Here are a handful of methods that can help you during the understand stage.
I'll give you a quick overview of each of these methods.
The first is 360 degree lightning talks.
As Nadia mentioned, 360 degree lightning talks are incredibly useful.
The deliverable of the design sprint should meet the business goals,
satisfy user needs and be possible with current or emerging technology.
Here are the questions that should be addressed by anyone who
gives these talks.
For the business side, that person should be able to address what's
profitable and sustainable for the business in the long run?
And what are the current business needs?
Anyone speaking to the user experience should be able to answer,
what do people need?
And what's delightful or useful to the user?
And finally,
someone should be able to speak knowledgeably to technical concerns.
What's possible with today's technology?
Or what features can be built now or over time?
Lightning talks are meant to be a quick way to address those major concerns.
Now of any of these activities that you do,
you should be sure to do user interviews.
You want to talk to users at the beginning of the design sprint and
at the end of the design sprint, so you can validate your work.
User interviews allow you to understand the goals and the motivations of users,
you might also try exploring some of their emotions and how they feel about
existing products or about particular features that you want to implement.
If you have existing designs, you can definitely ask a user about them.
If not, you could always ask a user about a competitor's design.
The interview should follow a sort of arc like this.
You want to get to know the interviewee at first,
so make them feel comfortable and keep a conversational tone.
You also want to be genuinely interested in the person, so
you can ask them starter questions just to build rapport.
Then you can plan your questions accordingly, so
you can get out their own stories and the general moments in this diagram.
Be sure to thank the user and wrap-up with any followup steps.
If you don't have any current user research,
then you should definitely consider going to visit actual users.
This would be a field visit.
A field visit or
field study will let you observe how consumers use similar products or
you can take note of the context in which users use that product or service.
You can also ask questions about their behaviors, they're likes and
interests and their pain points or problems.
You might do usability testing with them, if you have current designs.
Or you might competitor designs, if you don't have current ones.
Or finally, you might gather feedback on early ideas, copy for your webpage or
app and particular features that users may want.
This would just be concept testing.
A stakeholder map is another necessity that can help you think about
all the players related to your business or your industry.
For example, the stakeholder map for
the SuperDuper shopping app would look like this.
Notice that this map includes internal stakeholders, such as the user and
external stakeholders, like the suppliers and specialists.
You could imagine building up particular features from recommendations of
a nutritionist or allergist.
These specialists might play a role in recommending foods to particular users
based on their dietary restrictions, their dietary goals or
their cooking habits.
This last activity is another great way to get perspective on the industry.
You can check out competitor's apps or websites to get a sense for
what they're doing.
This can help you figure out what's happening in your current space or
industry.
And you can also analyze, how's your approach different from these others?
Is it a subset of features or is it marketing efforts?
You can also see particular UI elements or design elements and flows,
that appeal to you and others that you might want to avoid.
Whatever methods you choose,
you should make sure that you summarize your findings from the activities.
These findings should be on your mind and on the minds of anyone on your team,
as you go into the next stage of the design sprint.