 Hey, Jonathan from AJ & Smart here, and this is the ultimate step-by-step guide to running a remote design sprint. In the video you're about to see, our senior product director, Tim Hofer, runs through how we at AJ & Smart run remote design sprints for our clients. We're going to be showing you the digital whiteboard we use, how we transform all of the exercises into digital format, and basically everything you could possibly want to know about running a design sprint remotely. I hope you love it. Let us know in the comments what else you want to know. Let us know in the comments if you liked it. Please hit the like button. Please subscribe. We're trying to grow this channel. We appreciate your attention. Thank you so much. I'm going to hand over to Tim now. Take it away. I'm going to show you exactly how we run remote sprints with our clients using a tool called MyRow. So MyRow is a digital whiteboard tool and there are a couple of other great options out there. We have heard really good things about MyRow as well. So it doesn't really matter if you're using MyRow or Neural or maybe there are other tools that you're using. Most of these tools have similar features. And I'm also going to show you why it's not that important to worry about specific features as long as you can work as a team in collaboration with people remotely. You don't need that much to actually run and facilitate a sprint. So let's jump right in. Before we start working with our clients in a workshop we always make time to onboard them both through the sprint process and to the tool that we will be using in the workshop. So in the case of MyRow we have this little sandbox prepared for them. The most important thing that they need to learn is how do I navigate through the workshop space? So here we have an outline of all the frames that are on the board. So it's really easy for the facilitator of people are getting lost to say, hey everybody, please take a look at the outline and join me at number three, the map. Once you click on it, you immediately jump there. So it's very convenient to get around. Another thing that's important is teaching them how to swipe and zoom. This is something that I think most people are probably familiar with especially if you're watching this video but you would be surprised how many people working for large enterprises or companies actually don't know how to do this because all they're doing at work is essentially navigating spreadsheets. So this is really useful to show them because this will be a completely new experience for them taking the time to show them how to swipe around the workspace. This will make life so much easier for them and I think they will really appreciate if you do that. The other thing that is really good to know is even though, as you can see here, there is a bunch of really powerful features in MyRow and also in Mural and other tools, you don't actually need most of them. For the purpose of running a remote sprint, the most important things that participants need to be able to do is first of all, select an element and copy it quickly and also use it and write something on the sticky note. So like here, we're just showing them how to move the sticky note like this here and also how to copy it. So if you press down option and you drag it like this, you make an instant copy but you can also of course just use copy paste. That's also fine. And that's pretty much all that they need to understand to make use of this tool, which is I think really, really important because it's quite overwhelming. Every time you're onboarding people to a new tool, it's intimidating seeing so many great features and maybe not being able to make sense of most of them. So if that happens and people are worried about this, just tell them, don't worry, you don't need to do much. I'm just going to show you exactly how it's done. So now let's move on to the structure of the sprint that we have prepared here in our sprint template. And I'm also going to show you later on how these things look in practice. So the first thing that is maybe good to know is that unlike a real in-person sprint, we are actually changing the structure and the timetable of the workshop slightly. So usually for in-person sprint workshop, we are blocking two full days and for the same workshop in a remote setting, we are actually blocking three half days. So we're assuming that we're doing the entire problem framing part or end of the first week, then we are running two more workshops the next week on two days so that we can keep the remote sessions quite short because it's very exhausting sitting in front of your computer the entire time. It's very easy to lose focus and get distracted. So our recommendation would be change the timetable in a way that allows you to keep the workshop, the workshops a bit more focused and a bit more concise and you will need to find the perfect stopping point for every day to make that work. But I'm going to show you exactly how we do it. So the actual workshop itself doesn't really change too much. I mean, you can pretty much see every exercise here on the board. You have the map, you have the how might we challenges and we have something here to capture the top voted how might we's two year goal sprint questions and then we also have a sheet here where we can paste the final longterm goal and the sprint questions so that we have a nice little artifact and a checkpoint for people to refer back to. So in a way, digital whiteboard workspace becomes almost like this living document that the facilitator can also change and adapt in preparation of the next workshops. So yeah, you can see how this looks like. This is where we're capturing the concept gallery and it all ends with user test flow, storyboard and then we are at the wall of justice for running user tests. So this is also something I'm going to show you in detail because I think it's very interesting for people to see how that exactly works in remote sprint. So let's move on. What I want to show you now is something that's really important to understand and because a lot of people ask us, so how do you do the map in a remote setting or how do you do lightning demos? So