Day 98 — Sprint 13 Retrospective
Wrapping up a week of content exploration
Wrapping up the week
As we wrap up the week, I have mixed feelings. On the one hand, we completed a good amount of high-level strategy work that will improve our odds of future success. On the other hand, I don’t have a lot of output to show.
I’m finding my output is way better during weeks where I have a set structure to work from (e.g., Google Design Sprints) and clear success criteria. I think I just need to find a better structure for these types of weeks (or make my own).
🎥 Highlights of the Week
- Prepped for our Youth Advisor Board Outreach
- Sent our monthly update
- Looked into what it will take to achieve ADA Recognition
💡What I Learned
- Strategy takes time. I’m not thrilled at my output for the week, but from a strategy perspective I feel like I’m much further along. I grew a lot this week as a founder and it was a great week of working together with my team.
- Mentors make for amazing sounding boards. Mentors really came through for me this week. I reached out to a few for advice and act as a sounding board, and they really came through. It made me really grateful for their expertise and wanting to find more opportunities to surround myself with smart people.
👍 What Went Well
- Worked as a team. We had great team collaboration this week — both on upgrading our Expo tools and strategizing how we’ll form our youth advisory board. In both cases, there was an easy hand off, work tracked in JIRA, and collaboration during the work to identify issues.
- We now have a plan to engage youth advisors. A week ago, engaging college-aged young adults to help us create content was just an idea. A week later, we have an outreach plan we can put into action.
👎 Opportunities to Improve
- Strategy without structure. Compared to design sprints, this week felt like it lacked any real structure. As a result, it was hard to focus on what to deliver. I need to find a format for strategy/research sprints that will allow us to maintain a high level of execution.
- Trying to do too much. While working on a few of the activities this week, I was a bit distracted. As is often the case, I overestimate how much I can get done in a single day. Usually, it’s only one real thing. And many weeks, that’s the case too.
⏭️ Action Items
- Send out the first 3 invites to our youth advisor board.
What’s Next?
It’s time for another design sprint! These weeks are my favorite: it gives me a framework to work from and allows me to quickly get to results, all while improving the product.
Our design sprint this week will focus on transition readiness assessments like this one:
Today, with these assessments, clinicians are looking to establish a baseline knowledge level for patients (in this case, teens with type 1 diabetes). This helps them determine the education they’ll need to administer and to re-assess periodically.
The challenge is, for teens, these assessments feel like a test. And they’re a really impersonal way to collect information.
There’s got to be a better way.
Our goal for the week:
- For teens: Make questionnaires more personal and engaging.
- For healthcare providers: Make it easier to administer surveys to patients, review results, and make treatment decisions.
Here’s the schedule for this coming week:
- Monday (Day 1): Start at the End
- Tuesday (Day 2): Solution Sketching
- Wednesday (Day 3): Storyboarding
- Thursday (Day 4): Prototyping
- Friday (Day 5): User Testing
