Project: Online Deliberation Mapping Tool Development

As the fall semester was about to end, we were about to finalize the design and functionality of our tool. Starting from where I left in my last post, we went on to step 4 of our design sprint. In this step, each one of us, individually, made a storyboard using the materials from mind map and the crazy eight phases. The storyboard would highlight the most important functionality desired by that individual from the tool.

The storyboard was to be stand alone, anonymous and with a catchy title. These requirements were needed so that the storyboards can be reviewed without any bias and the best ideas for the tool would surface. There were three rounds of review of the ideas in the storyboards. First, the silent review round. In this round, people walked around going through the posters looking for cool ideas. Then, in the second round, each person described the idea which he liked the most. If there were some important aspects of this idea which was being missed, the actual contributor of the idea would fill in. Finally, in the third round, there were special stickers given to use. Each one of us would pick two features that we definitely want the product to have.

By the end of the design sprint, we had clear idea as to what needs to be in the tool and how important or novel each feature was. So, we were setting the stage to move to the next phase of tool development, that is implementation.