---
title: My First Product Design Sprint
teaser: 'Product Design Sprints are great for validating ideas and concepts, and developers
  can both learn and add a lot to them.

  '
tags: design,stockholm,product design
author: Calle Erlandsson
published_on: 2016-07-07
---

Last week, I had the opportunity to be part of my first [product design sprint].
It was an exciting, exhausting, and intense learning experience that I want to
share some tidbits of.

![Sprint materials](https://images.thoughtbot.com/blog-vellum-image-uploads/u0cTBGHTgCU4wcOm8jUa_IMG_1582.jpg)

We did the sprint together with Andreas from [Promoter]: A Stockholm-based
startup that helps game developers and publishers track press mentions and to
distribute keys and promo codes to journalists.

Andreas and I were joined by Teo and Reda. Both Teo and I are developers in [our
Stockholm office] and Reda, who facilitated the sprint, is our design director.

The goal of the sprint was to increase the number of people trying out the
service after visiting the site.

![Story boarding](https://images.thoughtbot.com/blog-vellum-image-uploads/7vFsS4ZQdmq5Sg9P30ci_IMG_1614.jpg)

Over the week we went through many of the exercises outlined in [our Product
Design Sprint guide]. Here are some of my favorites:

[our stockholm office]: https://thoughtbot.com/stockholm
[our product design sprint guide]: https://thoughtbot.com/product-design-sprint/guide
[product design sprint]: https://thoughtbot.com/product-design-sprint
[promoter]: https://www.promoterapp.com

## Five Whys

[The Five Whys exercise] is used to dig deep into the reasons of a problem to
get to the very root of it. It’s done simply by writing down a problem and then
asking “Why?” five times, each time writing down a new problem based on the
answers.

I found it fascinating that with some added structure, asking the same question
five times can provide new insights.

[the five whys exercise]: https://thoughtbot.com/product-design-sprint/guide/understand/five-whys

## Crazy Eights

[Crazy Eights] is a short exercise to generate lots of ideas really quickly.
It’s done by folding a paper in half four times to produce eight panels and then
spending a maximum of five minutes filling them with really rough sketches of
eight different user interaction ideas.

We did this exercise a couple of times throughout the sprint and it really
helped to jump-start my creative thinking.

[crazy eights]: https://thoughtbot.com/product-design-sprint/guide/diverge/crazy-eights

## Silent and Group Critique

After some rounds of crazy eights we dove deeper into the details of our best
deas with [the Story Boarding exercise], sketching out flows through the UI.

We followed up on this with both [silent] and [group critique].  During the
silent critique everyone posted their ideas on the wall. We then individually
looked at all of them, putting dot stickers on parts we found interesting or had
questions about; this made some of the ideas really stand out.

![Silent critique](https://images.thoughtbot.com/blog-vellum-image-uploads/fHeqADwRdapZwjxzWtug_IMG_2282.jpg)

We went through all the parts with dot stickers as a group, asking everyone what
they liked about them.

This way all voices were heard.

[group critique]: https://thoughtbot.com/product-design-sprint/guide/diverge/group-critique
[silent]: https://thoughtbot.com/product-design-sprint/guide/diverge/silent-critique
[the story boarding exercise]: https://thoughtbot.com/product-design-sprint/guide/diverge/story-boarding

## Summing Up

As a developer, taking part in a product design sprint was enlightening; it
taught me new things about design thinking, introduced me to exercises to help
channel my creativity, and showed me new ways of approaching problems.

After the first days, I also had a solid understanding of the product and the
problem it was solving. I would have no trouble jumping onto the project, making
informed decisions about implementation and prioritization while building out
features and squashing bugs.

Having developers take part in product design sprints is also beneficial to the
sprints since it diversifies the perspectives and allows for valuable feedback
that can avoid wasting time testing out technically unfeasible solutions.

![Scribbling on a board](https://images.thoughtbot.com/blog-vellum-image-uploads/B63zM4zQGyzQOmvCB5JM_IMG_1652.jpg)

We think product design sprints are an effective and efficient way to learn and
to validate ideas and concepts. Therefore, we’d like to do more of them in
Stockholm. If you think it sounds interesting, [get in touch]!

[get in touch]: https://thoughtbot.com/stockholm#contact-us