Hackathon (1-4 weeks)

What's the hypothesis or challenge? What are you trying to uncover or understand in-depth? Where should I add my hypothesis? Include your hypothesis inside the "Session goals and instructions".

Learn about the market environment and find information about the topic. Everyone on the team needs to find the most recent news related to the product, problem, or challenge. You and your team can use magazines, journals, newspapers, TV news, etc. Write down sources you will explore to the step note here. You can use the sticky board to add your findings and easily create clusters and group the information that is relevant to your situation, idea or project.

In this step, the team should discuss those findings and explore further if they consider it is necessary. Possible actions the team can take in this step: 1)Discuss all the findings and add a valuable comment or short memo (move to the next step) or - 2)Add more information to help the team get a better understanding of the situation, or - 3)Reorganize the sticky notes ( Internal, Microenvironment, and Macroenvironment)

Share your findings and thoughts. You can add your memo inside the resources section.

Schedule a call or a meeting to talk about the findings until you get to a conclusion. Send an invitation to that meeting to all the members/participants. When the meeting is completed, the session leader will add a summary and conclusion here.

The team leader will determine if the team found enough information. If so, the team leader can move forward to step 7 to better visualize and understand all the findings, or step 11 to finalize the research. What should the team do next?

The team leader can start organizing that information and create clusters with sticky notes. Continue the session if you need more information.

In this step, the team will need to analyze the board and add their thoughts and comments below. If someone in the team thinks it’s important to add new information, this will be the last chance to do that.

Invite everyone to explore interesting findings and alternative solutions to the challenge. For example, they will discuss why certain solutions were created, why some solutions worked or didn’t work, and highlight unique businesses. How did they improve and stay relevant in their marketplace? The team can post to the sticky board.

Check the Yellow Section. Start brainstorming. Follow the "Yes, Maybe, No" canvas to select the ideas/information worth exploring further. Keep exploring those ideas. Notes: In this step, the team can add their final comments and, if possible, their considerations and ideas, responding to the question: How would you create the ideal solution for this market or a segment of this market? What are the first solutions you can think of? This is a quick brainstorming session, so it should normally be a quick step. The goal is to get a quick idea of what the team has in mind. Suggestion: In this step, you can get your team collaborating at the same time for 5-15 minutes and ask each to add 1 to 10 ideas. It usually helps to move things along quickly.

Make sure you have a persona in mind before starting this exercise. If you don't yet have one, create one using our "Personas" tool, or have a pre-defined persona in mind. You may add a link to the persona on the board.

Before proceeding, you should know basic information about the target: such as Age, Sex, Lifestyle, Hobbies, Status, Education, Location, Interest, Groups, etc. You should also know key characteristics that will differentiate your user from other people/users.

Make sure everyone understands who they are before you start building the empathy map.

👉You can add basic things here: Profile, Job to be done, Pain points, etc.

👇🙉🙊🙈But let's go over the details.

Start by finding information online (the easiest way to gather data quickly). Write down a number of places where your customers may hang out online, and make sure your team searches for recent data.

Excellent places to search are online forums, Facebook groups, comments sections of popular blog posts, Google reviews, and Amazon reviews. These pages are often excellent places to observe the way your customers really feel.

💥Note: Doing some research before you open the board and discuss this session further with your team can facilitate the process.

An empathy map is an easy and visual matrix that captures knowledge about a user’s behaviors and attitudes. It is a useful tool to help teams better understand their users and to evaluate information during interviews.

Empathy maps have four elements:

Consider personal connections with family, friends, and coworkers along with what is being said in the media by bloggers, social media influencers, and experts in fields.

The objective of this session is to 👉👉discuss and brainstorm initial ideas to [what] 🙏

This is a collaborative session, so it feels a lot like a meeting(but without adding another meeting to your calendar). For example, you can see other people's answers and build on each other's ideas. You can even see each other's cursors if you end up crossing paths in this session. Of course, if you feel like joining a quick conversation with someone in the session, you can always join the voice call and say 'hi!'.

Let me give you some context.👇 [ ADD AN LINK AND VIDEO(Loom/Youtube) ]

You can also find all the documents and information here. Document link

👉Please "give me five" once you are done watching this video. ✔🙏

Add one idea/suggestion per sticky note. 🔥🙏

Keep those notes short. I will contact you if I have questions or I need additional details.

