This session provides a strategic overview of the Design Sprint framework and how we are using this methodology to drive transformation, empower teams and foster a culture of innovation within The Home Depot. Specifically, I discuss the strategies used to create a robust, scalable Design Sprint program to effectively alter the behaviors and mindsets necessary to drive organizational change. Lastly, I discuss the benefits of investing in Design Thinking efforts.
52. Awareness play and mock sprint
Focus on activities
Leave with understanding of process
Become advocates of the methodology
Intro to Design Sprints Training
54. Leadership and customized workshops
Deep dive in soft skills
Managing a room
Getting to the “why” behind the activities
1x1 coaching based on individual goals
Facilitator Training
Welcome everyone, and thank you to HOW for giving us the opportunity to present today
This is Scaling Design Sprints for Cultural Transformation
I’m Paul Stonick, Director of OUX
I’m Brooke Creef, UX Manager, Design Sprints
We’re from The Home Depot and super-excited to present our DS journey today
Before we jump into that journey, let’s take a look at THD
World’s largest home improvement retailer
First store opened in 1979
2200+ stores across US, Canada and Mexico
Orange blooded team is larger than US Navy
Size of business: yes, that’s a “B”
2013: Experience people wanted, interconnected experience that is flexible, personal and easy (phy-gital)
Guerilla Style Survey:
How many people have shopped online at THD this month?
How many people shopped our app, which Forrester rated as #1 Retail App in Q1 2019?
How many people have a THD 10 minutes or less from there home?
How many people have shopped in our store?
Little bit a bit me
2.5 years at THD
Experience spans 11 years across consulting and in-house design teams
Transitioned from Public Relations to Design
Most recently I sent three years with slalom
Slalom is a global management consultancy focused on strategy, technology, and business transformation.
Had the pleasure of working with major Fortune 50 companies in the Atlanta market
Help them visualize what’s possible and drive strategy through managing ambiguity and risk
First up is my work on TWC series, Weather Films
Weather films, which launched in 2013, has one several awards for its exploration at the intersection of weather, the environment, and social justice.
My role was to create concept work around the micro-site that supported the launch of the documentary film unit
Next we have Anthem Innovation Studio
Specifically, Anthem collaborates with its partners to bring health care innovation to life
My role was to drive the UI/UX behind the redesign off their internal innovation portal
In the spirit of storytelling and transformation
My dog Bella is a Halloween Contest winner
She dressed as the lead singer of Kiss
Now that you know a little more about us - Let’s get into why we are here today
We are excited to share how we are using Design Sprints to drive transformation within our teams
Specifically, we will discuss why we choose Design Sprints over a DT Playbook?
How did we scale?
What did we learn?
Let’s dive into how we are using DS to drive transformation
Like every good Design Thinker, we started by defining our problem
Specifically, how might we to introduce and scale DT
And ultimately why did we choose DS over a DT Playbook?
Let’s use analogy to tell our story
As you know, Design thinking is a human-centered philosophy and approach to innovation
Within it are variety of tools for teams to utilize
This is similar to the variety of tools at a builder’s disposable
But where does he start?
He starts with a solid foundation and understanding first
This was our Ah ha moment
Design Sprints are our Design Thinking foundation
They are the tactical tool we have used to introduce and scale design thinking within our teams
Design Sprints are a repeatable problem-solving methodology that can be used to solve any large problem
Check out the book
Key to our success
Customize early until teams mature
Flexible agenda story
Integrity
Our journey wasn’t always easy
Along the way, I was met with friction and challenges
Specifically, requests for flexible agendas
I stood very firmly against this until the teams matured
While is wasn’t a popular idea, it kept the integrity of what we were building
Level of customization is directly proportionate to the maturity of the team
Customization too early leads to fragmentation and old ways of working
Now that we have established Design Sprints as our foundation
Let’s discuss how we gained momentum and traction in 2017
3 months of work in one week <PAUSE FOR EFFECT>
To support our new way or working
Train the trainer program onboard new facilitators
Set it up - Shadow, lead and train
First shadow
Second lead
Third Teach
8 core facilitators
4 trainers
2 PM partners
10 Design Sprints in 2017
23 in 2018
Awareness play of roughly 65 team members through our intro to DS course
When I arrived at THD in 2017, there was fairly mature UX team in place and practice
Entrepreneurial spirit at its finest
Created position/promoted
T-shaped
General knowledge and native genius
4 disciplines
UR: Studying our users behaviors, their needs, wants and frustrations
IA: this is about the science of structure and hierarchy
CS: more than words, we view it as the science behind the story telling
UXD: visual, iconography, imagery and typography through the lens of our standards and brand guidelines
How do 53 people work together to solve problems?
