Design Sprint: How To Create A Product Based On The User Experience

At Clarika, we work with a Design Sprint to achieve the best result in everything that involves UX experience. This Google Ventures’ methodology, involves a five-day process that grants the alignment of all the team workers under a shared vision. This method makes it possible to work with defined goals, thanks to a clear week schedule when different ideas are validated with customers through prototyping and testing.

The first day focuses on Understanding the users, their needs, their context and the strategy that we are going to apply. On the second day, a Sketching process is carried out, the team members devise multiple possible solutions. On the third day, Decision Making is implemented, which makes storyboard and navigation’s flow possible for real development. On the fourth day, a rapid Prototype is made for the user’s testing response. Day 5 is Validation, our prototype is presented to clients and real users, to discover if something doesn’t work.

Concept Design involves IA (Information Architecture), VS (Visual Design) and IxD (Interaction Design). This last concept refers to the development of wireframes, prototypes, and functional testing to make tests and redefine concepts. Also, to adjust visibility and functionality.

The Prototype is the first model. It has to be “user-friendly” to offer constant improvement in the user’s life quality. The main objective is to achieve an accurate communication, which means to communicate functionality.

The Flowchart is based on IFML (Interaction, Flow, Modeling, Language) which involves all the fields: UI, UX, modeling and Design.

There are three types of Prototyping:

• Low Fidelity: a design made with pencil and paper, also called “prototype paper”. It would be the first interface idea in which general elements are modeled, like a flow prototyping’s storyboard. In this stage, the “key user interactions” and “layouts explorations” are defined. Through key user interactions, different interactions are simulated, and through layouts explorations, different layers are tested, such as color, volume 3D and shadows. In this stage, guides as Material Design and Touch Gesture can be used. To visually explore how it works it is possible to show those interactions through a video or a GIF.

• High Fidelity: is the most similar model to the final prototype, which allows creating the “ideas of interactive architecture“. Different tools of prototyping can be used, such as Sketch and Xd, that give an idea of paper’s flow animation sketch. At this point, the stage quarters are evaluated, to see how the app will work including scrolls (Up/Down, Right/Left). This process aims to test usability and functionality.

• Native Prototyping: it is used to complete the workflow (Design, Prototype, test, Validate), in order to identify the App’s sweet spot, and it’s based on real feedback users. It is the moment when the magic happens working with Javascript, C++, Python, Swift, among others.

At Clarika we develop software, mobile apps, websites and different systems focusing on the user’s experience. To optimize this experience it’s important having the ability to put ourselves at the user’s place thinking about the mechanisms carried out when navigating. To learn more about UX/UI Design, read our article: UX/UI Experience.