Sprint 1

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In the first sprint of the project, we started by working on the Lean UX canvas and then talked about the basic layout of the app’s features. We had 3 weeks in this sprint, 6 user interviews, 6 stand up meetings, and one retrospective.

Design Week 0

This week was dedicated to working on the Lean UX canvas where we completed exercises for each of the 8 sections of the canvas. This allowed us to declare our assumptions and create a shared understanding of what we wanted to achieve. By using the Lean UXCanvas, my team and I learned how to assess how risky our hypotheses were and rank them based on that. The canvas helped us to define what the problem was and ensured that our assumptions were tied to the user needs or business goals. The resulting sprint backlog consisted of a mixture of low and high risk MVPs so that we could assess their value in user testing.

Sprint Week 1

For Sprint Week 1, we had 3 standup meetings to keep track of our progress and tasks. These standup meetings were a chance for our team to talk about what we have done so far, what needs to get done, and who will be assigned to which tasks. In the first round of interviews, we talked to 4 people that were either professionally diagnosed or self-diagnosed with ADHD. We asked these users what kind of productivity apps they currently used along with their likes and dislikes from these apps. We gave them a rundown of our app and the features it would house. From there we asked them questions that assessed the value of the MVPs we had come up with in the Lean UX canvas. Moving into MVP creation, I started out with sketching layout ideas on paper with my team.

Sprint Week 2

In Sprint Week 2, we took what we learned in Sprint 1, and we started low fidelity wireframing in our design file. I created a rough draft layout based on the assessed value of theMVPs from Week 1. After this was tested, we moved it to the design file and started tweaking the layout and flow. Personalized content layout was also added to implement the customization of the app for users. This was implemented after several people said that they would like to be able to edit what kind of content they see in the interface. The interviews from week 1 also confirmed our assumptions that lighter colors would be better for the design to reduce stress. From there we laid down a color pallet and continued to build our style guide with color variables and text styles. At the end of week 2, we completed our Sprint 1 retrospective where we talked about what went well, what could have gone better, and then what we will try next. In the retrospective, I personally made a few points on productivity and time management because I wanted our team to be better about getting tasks done efficiently. My main point was that the sooner we build our MVPs, the sooner we can test and iterate them.

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Sprint 1 laid a strong foundation for our project by focusing on understanding user needs, testing assumptions, and iterating on our design. The Lean UX Canvas helped our team a lot and taught us how to order hypotheses by risk and set clear objectives. Through standup meetings and user interviews, we were able to gather enough information to inform our design choices for Week 2’s wireframing. By referencing feedback from interviews, we ensured that our design decisions were user centered. At the end of the sprint, the retrospective allowed us to reflect on our performance and identify areas for improvement.

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Sprint 2

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Moving into Sprint 2, we looked back at our Lean UX Canvas to reassess or assumptions. Overall, we changed our proto-personas, our hypothesis table, and our outcome to impact table. After revalidating our canvas, we quickly moved back to designing and testing the final product. Just like the previous sprint, we had 6 user interviews, 6 stand up meetings, and one retrospective.

Design Week 0

In Design Week Zero, we were given one week to revalidate our canvas where we could make any necessary changes to the content based on what we had learned since the first time we filled it out. We learned that revalidating the canvas is a very important step because our project was bound to change once we tested our MVPs. For our team, I wanted to add two new personas because we added new features that didn’t align very well with the needs of our initial personas. The new proto-personas included different needs and obstacles than the first two so that we could refer back to our new personas when designing our MVPs. We found that this change was necessary because our assumptions had changed, making features like customization, more important. I wanted to revalidate our canvas right away so that we could use the rest of Design Week 0 to continue designing as soon as possible.

Design Week 1

Designing for Sprint Week 1 was mainly focused on the layout and the overall design of the app. By this point, we had most of the main sections prototyped including the calendar, dashboard, timers/alarms, etc. In our 2-day stand ups we continued to discuss our tasks for the week, any meetings we had, what we needed to get done before the next standup, and any issues we ran into. I also made Tuesdays our designing days and Thursdays our testing days so that we could have an entire day to focus on just the design and not have to worry about taking an hour to conduct an interview. During user testing we asked our participants to navigate through the prototype using the think aloud process so that we could get more insight into what they thought of the app and its overall experience. We asked them about their likes and dislikes, what they would use most frequently, how they would plan to interact with the app, what they would need from the app, etc. Most of the feedback that we received was very helpful and it inspired more features that we designed during Sprint Week2.

Design Week 2

One of the features we added after the testing process in Sprint Week 1 was the change theme feature. Several users that we spoke to said that they would love to have a way to change the colors of the app so that they could customize it even more. ForSprint Week 2, I assigned this task to a teammate who I knew had good experience with variables in Figma, so she was able to get it done fairly quickly. Minor improvements were made with the interactivity of the timer page, and then we also moved the lists page to be nested in a home page widget based on user feedback. These adjustments to our app aligned with user needs, ensuring that our prototype would be committing to the customizable and intuitive experience that our users wanted. We concluded the sprint with another retrospective where we, again, talked about what went well, what could have gone better, and what we would do next time. It was a good opportunity for our team to reflect on our sprint and talk about some issues we ran into and how we could have solved them better. At the end of it, we were proud with the prototype that we came up with and we were grateful for the experience that it gave us. One issue worth mentioning did arise at the end of Sprint Week 2 that was more challenging than the other issues we ran into. This issue was about a teammate who was far less productive in their design than the rest of my team which stood out sorely. I had to remind them frequently to finish up their designs, and it took me giving them a very strict deadline for them to finish their work.

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What I learned

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Overall, the project went smoothly. We did learn a lot of lessons about how to conduct user testing and how to properly utilize the Lean UX canvas. We learned how to ask users better questions so that we could get the answers we were looking for in a non-biased fashion. Some small issues that I ran into as a team leader involved teammate communication and responsibilities. I learned how to effectively communicate an approaching deadline to a teammate that had not contributed very much work that week. I figured out that they needed a stricter deadline and structure set in place so that they couldn’t continue to procrastinate, and it solved the issue. Looking back if we were able to start over, I would have had us start the design process far sooner so that we could start user testing as soon as possible with our MVPs. I would have also trained my team more on conducting usability tests or I would have conducted them myself so that less time would be wasted, and the right questions would be asked. In addition to that, I would have been stricter with my teammates about deadlines and their responsibilities to prevent procrastination, and I would have communicated with them even more than I previously did so that I knew what their progress was.

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All in all, it was a great experience to be able to lead a team. I was able to learn a lot about not only leader leadership and managing productivity, but also about the process of Lean UX and how to adapt it to the situation.

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