Original model
Scale to modern matrix
Squads: holy trinity, single mission, purpose driven solving a particular customer problem (autonomous, decides what, when and how to release experiences)
Communities: a group of squads working to solve a common goal
Chapter: specific discipline in the community
Guild: Build a Guild initiative, essentially a team sport that takes members from all of our squads/communities.
4 core responsibilities
Operations
Training
Integration
Socialization
Update graphic
The Design Sprint Guild are the champions and governance team behind our program
Helping push innovation and behavioral change
Because changes in behavior and mindset are necessary to drive adoption
Our core behaviors are
Support our customers
Foster collaboration
Iterate to learn
Empower autonomous teams
At our core, we are customer-centric company
Our entire corporate strategy put our customer first
What is pictured here is our inverted pyramid
It a way of approaching leadership where the CEO is at the bottom and our customers are at the top
This cascades down into our teams
We put the customer at the center of everything we do
By focusing on customer problems first, we lower business risk as we identify assumptions and hypotheses to test earlier in the funnel
This allows team to pivot and shift quickly once learnings are uncovered
STORY
Our teams work together throughout the process
By working together, we gain both a broader perspective and team alignment which is crucial for moving forward
STORY
We work in a constant feedback loop
Our nimble feedback loop allows for learnings to be validated quickly
This creates a learn-fast culture focused on learnings vs failures
A wise friend once told me, the only thing different than failure and learnings is how attached you are to the outcome
STORY
Our squad-level facilitators elevate their teams to work autonomously as they mature
One squad in particular used Design Sprints as their new project kick-off
They successfully identified, scoped and ran design sprints for each of their major product releases
STORY
By changing behaviors, we elevated design as strategy
Leadership buy-in from our CPEO all the way to tactical execution
From the strategic level
CPEO asked to pressure test the Design Sprint methodology at different altitude levels, based on varying goals and outputs
Example is an upcoming Design Sprint -help identify the biggest opportunities for our UX and Creative teams to collaborate?
HMW identify the biggest opportunities for our UX and Creative teams to collaborate?
HMW identify the biggest opportunities for our UX and Creative teams to collaborate?
The influx in custom offerings pushed for a revamp of our training curriculum
Designers as teachers
Awareness play and mock sprint
Focus on activities
Leave with understanding of process
Become advocates of the methodology
Leadership and customized workshops
Deep dive in soft skills
Managing a room
Getting to the “why” behind the activities
1x1 coaching based on individual goals
From a tactical level, we implemented a tiered Design Sprint model to support varying research inputs
Start with a research intake meeting
Validate quality and breadth of user research
Define goals, deliverables and project scope
1-Day Problem-Framing
Roadmap or ideation
No research
5-day traditional Design Sprint
Higher scope
Deep research
Internal (evangelize and teach)
That repositions our team much differently: outputs vs. outcomes.
More about delivering value than artifacts.
JFDI moment:
We have done internal roadshows, not only in ATL but in our Austin and Dallas offices
Breakfast and learns
Quarterly planning meetings
External
This is a moment where you should take a pic of the screen
Google THD and Design Sprints
Featured in article and video series by Invision called Enterprise Design Sprints
Written by Richard Banfield
What, when, how and where on design sprints and how to get executive buy-in
Google Design Sprint Conference, October 2018
Commissioned to write an article series (executive buy-in)
What we spoke about today can be found in these articles
And finally
What did we learn along the way?
Customization too early leads to fragmentation and old ways of working
Gain momentum by starting small and aligning to strategic initiatives
Focus on behavioral and mindset change to drive adoption
Welcome everyone, and thank you to HOW for giving us the opportunity to present today
This is Scaling Design Sprints for Cultural Transformation