one thing that I need to make clear is that we're never starting from a blank slate. So what you just saw earlier, this kind of like these empty templates, a client will never see that. Whenever we are starting the workshop, we are always using a template that has been pre-populated and pre-filled with artifacts and ideas and sticky notes that are based on client interviews we did in preparation of the workshop. So the map is actually something that we would have ready to discuss and have a structured conversation around. Already in my role like this year, so we would have the facilitator kind of like present this map back to the group and then also allow the participants to give feedback, make suggestions how to change things. Like for example, maybe there is something in there that is actually not relevant at all. We can just delete it like this. As you can see, it's also just like a list of bullet points which makes it really, really easy to just add new stuff like this here and you can also move things around quite easily. So if you realize, oh, there's actually a step missing here let me just quickly create a new block here. That's really easy to do. It's actually way easier than doing the same thing on a whiteboard where you have to rub everything off the whiteboard and then you'll have to rewrite everything. It can be quite tedious to do that. So if you have the opportunity to work in a digital whiteboard, I think after a couple of times you will really appreciate how much time you're saving doing this. So the map is one thing that we are already preparing same with the challenges and I'm also going to talk quickly about voting here. So this is pretty much the state that clients would see when the workshop starts. So we would just quickly allow them to look through each of these and maybe if they have anything to add at their own sticky notes like this here it is really easy to do. So in my role you actually have built in voting functionalities where you can just select an area to vote on and so this is too big. Let me just make this a little bit smaller. So like this here and once you are done with the setup you can define very granularly what people can actually vote on. As you can see, it's a bit finicky and I personally think it's a pretty good tool but there is a drawback and the drawback is that when people vote on these you actually don't see the votes of other people before the timer goes off. So if you're in a heatmap situation where the voting is a bit of a trick like a mix of actually people pointing out interesting features but also a way for you to highlight specific features that you want to get other people to notice the built in voting functionality doesn't work that well. Another thing that is a bit of a drawback with the voting feature is that you can only vote on specific pre-determined elements in my role. So if you're actually doing a heatmap on a concept drawing you can only vote on the entire image that you uploaded and not on specific features. So I want to show you how we recreate the voting experience with dot votes on my role. So for this, we have just a little red dot here and we're using that exactly like we would use a dot sticker in a real workshop. So this is also part of the onboarding by the way we're explaining people how to copy and paste things. So we just tell them everybody copy this red dot here decider gets four dots, everyone else gets two dots and I'll take your time to read through all of these and vote on the ones that you find most relevant. So I personally prefer doing it this way because unlike with the voting feature that is built in here you can actually see the votes built up while the voting is going on. And you don't have to wait for the voting to finish to see the results, which is quite nice. This also allows the facilitator to see if maybe there is a very interesting and relevant challenge that maybe is getting overlooked by the group and put some additional heat on that just so that it gets people from the sprint team to notice it more. So it's a really good recreation of the actual voting in an in-person workshop and I just prefer doing that. Another really interesting and nice benefit is it is just so cool to see people work together in real time and this is something that you should also know. So currently I'm alone on this board but when there are other people joining the board I can actually see them moving around which is quite nice. So let's move on. So in the end you have your top voted, how might we? You're doing the exact same thing with the two-year goal. You're doing the same thing with the sprint question, the can we questions. And like I said, we're never starting from a blank slate. So every time a client participant is coming to these exercise sheets here they're already prefilled with suggestions from our side and we're getting these suggestions like we're not pulling these suggestions out of thin air we're basing them on interviews we did before the workshop. So very often people will actually see their concerns or their challenges written out already by people from our team. So once the voting is done we have a sheet here where we're just capturing everything. This sheet here will come in handy later on because it's breaking down the long-term goal and the sprint questions in a really easy to understand way. And when we're then going back to the map when we're actually placing the top voted, how might we? This is also really easy to do and you can just copy the sticky notes and move them around like this here. So you can just do it like this here and you can just move them here and here. And with the pen tool you can also very easily draw like the key area on the map that you need to work on really easy to do again. You can make that quite chunky here, quite visible as well and it's also very easy to change and edit it. So this is making it really nice. So with the definition of the long-term goal and the sprint questions, we are actually ending the first workshop, the problem and challenge framing workshop. And it's the first time now that we're giving our participants homework to do on their own time is coming up with lightning demos. And