Design Sprints Bring Product Teams In 105% Performance Phase - The Optimum Stress

A Neuroscience Perspective On Design Sprints

This article is about the neuroscience of design sprints.

Why?

Because after facilitating a lot of them, this week I was in a training called “The neuroscience of communication” from Mindarchitect.ro and I had a huge AHA moment on what happens in the brain when a design sprint is made.

And I have as usual the need to share my AHA moments so here I am :)

I will introduce you to the relationship between stress and performance first and then I will make the connection on why Design Sprints help teams to stay in the optimal stress area which brings them the best performance.

What is a Design Sprint?

A Design Sprint is a structured step-by-step system for solving big problems as a team in one week. Here you find more details, its benefits, and a real story of my first design sprint.

When are we in optimum stress for best performance?

Based on the studies from the companies mentioned in the Resources section, you can see below a visualization of the Stress Curve and how stress affects our cognitive performance.

There are 4 phases and you can see very clearly below the relationship between stress, motivation, and performance:

🎲 Green area - total relaxation, too little stress

• when the level of challenge is low, for some of us means boring some is total relaxation

• in this phase, serotonin is released

• when a person at work is in this phase it can be that person will say “ I am not using my know-how in this position” for example

🎲 Yellow area - Eustress - Optimum Stress

• this phase is the desirable type of stress, pleasure, and motivation arise out of it ad dopamine is released

• the challenge is balanced with the level of ability

• we are using 105% of our maximum current capacity which helps us in our personal growth process

🎲 Orange area - too much stress, overload

• this phase is not desirable, most of us reach it but it is important to identify when so and try to go back to the yellow phase

• because of too much stress, cortisol is released, and we are the impression we are active and alert most of the time during our life

• exhaustion happens and if we stay longer than 2 weeks stress arrives at a high level where anxiety is also felt

🎲 Red area - Distress - burn-out

• it is a dangerous phase when anxiety, panic, and anger are felt all the time

• the whole mind and body feel a breakdown and adrenaline is released

• the whole energy is redirected to survival functions and cognitive performance is very limited

Obviously, from all the phases we want to be in the optimal stress (yellow) area and go to green from time to time. In the Eustress the optimal performance happens.

Why do Design Sprints help teams to stay in the optimal stress area which brings them the best performance?

🎲 The difficulty level is balanced with the ability level - the task is challenging you with 105% of your current maximum ability

• a design sprint has definitely not a usual day structure and it challenges the participants to arrive at 105% of their current maximum ability; why is this happening? because they choose out of the challenges the one that they want to e solved and the one that makes sense in relation to their current goal to achieve

• it is from the definition a challenge that is not too broad (otherwise is not doable in a week) and also not too small (otherwise it would be solved in 2 days by the team in a usual work setting)

🎲 The feedback happens instantly - our brain is naturally made to get feedback fast and motivation rises from this

• feedback happens in all phases of a design sprint by simply having the whole product team working together on the same challenge and deciding together upon things

• feedback happens at very high levels, a few hours after the prototype is ready with the user interviews; the real users of that product give you direct feedback on what they see and test; this is the most valuable outcome as instead of waiting for months of work with real product implementation until you get a real user review or perspective, you get it instantly in the user testing day

🎲 The objectives of a Design Sprint are SMART

• Specific: who and what - you circle a specific area of the Design Sprint map to focus on specific actors and actions that they do during their experience with your product

• Measurable - you decide upon a specific product goal and how you measure its success when achieved right from the start of the design sprint; you also set up testing goals in order to be able to calibrate the prototype on the needs of what to test

• Achievable - one of the important phases of a design sprint is to decide upon the “Can We” questions which are specific questions about the product and if you can achieve goals - in the worst-case scenario how realistic is that something happens

• Relevant - why are you doing what you do? the goal of the design sprint itself is relevant here which part of the product map is to be targeted, which part is most relevant, and why?

• Time-bounded - well here is easy - the whole design sprint is a few days only so everything happens in some cases 7 times faster than in a usual work setting, time boxing is everywhere in a design sprint from the goal to any activity within

🎲 You focus only on what is in your control

• a design sprint helps from its structure to stay in the area where the product team has control;

• you will (hopefully) not start to validate an idea by building a prototype of a part of the product that is either not in your control or decision or doing this without involving the experts you need for it

  

  You can see in the above image the 7 ways how to help your pre-frontal cortex perform - meaning how to stay in the optimum stress (yellow area).

  Design Sprints check more than half of them (and probably even more but I wanted to bring awareness here on the most relevant ones I see). This is why I had the AHA moment I was telling you about at the start of this article because I was wondering very often after each Design Sprint why is that it works so well every time. Not only that the recipe of it is very good (thanks Jake Knapp for this!), but also there is a neuroscience explanation behind it which I am happy I can share today with you!

As this is one part of my research about the “why” behind design sprints, I am preparing an article about the neuroscience of happy people who take part in a design sprint, so stay tuned for that!

One-phrase summary:

Design Sprints help by their structure the product teams to reach high performance, the optimum stress level which brings the team to grow together. And this is explained from a neuroscience perspective, taking into consideration aspects of how our brain works.

Resources:

• Mindarchitect.ro

• NeuroMindfulness Institute

• The Yerkes-Dodson Law & Amishi Jha - Mindfulness summit 2018

• The “Sprint” book by Jake Knapp

• The Aj&Smart Design Sprint masterclass

Want to turn complex information into an eye-catching visual story?

Try Drawify, I got in love ❤️ with it and you can use a special discount (in the link) to play and create visuals as well (I am a Drawify Ambassador).