Jake Knapp &amp; John Zeratsky

@jakek · Google Ventures

@kwamesompimpong Great question, and a tricky one, because (unless the government agency is building a product) you'll have to be more inventive with your prototype and your test. In the book, we talk about a prototype tested by One Medical, who wanted to test a new kind of clinic for families. They modified an existing clinic for one night—basically they "acted out" a fully functioning service in a small way so they could test it. I think that same approach could be applied to many government services. You also might test the way the service is described by prototyping and testing a "brochure" (which might be a website, advertising, phone line... any place where people find the service)

6 share tweet・a year ago

Kwame Som-Pimpong

@kwamesompimpong · Manager, Africa Business Fellowship

@jakek This is helpful. Thanks!

upvote share tweet・a year ago

@jakek · Google Ventures

@kwamesompimpong Awesome. You're very welcome!

upvote share tweet・a year ago

Bryan Landers

@bryanlanders · New podcast: missionandvalues.co

Do you recommend any specific kinds of research before design sprints begin? For example, the 4-day research sprint you've documented (https://library.gv.com/the-gv-re...) or similar. (Forgive me if this is in the book, I pre-ordered, but it hasn't arrived yet! 😉) Thanks for all of your amazing work!

@jazer · Design partner at GV, author of Sprint

@bryanlanders Well, first, thanks for your order! :) We actually have an FAQ about this in the book. And the answer too... it would be cruel if we just printed the question without the answer ;) Anyway. Research before a sprint is always good. We do it a lot with our portfolio companies, and it really helps Monday's exercises to have those "inputs" from research. It's especially useful when a team hasn't done research before, or when they don't know a ton about the problem at hand. But, the reason we didn't make it Step 0 in the book is that we've found teams usually already have tons of knowledge about their customers, their market, and their product. They've done research, they have data, they have ideas, etc. Research is always helpful, but unless they haven't done ANY research, it's more efficient to prototype and test a concrete idea.

Peter J. Davison

@ourmaninto · Our Man in Toronto

@bryanlanders Thanks for sharing that link

Bryan Landers

@bryanlanders · New podcast: missionandvalues.co

@jazer "Research is always helpful, but unless they haven't done ANY research, it's more efficient to prototype and test a concrete idea." Very helpful. I look forward to reading the FAQs! Thank you.

@jazer · Design partner at GV, author of Sprint

@bryanlanders Haha, the FAQs are at the very end, so hopefully you'll read the actual book too! :)

@jakek · Google Ventures

@jazer @bryanlanders If you start with the FAQs, we won't judge.

Emily Hodgins

@ems_hodge · Community and Marketing, Product Hunt

What are some of the key pieces of advice you often find yourself offering to your startup clients, time and time again?

@jakek · Google Ventures

@ems_hodge "Perhaps a sprint would be useful for this problem."

@jazer · Design partner at GV, author of Sprint

@jakek @ems_hodge A few more: "Map out the most important customer stories and make sure your product supports those." "Talk to our partner Michael Margolis about running customer research." "There are six essential design skills. Which do you have? Which do you need to prioritize?" https://twitter.com/jazer/status... "There's gotta be a way to prototype this before you invest the the and money in building the real thing." "Don't be clever. Just tell your customers what your product does." "Getting out of the building isn't enough. You need to put in some extra effort to make customer interviews worthwhile." https://library.gv.com/getting-o...

Jack Smith

@_jacksmith · Serial Entrepreneur & Startup Adviser

Jake, John - really glad that you're sharing your wisdom with a wider audience with this new book. I was wondering - how long did the book take to write, and how did the process compare to your expectations?

@jakek · Google Ventures

@_jacksmith I predicted it would take 90 days to write the book. It took... a bit longer. The entire process—from first prototype to publication—took about 18 months. But the bulk of the writing happened between April and July. So my estimate was about right, there is just a lot of extra stuff I didn't account for: Editing, illustrating, re-editing, re-illustrating, etc. etc. took a long time. But it was very fun, which was what I hoped for!

Mave

@marvinspyrka

Are you going to produce an interactive online course based on the Sprint philosophy? And if yes, I would be very happy to contribute 😏

@jazer · Design partner at GV, author of Sprint

@marvinspyrka Good idea! We're just scratching the surface on helping people run sprints. Short answer: we're not planning an interactive online course. But that doesn't mean we won't do it in the future! BUT! We are announcing a new thing called Sprint Week! It's an event where teams around the world will sign up to run sprints in parallel. We're going to help out by posting daily videos, doing online Q&A (kinda like this!), and sharing interesting stories across the sprint community. You can sign up here: http://www.thesprintbook.com/spr...

8 share tweet・a year ago

Peter J. Davison

@ourmaninto · Our Man in Toronto

@jazer @marvinspyrka Nice

Mave

@marvinspyrka

@jazer GREAT and thank you John! I will sign up for the Sprint Week immediately. Great idea and maybe there comes the time where you're going to plan an interactive online course. I seriously believe there will be a whole bunch of people, happy to pay for such a service. Kudos @jazer and @jakek 😍💯

⭐️

Ben Tossell

@bentossell · Community Lead, Product Hunt

Hey! What are your favourite questions to ask founders?

@jakek · Google Ventures

@bentossell "What keeps you up at night?" I know that sounds like a cliche, but it's a great way to frame a sprint: it focuses effort on the biggest question—the kind that's worth clearing your calendar to answer.

8 share tweet・a year ago

@jazer · Design partner at GV, author of Sprint

@jakek @bentossell It's also useful because we, as "design partners" and designers, often get questions about "design stuff," like UI design, branding, etc. Those things are super important and we love to help with them... but by asking "what keeps you up at night?" it shifts the conversation away from the obvious and into the core issues that founders are struggling with.

5 share tweet・a year ago

Anthony Broad-Crawford

@broadcrawford · I like stuff

I've been executing design sprints since you first start blogging about them @ GV (thank you so, so much for releasing these to the world). Is there enough "new" content, advice, battle scars, retrospectives in your book that I should pick it up?

@jazer · Design partner at GV, author of Sprint

@broadcrawford Definitely! Or at least, we think so :) There are three big things that are special about the book: 1- It has tons of real stories from real sprints we've done. (Including times we messed up and what we learned.) 2- It has way more detail about how to run a sprint. We literally give hour-by-hour instructions. 3- The sprint process itself has evolved a lot since we wrote those blog posts. We think it's a lot better now :)

Harry Stebbings

@harrystebbings · Podcast Host @ The Twenty Minute VC

Thanks so much for joining us today, I would love to hear about the most common design mistakes early startups make and what advice you give to them?