lightning demos are really nice homework because I mean, we are also giving them clear instructions what to do with the lightning demos, how to research them. And we're also asking them to submit their lightning demos basically after a couple of hours after the workshop ended because that allows the facilitator to upload the lightning demos to the board. So the participants from the client side don't have to worry about all of that. The facilitators are taken care of that completely and also breaking it down in a way that is easy to present then in the next workshop. So another reason why we're doing that is because we want to avoid our clients working overtime or working on the weekend to prepare these lightning demos. We're telling them specifically, look, you can run off now, the workshop is done. However, by the end of today, 6 p.m. your time, please send us your lightning demos with a few bullet points and send them directly to the facilitator. And the facilitator can then also check in if they don't receive any lightning demos. So to maybe coach them one on one to help them find really relevant lightning demos as well. So when the next workshop is starting, we already have the lightning demos prepared on a board that looks like this here and we are then taking turns to present them one by one. So another thing that is quite nice to do on a digital whiteboard is embedding a little video. So it's really easy to just capture a video and show your lightning demos like this. So this allows you to be very descriptive in communicating the big idea. And you can also share links. So this is also something that is very difficult to do in an in-person sprint. It's really easy for participants if they are starting to sketch their own concept to go back to the lightning demos, click on a link and just look again at what the lightning demo was about. Okay, so these are the lightning demos and now let's take a look at the creation of the concept. So this is something that we get a lot of questions about like what is the best way to sketch a concept in a digital whiteboard tool like my role. So the answer to this is we are actually just using the whiteboard tool to facilitate the sketching but the sketching itself is happening together alone on paper with a Sharpie in person with every participant. So the way you can imagine this to work is we are running them through the instructions for something like the note taking. We're setting off the timer which is also quite easy to do in a viral like this. Timer is running now and then we are just telling them the specific steps that they need to be aware of. And otherwise they can just remain sitting, they can just remain connected to the group call while they are doing this. And the nice thing about this is also that it is really easy for the facilitator to check in with individual participants. If you find that somebody is maybe having trouble or is looking distracted, you can just check in with them directly and ask them if everything is okay, if they need help, if there's anything you can do for them. So we are progressively disclosing the concept sketching like this. We are moving through these four steps without having any kind of distraction. So with that we're doing the crazy eight. As you can see, it's all really easy to do with the built timer. And at the end, when we are starting our solution concept, this is another instance when we are giving the participants homework. So we don't necessarily need them to keep locked into the call or the workshop working on this. However, we are giving them very clear guidance. We're telling them when they have to submit their concept either as a photo or a scan. Again, like the Lightning demos, they send it to the facilitator and the facilitator is then preparing it for the following workshop like this year. So you can see there is nothing digital on here. It's all on paper with sharpies, like pretty standard concept sketches that you are familiar with from in-person sprints. And this is how we start off the last workshop of the first sprint week voting on the concepts. Again, we are using these red dots as votes and we're not using the built-in voting functionality. And again, the decider can just place their decider dot on the winning concept or a feature that they really like. And it's quite easy to do. Again, this is where the built-in voting functionality won't be as helpful because you can only vote on a specific image but not on parts of the image. So our advice would be just recreate these voting dots. It's a bit more visual and a nicer way to bring across the feeling of collaboration and really working as a team. Which brings me to the storyboard. We often get questions, how do you actually storyboard in a remote workshop? And so one thing that Adrian Smart is doing is differently from the standard sprint process as it's described in Jake Knapp's book is that we introduced a little pre-storyboard exercise called the user test flow to structure the conversation around the storyboard a bit better. Because if you have done a storyboard exercise with clients before, you know that it often tends to go off the rails a little bit and then you have these huge unstructured discussions about a specific screen and it's a lot of like the artist like having to wipe things off the board and starting from scratch and just to introduce some guard rails and constraints to this entire process, we came up with a user journey mapping hack and we just call it the user test flow. So we have a lot of resources on that. So I'm not going to explain the exercise too much but essentially what we are doing here is we are defining a very high level version of what's going to happen in the prototype without going too much detail but just so that everybody is aligned on what is actually happening in the prototype even if we still don't really know what the screens will look like we at least have an understanding of the important things that are happening in the prototype. Yeah, every participant is creating their own version of that perfect prototyping flow and in the end we are voting on one of these flows and the decider can pick one main flow and also pick one