Design Sprint: Defining Design Thinking

For some of us, sticky notes are our best friends, and our planners are works of carefully detailed art. We tend to overthink and over-plan but then rush to the finish line when the planning process takes longer than, well, planned.

Design Sprints lead you out of your tidy comfort zone. Essentially, a Design Sprint is a crash course (and yes, I mean crash) to Design Thinking. Design Thinking is a technique centered around innovating for the human experience. These fast-paced, high-stress activities force you into an overwhelming invention mode to create something of value for a user of your choice.

In a Design Sprint, you connect with another person to listen and understand their concerns or problems. By the end, you will have a solution to those problems. First, you need to empathize with the other person’s situation. Ask general questions first (for this project, the prompted question was “tell me about your experiences here at Quinnipiac University”), then follow those with more directed questions. Note their answers for reference later.

Hopefully, this series of questions will lead you and your interviewee down a rabbit hole of one or a few issues. With your notes, highlight which statements stuck out to you the most. Turn these into a problem statement: “Something is a challenge for someone because of this reason.” In my practice, the problem statement became: “Completing courses with absentee professors is a challenge for some students because they need more participation and adequate feedback from their professors.”

To solve your problem, you need to ask the right questions. So, what question would best introduce your problem statement? The initial question I used was, “How might we ensure students get full participatory instruction and constructive interaction from their professors?” Unfortunately, my first question didn’t produce great responses, so I took an alternate approach to the question, “How might we hold professors accountable for their course interaction and instruction?”

Research your questions for possible solutions. Perhaps someone has encountered a similar issue, and inspiration for your ideas is always helpful. With my initial question, the “solutions” I found revolved around being a better student rather than being a more present teacher. The second question (and a few similar variations) gave me some insight into teachers’ tricks to being more proactive in the classroom.

I created a few different concepts for new solutions with this research available as inspiration. The first involved a feedback survey throughout the course to ensure students could give professors insight into their needs. In the second idea, professors would have a short “engagement” checklist. The third concept was a simple professor availability schedule to offer transparency as to when students could contact the professor. Like the first idea, the fourth centered around student feedback—this time at the end of class rather than through an online form. The fifth and final concept listed a required class meeting time, an optional meeting before the assignment due date, and optional individualized meetings.

I presented these ideas to Luke, who liked having dedicated time in class to openly receiving student feedback and having scheduled availability for questions. He didn’t like having individual meetings with the professor but liked the optional meeting before the assignment due date.

Based on Luke’s responses, I narrowed down my concept sketches to two primary concepts: a class daily plan to allow time in the end for feedback and an anonymous dropbox for student questions. Luke liked both ideas but was more interested in the dropbox idea, especially if it could be repurposed on Blackboard.

Then, I turned to prototyping. Expanding on the dropbox concept, I created a separate tab on Blackboard for questions. All enrolled students would see public questions, but the question submission form allows for a private mode. Only the author and professor can view a private question. The submission form also allows students to select a general topic and connect with the professor for an individual meeting.

When I presented this idea to Luke, he liked the overall format of the online dropbox and the option to choose public or private. He recommended adding up-votes and down-votes for the questions. I also offered a “follow-up question” form under the answered questions, but Luke believed this would clutter the answer pages. Since he also liked the option to schedule a meeting, he suggested linking the page to the professor’s Calendly.

Without further ado, here is the full document for my Design Sprint: