What is a Research Sprint?

Similiar to a Sprint in the world of Scrum, a research sprint is a fixed period where you build one idea and try to get as much feedback as possible. The results of one sprint can be used for the next one and so on.

How is it done?

Instead of building a finished product you work iterative. You build a prototype, test it with your users and then tweak your product accordingly. This repeats as often as it is necessary to get the perfect product-market-fit.

Get some Answers

The main goal of the sprint is to get some answer to difficult questions. Answers that determine success or failure of a product. Here are a few examples:

  • What problems, needs, and motivations do people have?
  • How do people evaluate and adopt products?
  • Do people understand your product’s value proposition?
  • Which messages are most effective at explaining your product?
  • Can people figure out how to use your product?
  • Why do people stop using your product?
  • Why don’t people adopt new features when you launch them?
  • …

Components

A Sprint consists of 5 parts that you need to get right in order to gain the most out of your research.

1: Questions and Assumptions

Without these, you’re not making the most of your effort. Before starting the sprint, everyone on the team should agree on the questions you plan to answer and the assumptions you plan to test.

2: Intentional and selective Recruiting

You’ll need to carefully recruit people based on your goals: existing customers, prospective customers, representative customers, etc.

3: A realistic Prototype

You can learn a lot by listening to people, but you can learn way more by seeing how they react to a realistic prototype. The more realistic, the better — you want people’s real reactions to what you’re building.

4: 1-on-1 Interviews

1-on-1 interviews (in person or remotely) are the best-bang-for-your-buck type of qualitative research. You’ll learn from facial expressions, gut reactions, and body language. You can ask follow-up questions and follow interesting tangents.

5: Real-time summarization

In a research sprint, the entire team watches the interviews, takes notes, summarizes the findings, and decides on next steps before heading home for the day.

Side note: How many Interviews should you conduct?

Some people think that usability is very costly and complex and that user tests should be reserved for the rare web design project with a huge budget and a lavish time schedule. Not true. Elaborate usability tests are a waste of resources. The best results come from testing no more than 5 users and running as many small tests as you can afford.

After the fifth user, you are wasting your time by observing the same findings repeatedly but not learning much new.

You want to run multiple tests because the real goal of usability engineering is to improve the design and not just to document its weaknesses.

You can learn more about this here: Why You Only Need to Test with 5 Users

Schedule

A research sprint takes just four days.

Day 1:

Recruiting participants

Day 2:

Schedule and draft Interview Guide

Day 3:

Schedule and finish Interview Guide

Day 4:

Interview and Summary

Checklist

  • Create a recruiting screener
  • Post recruiting screener where the right people will see it
  • Select and schedule participants
  • Start creating interview guide
  • Confirm participants
  • Complete interview guide
  • Review prototype with your team
  • Set up test devices and recording system
  • Interview five customers!
  • Summarize findings and plan next steps with your team