The Google Design Sprint in Action

The Fanbase Design

Fanbase, is a Decentralized App (dApp) running on the Lightstreams blockchain protocol to bring rewards to music fans and content control to musicians, was validated this month with the renowned Google Ventures Design Sprint that allowed our team to create a design for the best user experience possible.

The Design Sprint creates a shortcut to learning, a team does not have to launch and find they’ve forgotten important parts of a successful product. By using a Design Sprint to validate Fanbase, we asked ourselves important questions, worked across teams to make sure we weren’t building biases into our dApp, and eventually tested the final product. I took part along with Executive Board Member Andrew Zapella, John Bettiol, Technical Engineer Gabriel Garrido, designer Edi Gil, and Lead Engineer Lukas Lukac.

The sprint means we can release the dApp when it’s ready without developing a product that might not meet the needs of fans and artists.

The Design Sprint is a 5-day process.

Here’s how it went:

Monday

We defined the goals of our 5-day process. We mapped a successful customer journey. We engaged experts and built our collective knowledge, redefining our map as we went. After all, without input from the industry on needs they see, and fan frustrations they know intimately, we cannot build the best experience for artists and fans. We also decided on a customer target and focused on that customer the rest of the week.

The long-term goal of Fanbase is to be a scalable, consumer-facing dApp that can spread virally — so it needs to be easy to use and attractive to fans, offering them a superior experience to the current centralized sites. It must also help artists reach out directly to fans.

Core Reasons for Building Fanbase

When we began the sprint, we recognized that’s the core reason we’re building Fanbase: we want to bring artists and fans closer together. There shouldn’t be the a-typical social media site in between them. Artists should be able to share content with fans directly and fans should be able to share their content, communicate with fellow fans, and be rewarded for their loyalty directly by artists. When Fanbase launches, it will be an artist-based community, run like Reddit, where trolls are managed and users can interact based on tiers. They can also be rewarded for popular content they submit.

Tuesday

All our team members sketched out their solutions in four stages, from research to doodling, brainstorming rapid variations, and finally working out the details.

Three teams put their heads together to devise creative solutions for their target users.

Wednesday

The entire team chose a winning design and everyone developed a storyboard showing the structure of the app journey and landing pages within Fanbase.

Thursday

We got to work! Our fourth day was dedicated to building a realistic prototype that could be used and tested by users.

Friday

We took our prototype to fans and interviewed them one-on-one for their reactions. This helped us capture ideas and move forward building the best user experience for fans and artists. We’re excited that our MVP will incorporate all of the learning from our successful Design Sprint!

Conclusion

We found undertaking the Design Sprint has helped us focus on a user experience that quickly satisfies the goals of the project and helps avoid wasting a whole lot of time building features that may not. It also helped our team better collaborate, giving all members input and quickly forming a design consensus.

I hope this has been an informative post and if you would like to follow our progress with Fanbase, subscribe to our newsletter on the Lightstreams website.

Michael SmolenskiCEO Lightstreams

The Google Design Sprint in Action was originally published in Hacker Noon on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.