The Sprint Process Day 5: Test and Learn

In this tutorial we will go through the UX Design tools used on Day 5 of the Sprint Process — mostly how to conduct User Interviews, and how to best learn from them. Here we go:

• Makeshift Research Lab:
• Book two rooms: the sprint room where the team will watch a live video feed of the interview, and a separate smaller room for the actual interviews.
• Set up a video stream of a webcam pointed to the customer, a microphone, and if you’re testing on an iPhone/iPad or a digital device, then a document camera.
• Interview Room:
• Explain you’re looking for candid feedback. After a friendly welcome, start with easy small talk, then move on to questions about the topics you’re trying to learn about.
• Remind the customer that some things may not work, and that they are not being tested here. Ask them to think aloud, and watch them figure out the prototype on their own. Ask follow-up questions to help them think aloud.
• Ask questions that prompt the customer to summarize.
• Sprint Room:
• Before the first interview, draw a grid on the whiteboard — a column for each customer, and a row for each prototype or section of a prototype.
• During each interview, take notes as you watch. Write down direct quotes, observations, and interpretations. Indicate whether that’s positive or negative.
• After each interview, stick up the notes on the whiteboard grid. Briefly discuss the interview, but don’t draw conclusions yet.
• After all interviews are done:
• Look for patterns and make a list of all the patterns the team noticed. Label them as positive, negative or neutral.
• Review your long term goal and the sprint questions, and decide how to follow-up after the sprint. Write it down.
• General tips:
• Five interviews are enough. After five customer interviews, the big pattern will emerge.
• Dont’ disband the sprint team. Watch all 5 interviews together.
• A winner every time. Your prototype might be an efficient failure or a flawed success. In every case, you’ll learn what you need for the next step.

This is it for the Sprint Process. We hope that going through the last 5 tutorials has probably given you a concrete idea of what running the process looks like. If you found this useful, it might be a good idea to read the entire process in detail with lots of examples in The Sprint Book by Jake Knapp with John Zeratsky and Braden Kowitz.