Converge on the most promising storyboards using an individual critique followed by voting.
👥 1 and more | ⏰ between 10 and 15 minutes
Objectives
After creating storyboards of user stories, which show how a user would move through part of the story, you’ll discuss and evaluate them. The critiques will also provide an opportunity to ask questions you may have about any of the storyboards.Â
Determining which storyboards (or parts of storyboards) everyone liked best will help the team decide where to focus and which pieces will go into the prototype.
Instructions
- For the Silent Critique, participants are given a bunch of dot stickers. Everyone silently looks at the storyboards and puts a sticker on every idea or part of an idea they like. There are no limits to how many stickers you can use, and you can vote for your own ideas. By the end, you’ve got a heat map of ideas.
- For the Three-Minute Critiques, everybody gathers around the storyboards one at a time. First, people talk about what they liked, then we ask the person who drew it if we missed anything important. Usually the best ideas are the ones people can understand without an explanation. This process works far better than letting people explain their ideas first — which almost always uses up a lot of time.
- You might opt to do the three-minute critiques on a projector, especially if there are a lot of ideas to get through. Take photos of each storyboard, upload them to a shared drive, put them in an editable file, then make notes about parts we like with outlines and text labels as you go through. This is easier for everyone to see, and you have a digital artifact of the ideas. Count on 15 extra minutes to capture and upload photos.
- Super Vote: Once you’ve looked at all the ideas, everybody gets a few “special” stickers (which can be the same dot stickers with a pen mark on them). These are “super votes” for the ideas you think are the best. Between the original and super votes, it’s easy to see the strongest concepts.
The super votes can reflect the decision-making structure of your team or company. Does your CEO make all final product decisions? If that’s the case, be honest, and give her three super votes and everybody else one. The simple rule is to give the deciders extra votes.
By default, this process will be a meritocracy, but that’s not always the way companies work and consensus can lead to poor design decisions. The last thing you want are decisions that the deciders don’t truly support. Don’t be surprised if it feels a bit awkward to bring this up.
Source:
Google Ventures, http://www.gv.com/lib/the-product-design-sprint-divergeday2
https://www.slideshare.net/almingwork/nyt-product-discovery-activity-guide