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Sometimes, good ideas don’t get selected (at least, not in the first sprint). But the “sticky decision” – if not perfect – is pretty good and very speedy. That speed helps with the sprint’s larger goal: getting real world data from Friday’s test. Ultimately, it will be that data that leads to the best decisions of all.
On Wednesday afternoon, you’ll answer those small questions and make a plan. Specifically, you’ll take the winning sketches and string them together into a storyboard. This will be similar to the three-panel storyboards you sketched on Tuesday, but it will be longer: about ten to fifteen panels, all tightly connected into one cohesive story.
Pixar, the film studio behind movies like Toy Story and The Incredibles, spends months getting their storyboards right before committing to animation.
The right context can help customers forget they’re trying a prototype and react to your product in a natural way – just as if they had come across it on their own. If you’re prototyping an app, start in the App Store. If you’re prototyping a new cereal box, start on a grocery shelf.
Many of their new customers discovered the service by reading an article about it. So Merci suggested we use a fake New York Times article for our opening scene. The article could be about “new trends in office software”
The trick is to take one or two steps upstream from the beginning of the actual solution you want to test.
How do customers find out your company exists? Where are they and what are they doing just before they use your product? Our favorite opening scenes are simple:
It’s almost always a good idea to present your solution alongside the competition. As a matter of fact, you can ask customers to test out your competitors’ products on Friday right alongside your own prototype.
Those tiny decisions can be tiring, but remember – you’re doing your future self a favor. Every decision you make now is something you won’t have to think about when you build your prototypes.
You can have buttons that don’t function and menu items that are unavailable. Surprisingly, these “dead ends” are generally easy for customers to ignore in Friday’s test.
Avoid inventing a new solution on the spot. Coming up with ideas on Wednesday afternoon isn’t a good use of time or effort.
Work with what you have. Resist inventing new ideas and just work with the good ideas you already came up with.
Include just enough detail. Put enough detail in your storyboard so that nobody has to ask questions like “What happens next?” or “What goes here?” when they are prototyping on Thursday.
To make it easier, continue to rely on the Decider. In the Slack sprint, Braden was the “artist” drawing the storyboard, but Merci made the decisions. It was extra work for her, but it kept us fast and opinionated.
So you’ll have to reverse the way you would normally prioritize. If a small fix is so good and low-risk that you’re already planning to build it next week, then seeing it in a prototype won’t teach you much. Skip those easy wins in favor of big, bold bets.
Fifteen minutes will take longer than fifteen minutes. And there’s another, practical reason for this limit. Sticking to fifteen minutes will ensure that you focus on the most important solutions – and don’t bite off more than you can prototype. (A rule of thumb: Each storyboard frame equals about one minute in your test.)
Decisions take willpower, and you only have so much to spend each day.
“This is a good discussion, but there’s still a lot to cover today. Let’s have the Decider make the call so we can move on.” And: “Let’s just trust the Decider on this one.” Smaller details – such as design or wording – can be pushed off until Thursday: “Let’s leave it up to whoever makes this part of the prototype tomorrow.”
“It seems like we’re coming up with new ideas right now. These ideas are really interesting, and I think you should make note of them so they don’t get lost – but to get the sprint finished, we have to focus on the good ideas we already have.”
Remember that most ideas sound better in the abstract, so they may not be that good. But even if one of those new ideas is the best idea ever, you don’t have time to back up in the process.
On Thursday, you’ll adopt a “fake it” philosophy to turn that storyboard into a realistic prototype.
It makes no difference to the audience. For the few minutes we see the town, we get lost in the story. It all appears real. Whether it’s a façade or a ghost town, the illusion works.
Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. The storyboard removes all guesswork about what to include. The solution sketches are packed with specific text and details. And you have the perfect team, with all the right skills to create your prototype.
But perhaps the biggest problem is that the longer you spend working on something – whether it’s a prototype or a real product – the more attached you’ll become, and the less likely you’ll be to take negative test results to heart. After one day, you’re receptive to feedback. After three months, you’re committed.
if you limit yourselves to building a façade. No plumbing, no wiring, no structural engineering. Just a façade.
the “prototype mindset,” and it’s made up of four simple principles.
