Design sprinting for Defaqto Engage

Red Badger taught us how to run design sprints. The idea is to solve a problem and test the answer in five days. Ours ran a little longer than five days, but we followed the same five stages.

Map (research internally and with users). We mapped the user journey in Miro and grouped the pain points by stage, such as the annual review and research. We gathered what we already knew inside Defaqto. We also spoke to users. Navigation and findability came up again and again. Reports were big and hard to find, and people could not tell where to go next.

Sketch. Each of us sketched possible solutions. My sketch put a client hub at the centre. It had a Client Hub, a Research Hub, a Document Hub, client search and live chat.

Decide (as a group). We chose to focus the design on a client hub. The aim was to make recent work and clients quick to find.

Prototype. I turned the chosen sketch into wireframes, then into high-fidelity designs in Figma. I made these main choices:

• The home page lists recent clients and a "Jump back in" list, so people can return to recent work in one click.

• The information architecture is a simple set of tabs on the client record.

• Cards, and full-page modals for Plan and Goal, hold most of the information.

• The left-hand navigation gives access to better help, live chat and profile options.

We also explored the annual review workflow. This included fund detail that links straight through to research, and saved filters for common filter sets. For this phase, the client hub area is what we delivered.

I annotated the designs so the team could see the reasons behind each choice.

Test (then go round again to refine). We put the prototypes in front of users and wrote down what they said. Then we ran the loop again to improve the designs.