Mark Congiusta is a senior user experience manager at Cisco who has led or participated in design sprints both within and outside of Cisco for 10 years. A design sprint is a 5-day process for answering critical business questions through design, prototyping, and testing ideas with customers. It is intended to help teams quickly learn, reduce risk and validate ideas early in the design process.

1. Mark Congiusta
Senior User Experience Manager
Ideas on the User Experience of Ideating User Experiences
Designing Design Sprints

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• Mark (don’t worry about my last name)
• At Cisco 10 years in June
• 4 yrs Collab / 6 yrs Security
• Architecture, product, web, advertising,
animation, graphics, UX, a couple of
design degrees etc.
• Led or participated in billions of Design
Sprints in and outside of Cisco
• Has been known to exaggerate
Who’s This Guy?

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Design Thinking Design Sprintingvs

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Design
Sprint
What?
Why?
When? Who?
Where?
How?

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What Is a Design Sprint?

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It’s a Design
Sprint…
Not a Design
Marathon

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BUT!...The Design Marathon of a Thousand Miles Starts With a Single Sprint

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Design Sprint Process
Part 1 Part 2
http://www.gv.com/sprint/

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A Problem
A Team
A Solution
Some Customers

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Why Do a Design Sprint?

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Business Value of Design Thinking
Analytical Leadership Cross-functional Talent
Continuous Iteration User Experience
Companies'
Greatest Design
Weakness
https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/mckinsey-design/our-insights/the-business-value-of-design
10
10
17
Create a bold, user-
centric strategy
Embed design in the C-
suite
Employ design metrics
8
6
5
Balance qualitative and
quantitative user
research
Test, refine, repeat.
Fast!
Integrate user,
business, competitor
research
4
8
9
Invest in design tools
and infrastructure
Nurture top design
talent
Convene cross-
functional teams
9
8
4
Integrate with third-party
products and services
Start with the user, not
the spec
Design a seamless
physical, service, and
digital-user experience

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Design Problems You
Need to Solve
Design Problems You
Need to Solve in Green

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Learn Quickly
Reduce Risk
Validate Early

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When Should You Do a
Design Sprint?

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Stakes Are High
Time Is Short
You Are Stuck
*
*No puppies were harmed in the making of this presentation

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Who Should Participate
In a Design Sprint?

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Cross Functional
And Diverse

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0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
80%
90%
100%
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20
Design Sprint Efficacy vs. Sprint Team Size1
Participants
Efficacy
1. All statistics are totally estimated and unscientifically derived

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The Decider

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Ruthless Facilitator(s)

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Where Should You Do a
Design Sprint?

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How Does a Design Sprint
Work?

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Design Sprint Process

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1. Understand

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Defining the Problem
1. Set the goal
2. Ask the right questions
3. Identify the problem

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Design Sprint Goal
“We kinda know…”

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Policy Design Sprint Initial Goal
“Normalize layer 3 and layer 7
policy orchestration”

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Policy Design Sprint Final Goal
“Customers know intuitively how
to write policies and know exactly
what happens when they deploy”

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• Is it reasonable to expect a user to know exactly what
happens (when they create a policy)?
• What does a user need to understand what happens?
• How much do users need to know to use our product?
• What level of knowledge of the environment should we
expect the user to have?
• What is the design phase of policy authoring?
• How is the design phase related to remediation?
• Is there one solution for all customers?
• Are there established system and UX patterns we
should follow?
• Do we know what should/shouldn’t be a policy?
• Is there a separate test environment?
• What is more common: requirement change or trouble
ticket?
• What would it take for user to be confident enough to
deploy without testing?
• Is policy consistency across all products valuable
to customers?
• What does consistency mean to the customer?
• Should there be a single workflow that spans across
multiple security functions and controls?
• Is there an expectation that email security is consistent
with other product policy?
The Questions We Framed
Design sprint problem Solution exists Research question(s)

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2. Diverge

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Journey Mapping / How Might We?...
• Share capabilities across Cisco platforms?
• Use context from the portfolio to auto-tune IPS?
• Ingest/auto-config/propose configs based on network
devices identified?
• Reduce duplication across products while also able to
stand alone?
• Understand everyone’s (not just NGFW) IPS needs?
• Automate the configuration of the nerd knobs?

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Targeted Workflow (The Spine)
Admin logs into IPS UI in order
to configure
Starts to answer
contextual
business/network
questions so IPS
can make
recommendations
Sees auto-
security posture
settings and
reviews
tolerances
Tweaks settings
to achieve
optimal posture
for
network/business
requirements
Runs traffic
simulation to
confirm settings
have been
optimized
correctly
Hits "deploy"
button and goes
to lunch because
so confident all is
good

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Design Sketches

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3. Decide

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Prototype=

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Storyboard
1. Enter into IPS tuning workflow
2. Import existing network data
3. Begin answering contextual
questions
4. Auto-tune and tweak
5. Network traffic simulation
6. Simulation complete notification
7. Deploy new IPS settings
8. Success message
9. Return to IPS home

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4. Prototype

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Multiple complaints HR can’t access
Dropbox and you’ve determined that
HR in the US and Asia regions
should be able to access Dropbox.

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Whatever Gets the
Job Done

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The Stitcher

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Design Sprint Process

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5. Validate

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Recruit Early Recruit Often

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Customer Interviewer

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Script Writer

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Customer Validation of Prototype
Sprint Questions Cisco CDW Exxon WWT Kohls
Was it clear that search results included several
types of rules and objects? ✓ ✓ ✓ — ✓
Were the search results useful? ✓ ✓ ✘ ✘ ✓
Did they understand how to use the resource
objects ✓ ✓ ✓ ✘ ✓
Did the exception model successfully resolve the
use case? ✓ ✓ ✓ ✘ ✓
Did the post-apply summary page show that the
intent was implemented? ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓

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Majority Rules

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An Efficient Failure
A Flawed Success
An Epic Win

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Etcetera…

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Paper
Pens
Time
Music
Toys

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Breakfast
Lunch
Dinner
Lots of Coffee
Snacks

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And Finally…

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