https://essexdigitalservice.blog.essex.gov.uk/2018/06/25/day-one-futures-academy-understanding-the-problem/

Day 1, Futures Academy: Understanding the problem

Day 1 of the design sprint

Today we started the one-week design sprint. We learnt about framing problems, mapping services from a user perspective and identifying pain points and opportunities. It's been a great first day.

We also shared the brief that the team are going to work on. Tomorrow, we'll get out and about to do user research and speak to people who use the service we're working on.

One of the things we've been trying to make clear is that we have a tendency, when faced with a problem, to try and solve it straight away. We've tried to acknowledge that and allow the team to spend the day understanding the context without jumping into solutions right at the beginning of the project.

We will put our solution-focused hat on Wednesday, once we have understood what is the user need through our user research. In the meantime the solution ideas are logged in a 'parking lot', which we can revisit once we've done user research.

About Futures Academy

Futures Academy is a learning experience that gives staff the time and space to experiment with different ways of working. Today was day one of our week long sprint that brings together a multi-disciplinary team from different parts of Essex County Council to work on a real service design problems.

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