extra post it from another flow if they think that there's maybe a feature that is missing from this flow and in the end we're just combining this flow and adding it to the storyboard which has been created here. So we're doing the storyboard in several passes. So as you can see here I've already copied over the post it's from the winning flow to the storyboard and we are doing several passes of the storyboard. The first pass would be essentially us quickly running through each of these sticky notes here to keep everyone aligned on their story that we want to have represented in the prototype and then we are also adding a couple of additional bullet points and this is what we are calling breadboarding. It's based on the shape up process basecamp is using for product development. So essentially what this is is it's going one step deeper into detail compared to the sticky notes but it's still not really on a wireframe level. So let's say we have the sticky note here agent opens dashboard to create new update. We might be able to just ask the client like what do you see actually happening on the dashboard? So let's just look at a few like made up examples here. So this is what breadboarding essentially looks like. It's as you can see it's very low-fi but it's going into more detail than the sticky note. And this is so this is usually the second pass. Another thing that is really convenient is looking at the winning concept again and you can just grab, copy the winning concept, paste it in here and then you can take the elements of the winning concept that are corresponding to the screen you're working on. So very often you don't actually have to sketch anything here. You can just take these drawings and maybe add a few post-its like so you can just change the headline like this and you can just annotate things it's very easy to do. Another thing to keep in mind is that although the storyboard is going into quite a lot of detail a lot of this detail is actually content and it's not so much coming up with the perfect design. So very often it's completely sufficient to utilize these built-in shapes that are part of the digital whiteboard. Let's say you want to create an navigation bar for your app. I mean, this is really just a rectangle with a couple of other rectangles in it. So it is quite simple to do that. And I mean, of course you can go into quite a lot of detail if it's necessary but for many screens it won't actually be necessary. The most important thing for the designer is to understand what's happening on each screen. What is the test they're able to do? So do I need to add any affordances for a new workflow for example, like button? As long as you can add this level of detail it's quite easy to storyboard like that. Another thing to keep in mind as well is usually in every prototype you only have one to two key screens that are essentially 90% of the idea that you're trying to convey and everything else is screens that are not as important to figure out in detail. It can make a lot of sense to just spend a lot of time mapping out these key screens and when you have a capable artist on your team they can quickly whip up something that is almost on the wireframe level. For example, with these built-in functionalities here let's say you just want to show there's a pop-up showing up. Hey, there's a suspicious activity like this here, boom, done. Really easy to do. It might take a while to get a hang of it but so in general it's not a huge problem and as long as you stick to the process I showed you before so kind of like progressively adding more detail starting off with the sticky notes then moving on to breadboarding using things like the existing drawings with a few annotations and then for key screens you can actually create a more high fidelity almost like wireframe type layouts of each individual screen and this is the storyboard and with the end of the storyboard also ends the first series of workshops for the sprint and now I'm also going to show you how we capture testing notes in MyRow. So this is actually how we started using MyRow in sprints. This was at a time where most of our sprint workshops were actually in person. We realized that it's a lot more efficient and a lot easier to take all the notes from user tests in digital format using MyRow. So here you can see the end result of one testing day and how that usually works is that we are working with two people each person has their own laptop in front of them. You have the person conducting the interview and actually talking to the testers and then you have the note taker and both the note taker and the interviewer have the MyRow board open and can quickly add and capture all the feedback that is coming from the tester. So this is actually way faster to do than on paper. It's also producing a lot less waste and you can also work a lot better as a team and like both always have a complete visibility of what the other person is actually adding to the board. So it's really easy to add notes like this here and then copy new post-it notes or just paste them here. So another thing that is really nice is that you can very quickly change the color of the post-its here. It's very convenient to do and you can also sort the post-it notes which is really useful. So using these different colors when you look at the different colors of the sticky notes it's really easy to see patterns emerge like maybe so there's a lot of critical feedback on this topic here, escalation. There must be some issue with it or there are a couple of features that get a lot of positive feedback here. So all of this is really nice. And then in the end we are also looking at adding the sprint questions to the board and it can get a very quick yes or no answer in all of these and that makes it really easy. And we also have things like the intro script prepared here. So this is really easy to test with. Hey, Jonathan here again. I hope you enjoyed that video. Like I said, leave a comment down below if you wanna know anything else about remote design sprints or remote workshops. Do hit the like button, do hit subscribe if you enjoyed this video and thank you so much for watching. See you next week.