In times of Corona, remote Design Sprints are not just flexible strategies for creativity. When done correctly, it provides different benefits that allow teams to work together more effectively.

1. Stronger solutions

Participants in in-person sprints must sketch their ideas in one hour with pencil and paper. Outlining takes place in the Sprint Room in one continuous session, with everyone's work visible to each other. The strict time restriction is meant to focus the mind, discourage procrastination, and restrict people from overthinking their ideas, while the social pressure of the group environment is meant to keep people motivated to perform.

However, these tactics don't always produce the best results. Many people work more effectively when they have more privacy, time, or discretion over how they use it. Similarly, certain speed challenges require more careful consideration than others. This may mean that not all good ideas make it to the newspaper and that the "quick" or "superficial" solution may outperform the superior one in terms of voting.

With the above in mind, remote sprints provide the opportunity to test new ideas. Participants will be able to refine their ideas in private "homework" sessions if you follow a modular sprint schedule with online and offline work sessions throughout the day.

The unexpected revelations

Having these homework sessions offline did not affect speed or encourage people to procrastinate, contrary to our initial predictions. Instead, overtime and solitude gave people the freedom to work at their own pace. People who perform well under pressure, for example, will submit their work within an hour, while those who require more time would do so in the morning.

Because people were unaware of each other's ideas and had the freedom and confidence to work with the tools that made sense to them rather than forced pencil and paper, we witnessed an improvement in the variety and quality of responses (for example, some people drew on pencil and paper, others used Miro or PowerPoint).

2. There are fewer biases

Design Sprints are intended to limit groupthink, a psychological phenomenon in which a group of people begin to agree on the same ideas. For example, each idea is developed independently and then presented by the facilitator. However, bias still creeps in, especially when it comes to voting for solutions and deciding a direction.

Everything in a Remote Sprint, on the other hand, is carried out through digital interfaces. As a result, there is more anonymity and less social pressure when voting. Additionally, there is a lack of opportunities for group discussions and side conversations, resulting in less opinionated decision making.

3. More effective groups

Due to busy schedules and sometimes different locations of team members, it can be difficult to find the right team to work with. Some companies are lucky enough to have the financial resources to bring their employees from around the world to one place. Costs, on the other hand, are becoming a growing concern for businesses, and the time of key stakeholders is more valuable than ever.

Remote Design Sprints eliminate all of this difficult coordination. Working remotely allows you to select the best people for the task and only request their availability for a short period (it's much easier to log into a call for 30 minutes than to spend hours traveling and changing schedules to locate availability), whether they're external experts, users, or the sprint team itself. 

The surprising revelation

We believed that having different team members coming and going in the virtual room would be disruptive when organizing our first remote sprint. However, it turned out to be the opposite. Working in short, focused bursts proved to be much more efficient for everyone involved. This may be due to the detailed onboarding we provide to all participants before their sessions, informing them what to expect, the tools they will use, and how to use them.

4. Concise summary

One of the most difficult aspects of a design sprint is data collection. Synthesizing all the data, with Post-its, whiteboards, flipcharts and unintelligible writing, is a huge task that the facilitator or co-facilitator performs by running around and taking photos of everything. The data must then be documented on a digital platform, synthesized, and reported upon completion. It is a time-consuming process.

In a remote design sprint, however, this is not the case. All assets remain intact in the virtual sprint room for you to revisit whenever you want if you use digital whiteboards that serve as process boards that organize your sprint and output boards that collect your data along the way. Not only does this provide a clearer picture of everyone's progress as the Sprint progresses, but it also makes it easier to synthesize the results of each exercise because they are already digital. As a result, you will be able to finish your Design Sprint Report faster and provide it to your stakeholders in time for the next steps.