How can a design sprint be conducted fully during the pandemic?

VALIDCOM is an internal application at Bel's used to make sure a communication (video publicity, graphic assets, digital social media content,...) is approved by all the guarantees (Legal, nutrition, etc...). In this case, we worked on the total revamp of the workflow and the interfaces.

How might we create value for a tool left behind for the mail? The engineering team had let this tool down, increasing the number of bugs and turning the user experience into an unfriendly journey. That's why the users had stopped using it; now they are mainly using mail to do the entire validation process, BUT they also have to do the process again on the look. Here, the aim is to get users back to the tool, and win back them by building value.

For two months, 6 end-users joined the adventure to help us during this redesign journey. As you may know, in a big company, it's not very easy to organize a 5 days Design Sprint with all the stakeholders, especially 6 full remote workshops. That's why we suggest this roadmap below to create a first MVP of the new application, to help them understand what the Design Sprint would be. We decided to integrate the tech team after the first MVP prototypes to let our users be more creative.

Redactor uses VALIDCOM as a final step of communication validation. It means they post a request with the assets attached, then the reviewers have to approve, disapprove or ask for a rework.

We started our discovery phase by interviewing our end-users. First, to introduce ourselves and explain our planning, then to get a maximum of frustrations and to understand why the tool had been left behind, why the mail application was more helpful than it.

Our first group meeting with our stakeholder allows us to validate together our understanding of the Assets validations process. Then we gathered all the frustrations and made sure not to forget one. That allows us to create a huge experience map gathering steps, actions and frustrations of the process.

First we started with an ice breaker to erase the old Validcom of the team mind. We ask them to think about a popular character that they would identify as the next Validcom and to define why with two or three words.

Then we split the team into two groups and asked them to create a new workflow in the following order: "If you had a magic wand, what would be the futuristic tool to validate the communication assets?"

They imagined two similar processes. They all extended it and included more steps like the brief.

Sometimes it can be difficult to express an idea with MIRO or on a digital tool when you're not a designer. That's why we ask our stakeholders to bring papers and pens for our remote workshop to make sure they can express themselves easily. We make them draw on a piece of paper the interfaces of their dream about three different situations.

After the sharing time, we asked them to vote for 5 elements they like on each member's drawings to have in mind what was the most important feature or information for hers.

A small overview of the few functionalities of the future communication and packaging validation interface of the Bel Group, designed with the Bel Design System