we actually move into week one, which we call week one, is the actual first design sprint. And this is the design sprint 2.0, of course. The design sprint is this week long process where you come together, we align on the challenge. We start to ideate and come up with solutions. We actually make a decision. We prototype that thing in one day and then we actually test it in the following day with five users. So at the end of that week one, we also have a day where we're really synthesizing the data. So that's the Friday where we're taking everything from the test and figuring out what it is that we learned. What worked? What didn't work? What will we like to move towards? Where should we iterate to? Then we move into week two, which is actually the iteration sprint. So to clarify, this is actually the third week of the design sprint package, but we call it week two because it is the second sprint. Just for fun, just to confuse people. So the iteration sprint you can think of as being very similar to the design sprint, but almost a little bit more condensed and with much more of a focus on the prototype. So we're actually coming back together as a team in terms of the client. They don't actually need to be in the room for the iteration sprint, which is a really nice bonus for them. So they can actually just come in on a call in the morning where we kind of revise everything that happened in the week before. We align on what the new sprint questions will be and then we move forward just with our team on our own. In this iteration sprint, I'm not going to go into too much detail in this video, but what we do is we do an ideation session again. So we'll do like another round of lightning demos and then we'll sketch again. So everybody will do a new sketch on the team and then we actually build on to the prototype. We do like the voting rounds and everything make more decisions and we add features to the already formed prototype. So your prototype is becoming more robust and then of course we retest with five users. Sometimes we'll use some users that we used in the first week, but it is nice to have a balance. So you have a few users that also tested in the first week, but then you'll bring in some new eyes as well, some new information. It's really important to keep that balance. So then we're moving into week three, which is the project delivery week. This is a very important week, obviously. We're taking everything we've learned. We're taking all the data from the user test and we're synthesizing it for the client. So this includes obviously providing them with an executive summary. We are also showing them a nice highlight reel from the user test. So they have those nice raw insights from their user tests with their prototype. We're obviously delivering both prototypes and of course the design files to the client. Now important to note obviously is that at the end of these four weeks the client is not leaving us with a fully formed, ready to go to market product. They actually have the core of the product so they know what the actual product is. They know what the USP is going to be and they also have some very clear ideas of the key features that they should actually include in the product. So they can go back actually with a really nice roadmap to deliver to their development team and they can say here's what you're going to start working on now. The other thing about our delivery week that our clients really really like is we actually take the features and put them on an effort impact scale. So we actually make a very clear prioritized list of the things that their development team should work on and in what order. That is really really valuable for them so that they can keep the momentum going after the sprint. So once we actually made the shift from offering just a single design sprint to actually adding on a research week and an iteration week and a delivery week. We found that our clients could take what we were working on, bring it back to their team, keep the momentum going and they would have a really nice clear prioritized roadmap of how to move the product forward. Ultimately they were able to launch products faster and really keep the momentum going on their team. Okay thank you so much for watching this video today. I hope that it gave you some insight into how here at AJ & Smart we guarantee design sprint success. If you have any comments on how you're running design sprints, maybe some little tips or tricks that you've found that work really well definitely put them in the comments below or if you have any questions for us on this actual package that we're selling or anything actually surrounding design sprints you can ask those in the comments as well. So if you want to see more from us please subscribe to our YouTube channel. We're putting out videos every single week on design sprints, innovation, product design, everything. Also we have a really nice little Instagram profile where you can follow along daily with what we're up to, how we're working. That's a really nice community to join as well. We also have a podcast that is actually with Jonathan Courtney our CEO and Jake Knapp the inventor of the design sprint. That's a really nice insightful podcast comes out every Monday. We also have a really active and fantastic Facebook group called Innovation Hackers and this is a community that has just grown to be way bigger than we ever thought it would be and it's people sharing tips and tricks on innovation, how they're making things happen, processes, it's all very very valuable stuff. So definitely join that group as well. We'll put all the links down below for you. Thank you so much for watching. Please like the video if you found it useful, helpful, insightful and we'll see you next time. Thanks so much guys. Did I miss something? Just click on the video above me. Where is it going to be? Somewhere around here. Let me start. Okay. Sorry. However, it's... However, I... Okay, I'm ready. I'm ready. I'm ready. I'm ready, Callan. However, obviously...