What were the key learnings from the Digital Wellbeing Sprint 2022 experience?

Digital Wellbeing Sprint 2022 (DWS 2022) is over and now it is time to make some reflections of the journey together with the Sprint. DWS is seven-days online event following closely the Google Ventures Design Sprint Methodology created by Jake Knapp (Knapp, 2016). 

My Sprint journey began back in February 2022 as I registered for tutoring the DWS 2022. Our dedicated team of tutors coming from the 3UAS (Universities of Applied Sciences of Haaga-Helia, Laurea and Metropolia) planned the event in our (bi)weekly meetings during March until May together with the project manager of DWS. 

So, from the viewpoint of the facilitator, what would be the key takeaways? 

📌 Preparation is the key

As a tutor, know your schedule, tasks, and tools you are going to use during the week. It makes your life so much easier when you have a good understanding on all of those. In addition to the book written by Knapp, also YouTube has good number of videos related to the Google Ventures Design Sprint that you can easily utilize. 

📌 Be flexible

Although preparation is important, facilitator should also have flexibility to change plans on the go. As the Sprint is conducted in digital settings, there are many things that may happen as technology and applications are fragile and sometimes, they act in mysterious ways. For instance, there may be power failures, internet connections may be down, or computer may not be able to run all the needed programs and software. 

📌 Use visuals for energizing the participants

As the Sprint is conducted in digital surroundings, visuals are playing crucial role in communication between people. Visuals can be used cheering and motivating people as well as creating cohesiveness among the group. This can be done by adding different backgrounds on your Zoom, wearing something colorful/funny and sharing emojis, among other things.

📌 Breaks, breaks, breaks

The Sprint experience can be so engaging that you quite easily forget to have your breaks. Therefore, it is good idea to schedule those breaks. And during those breaks you should get up from your chair, have snacks and keep yourself hydrated preferably with water.

📌 Learning about yourself and being part of an agile team

I truly recommend participating in Sprints when given an opportunity to do so. It really pushes you to think, ideate, learn, and form a remote team in a very short period of time. In my opinion, the best outcome of the Sprint is that you learn so much about yourself. This is certainly a valuable lesson that you cannot place a price tag. Participating also provides you well-valued experience on digital facilitation that is in high demand on job markets nowadays.

All in all, it has been quite an honour to be part of the digital community that is this diligent and determined to get things done and help businesses innovate new service solutions within such a short time frame! 

References: 

Knapp, J. 2016. Sprint. Simon & Schuster.

Photo. Pexels. https://www.pexels.com/photo/woman-draw-a-light-bulb-in-white-board-3758105/

This blog was written by Laura Parviainen-Vilo, facilitator in Digital Wellbeing Sprint 2022. Laura is currently studying for an MBA in Service Innovation and Design in Laurea University of Applied Sciences.