Prudential UX Design Sprint

Despite being a product designer, yesterday I had the pleasure of attending a UX design sprint that was hosted by Prudential. Although I had to leave early after getting ill, I still learned a lot from this experience. Traditionally speaking UX design is confined to the digital word, however having chosen to specify in physical objects I still found a lot of the information relevant.

A user still experiences a physical product and interacts with that object, in a similar way to how a user may experience an app or other screen based design. There will be aspects of a physical object that a user will like, and aspects the user may not like, this being said there will be ways the designer can improve the aspects that aren't so successful and create a fluid journey for the user to follow. Exactly the same as a piece of digital interaction design.

The main thing I took away from this workshop was, its all about understanding your user and their needs and how you can solve their problem(s), no matter whether that may be screen based or a physical form.

There was two design techniques that were encouraged to complete during this design sprint that I thought were really useful and unique. The first involved mapping the users journey on a graph thinking about what the user is doing and feeling at each stage. This highlights the parts of an experience that users really enjoy and which parts users really hate. Prudential explained that this helps them to focus their designs to better the least enjoyed parts of a journey instead of wasting time on aspects that already satisfy user needs. It is crucial to prudential to ensure the last part of a users journey is a positive experience so as this is the most memorable moment. I think this is very applicable to both physical and digital designs and after my mark 2 presentation I would like to evaluate the users experience in this way so that I can identify what aspects of my design should be improved upon before my final hand in.

The second design process was called ‘Crazy Eights’ which is a method used by Google. You start by generating eight concepts in a very small amount of time allowing no space for self critique. then after the time is up you select three of your eight generated concepts and develop these slightly to give greater detail and understanding, this is also timed so there is a limit to how defined these concepts can become. Every one in your group proceeds to display their ideas and you can vote three times for someones whole idea, or simply an aspect such as the design or idea. The most popular ideas are combined into one super concept. I found this a really effective way of accumulating many quality ideas under time pressure and was very appropriate for this workshop, and a technique I would consider doing again if working with a team in a similar circumstance.

Having wished I was well enough to see my teams final concept, writing this post has helped me extract and refine everything I had the opportunity to learn in the hours that I was there. So heres a picture of the boys I was working with voting on our 'Crazy Eights' before I had to leave.