DESIGN SPRINT
SIMGROEP
SIMGroep is a company that develops digital services for governments. They try to improve several processes or create new services that all revolve around the user, in order to make the connection between the government and citizens stronger.
For their latest project around the wedding process at the local government, their goal was to investigate the user and its needs and to come up with new angles for the process that takes places online.
When people want to get married, they have to take care of so many things, at all kind of different organizations that it is hard to get a good overview of the total process. Getting married is something exciting and the preparations should address that feeling of excitement and be as fun as the actual wedding. Although some of the preparations can be fun, like picking out a wedding dress, cake or looking for a good band, the legal things you have to take care of at your government is the last thing on your mind, while it is actually very important. SIMgroep wanted to investigate the possibilities for a new or redesigned digital service, to provide a good overview for the user and the process to be as exciting as the rest of the preparations and wedding.
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Therefore, Alberga Consultancy was invited to perform a small two-day Design Sprint for SIMgroep in order to bring everyone together and 'think outside the box'. Prior to the Design Sprint, all the research that was performed on this subject was investigated and some Design Sprint participants were interviewed, to get a good grip on the context. The programme of the Design Sprint was then made and customized especially for SIMgroep, so it would fit into two days, without making to many concessions on the outcomes.
The first day all revolved around analyzing the research and drawing conclusions, by interviewing experts and translating that into 'how-might-we's' and two customer journeys. In the afternoon, the brainstorm took place, with all kind of methods, in order to create new views on the topic. During the second day, we began by voting the ideas and bringing the best ideas together as one concept. In the afternoon, the team managed to make a storyboard out of the concept, while the prototyper assembled a clickable prototype. We finished the last day by really 'experiencing' the new concept through roleplaying, instead of performing a test with users.
In this way, the Design Sprint could be brought back to two days, only focusing on analyzing the research, brainstorming and conceptualization. This could only be done if there is already a profound understanding of the problem and goal and many research is carried out. Also, not performing a user test with the prototype at the end of the Design Sprint, does not mean that you shouldn't do that at all. Alberga Consultancy always advices to investigate and involve the user a lot throughout the entire process and this could be done at a later stage of the development as well.