Karrot's Community Design Process

[nathalie]

Reference: The Design Sprint

The Design Sprint invented at Google is a process for teams to effectively work on a new project within five days, typically from Monday to Friday. All stages are shown in the figure below. The Design Sprint is well suited for software projects.

On the first day the challenge and the problem are defined. The team sets long-term goals for the project, but also looks at difficult questions for the sprint. A map of key players is drawn. There is a set of methods the team can conduct like ‘ask the experts’ to gather more information in small interviews and ‘how might we’ to focus back on opportunities. At the end of the first day a target from the map is
chosen.

The second day is all about getting ideas together and sketching solutions. At this point concrete drawings are welcome. As a guiding principle, every team member is asked to do their own sketching,
inspired by existing solutions and the discussions from the previous days.

The different sketches will be presented to the team on the third day in order to decide for one or a mix of sketches. Later the day a storyboard will be produced to help prototyping. In around ten steps the storyboard shows how a user will interact with the new developed product.

The last two days are about prototyping. A prototype is built on the fourth day with enough functionality to allow user testing on the last day. On the last day interviews are done with users to receive feedback. The idea is to identify patterns from the interviews which can then be compared with the long-term goal and sprint questions from day one. On this basis the team decides how to continue after the Design Sprint.

To have a successful Design Sprint two roles need to be assigned. One is the facilitator, guiding the group through the whole process, knowing the steps and methods and bringing the team together. The second one is the decider, who is taking final decisions after the team went through a non-binding voting phase.

Links:

• https://www.thesprintbook.com/
• The Design Sprint — GV
• The Design Sprint

[nathalie]

Karrot style: Community Design Process

This is a variation of the Design Sprint adapted from the Karrot team and the Karrot Community. One of the most significant changes is to change the ’sprint’ to a ’process’. The following describes the different stages.

Stage 1 - Defining the Challenge

@bruno

This is the first stage (or “day”, in the original sprint), in which we will work together to have a clear definition of the problem or challenge ahead of us in this process. What is the long-term goal and what are main difficult questions we need to answer in order to get there? We will also make a very simple map, like a flowchart, of this journey, starting from key actors all the way to the end goal.

Ok, now let’s take it step by step! We begin by setting the long-term goal and asking the difficult questions…

1 - Long-term goal

Why are we doing this design process? What do we want to achieve? Where do we want to be in six months, a year, or even five years from now?

2 - Difficult questions

What needs to be true in order to achieve the goal? What needs to be done to make it happen? How could we fail? What could go wrong?

Now try to answer number 1 and 2 from your own perspective, experience and understanding of the problem/challenge at hand. There’s no right or wrong. We’re trying to explore these things together by gathering different knowledge and perspectives on the subject. We can work later on organizing these thoughts on the map.

Useful framing: ‘How might we…’

Also possible to create a map with topics, questions, key players

Stage 2 - Sketching Solution

@bruno

This is the second stage of this process to design governance features to Karrot. Now we try to sketch some ideas, based on the insights gained from the previous stage. Next up is prototyping and testing, but until we get there we have probably a few meetings left to have the final sketch (although I suspect we will need less meetings than on the first stage).

Method: First doing own sketches and then presenting them to other participants. The defined long-term goal from Stage 1 serves as a guideline and reference to come back to.

Tools: https://excalidraw.com/, pen and paper

Stage 3 - Synthesize ideas and make first decision

Either the previous step led to a collaborative process where a final sketch emerged or one person synthesizes ideas into a final sketch and brings it back to the group.

Stage 4 - Prototyping

Based on the sketches and decision a prototype can be build.

Simple: Use https://penpot.app/ or work on a more detailed sketch with whatever tool you like

Advanced: Build more complex prototype tool to show functionality.

Stage 5 - Testing the Prototype/ Get feedback

Simple: Bring back to Weekly Meeting, ask in Karrot group and forum

Advanced: Conduct interviews following a protocol e.g. Breaking the Silo - 5. Testing the prototype

Final: Decide to implement and hand-off to development

Bring to the Karrot team and seek consent. Move forward with development.

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And in every step: celebrate and have fun