1. You Can Prototype Anything This statement might sound corny, but here it is. You have to believe. If you go into Thursday with optimism and a conviction that there is some way to prototype and test your product, you will find a way.
2. Prototypes Are Disposable Don’t prototype anything you aren’t willing to throw away. Remember: This solution might not work. So don’t give in to the temptation of spending a few days or weeks getting your prototype ready.
3. Build Just Enough to Learn, but Not More The prototype is meant to answer questions, so keep it focused. You don’t need a fully functional product – you just need a real-looking façade to which customers can react.
4. The Prototype Must Appear Real To get trustworthy results in your test on Friday, you can’t ask your customers to use their imaginations. You’ve got to show them something realistic. If you do, their reactions will be genuine.
How real is real enough? When you test your prototype on Friday, you’ll want your customers to react naturally and honestly. Show them something flimsy – a “paper prototype” made up of drawings, or a simplified wireframe of your design – and the illusion will break. Once the illusion is broken, customer...
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You want to create a prototype that evokes honest reactions from your customers. You want it to be as real as possible, while sticking to your one-day timeline.
If the quality is too low, people won’t believe the prototype is a real product. If the quality is too high, you’ll be working all night and you won’t finish.
We just needed something that looked like a real app. We remembered that you can run Keynote (Apple’s presentation software, like PowerPoint) on an iPad. A slideshow running full-screen would look just like an app. It could even play videos.
whether you run a store, provide client services, or build physical products. There’s a good chance that your team’s regular tools are not the right tools for prototyping. The trouble with your team’s regular tools is that they’re too perfect – and too slow.
Software changes fast, so check out thesprintbook.com for links to the latest and greatest prototyping
five hundred copies. That book, which barely made it to the public, was Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone.fn1 You know the rest of the story. Today, there are hundreds of millions of Harry Potter books in print worldwide. How did publishers get it so wrong? Eight experts in children’s publishing turned Harry Potter down – and the ninth, Newton, only printed five hundred copies. But Alice, an eight-year-old, knew right away that it was “so much better than anything else.”
Here’s how Friday works: One person from your team acts as Interviewer. He’ll interview five of your target customers, one at a time. He’ll let each of them try to complete a task with the prototype and ask a few questions to understand what they’re thinking as they interact with it. Meanwhile, in another room, the rest of the team will watch a video stream of the interview and make note of the customers’ reactions.
Testing with more people didn’t lead to many more insights – just a lot more work.
The number five also happens to be very convenient. You can fit five one-hour interviews into a single day, with time for a short break between each
one and a team debrief at the end:
What does matter is that the Interviewer and the customer are sitting side by side, talking comfortably.
“Thanks for coming in today! We’re always trying to improve our product, and getting your honest feedback is a really important part of that. “This interview will be pretty informal. I’ll ask a lot of questions, but I’m not testing you – I’m actually testing this product. If you get stuck or confused, it’s not your fault. In fact, it helps us find problems we need to fix. “I’ll start by asking some background questions, then I’ll show you some things we’re working on. Do you have any questions before we begin?”
“What kind of work do you do?” “For how long have you been doing that?” “What do you do when you’re not working?” “What do you do to take care of yourself? To stay in shape? To stay active?” “Have you used any apps or websites or other things to help with fitness? Which ones?” “What did you want them to do for you? What do you like or dislike about them? Did you pay for them? Why? Why not?”
By asking for permission, he reinforces the status relationship: The customer is doing him a favor, not the other way around, and it is the prototype that will be tested, not the customer. It’s also important to say: “Some things may not work quite right yet – if you run into something that’s not working, I’ll let you know.”
“There are no right or wrong answers. Since I didn’t design this, you won’t hurt my feelings or flatter me. In fact, frank, candid feedback is the most helpful.”
That “I didn’t design this” line is important, because it’s easier for customers to be honest if they don’t think the Interviewer
is emotionally invested in...
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“As we go, please think aloud. Tell me what you’re trying to do and how you think you can do it. If you get confused or don’t understand something, please tell me. If you see things you like, tell me that, too.”
Asking target customers to do realistic tasks during an interview is the best way to simulate that real-world experience.