Read everyone's ideas and suggestions and select/react 👍 at least three that you think are great! If there are some ideas that should be avoided, please react 😩 and let us know so we can start evaluating things with a collective perspective.

💬💫👉 Any comments or explanations about why you have reacted to the ones you have? Please leave those comments here; it helps us understand your thinking process and what you see that may be invisible to us.

Skip if you don't have anything to add.

I will go through all of your comments and answers once the session is closed and will address all of your questions and concerns a few days later. If you have a question that requires an immediate answer, you can contact me through Slack.

🔥You can add additional comments here. What else should I be asking you? What else should I be thinking about? What else whould I consider? What challenges or obstacles do you foresee in implementing this plan? What conditions must be met, and what resources will we need to succeed?

Choose a hat from the card deck at the bottom of this step. That is the hat you will be using during discussion moving forward. A hat is used to emphasize a certain way of thinking or to switch to a different style of thinking when you get stuck during a brainstorm session or meeting. Before and after using the hat, the conversation is a typical discussion. Additional Tips For Using Hats Allow limitless time for white hat discussions when a lot of information needs to be digested, but keep the thinking focused on the subject. Be flexible with green hat thinking. Switch to a different hat once the flow of ideas has stopped. You can always come back to the green hat later on. Restrict red hat thinking to 30 seconds to prevent people from wanting to explain or justify their feelings. Only allow more time when intuition and feelings are a major issue in the subject of study. For example, you may want to extend time for the red hat when discussing how a customer feels. The hats represent a style of thinking. They do not describe people, thinking habits or thoughts.

Add your input on the subject under discussion to the board below. Make sure to discuss based on the hat you are using for the discussion. If this session of Six Thinking Hats is ongoing over a number of days, add to the board on an ongoing basis.

Open the card deck "Blue Vs Red" and click on the "Radom card button" and share your card with your team whether you are in the blue or red team. Add your name to the list. Blue Team:** Find information to back up their argument. Red Team:** Their goal is to "kill" the blue team argument. Find information and reasons why the original idea/decision will no work. The team should select a team before they start the discussion. The team should have time to gather data and have a good strategy in mind to win the game.

Objective: Each team represents opposing sides of a decision or idea. The goal is to present, contrast, and critically examine all perspectives to reach an informed, mutual decision. One team member (or the manager) will act as a mediator to facilitate understanding, ensure everyone’s arguments are heard, and guide the team toward a consensus and an actionable time frame.

Instructions:

Add Points on the Board: Each team member writes one argument per sticky note and adds it to the board.

🔴🔵Present Arguments in Turns:

When the Blue Team presents a new argument, the Red Team must collectively develop a counterargument, aiming to challenge and "disprove" the Blue Team’s stance. This counterargument should be placed horizontally across from the initial argument.

🙅🙋‍♀‍🙆‍♂‍Mediator’s Role:

The mediator can pause the discussion at any point to highlight specific arguments, prompting the team to dig deeper into the issues or opportunities raised.

This ensures clarity on key points and refines the team’s understanding of the pros and cons of each position.

Decide the "Winning" Argument:

After each topic and key argument is discussed, the mediator and the team will decide which side's argument is stronger.

However, instead of simply "winning," both teams should look for points of alignment and consider adjustments based on the opposing arguments. This helps integrate valuable insights from both sides.

💥💫Conclusion and Solution:

In the “Winning Arguments” section, add the final decision or conclusion. Reflect on the balanced perspective reached, noting how it incorporates elements from both sides.

🔥The goal is not to “win” but to find truth and actionable insights in each viewpoint, leading to a solution that respects both perspectives.

Discuss with the team and make a decision that benefits everyone.

Highlight your conclusion or add your notes to the conclusion section.

Describe your solution and provide information about your proposal.

Add your sketches, colors, materials, price comparison, etc

Send your prototype or a link to your online app/webiste to your end user and film how they use your solution. Share the link to that video here.

Look at you user using your prototype and evaluate how the use it. Where are they struggling? Are they reaching the goal? What do they think? What's their reaction? How much would they pay for it?

🔥 Define the main objective of your user interviews. The objective should be specific and help the team understand why this is important for the team. Avoid objectives like "I want to understand the user more" - What about it? Just you? Does the team understand the user? If yes, then ask them to transfer that knowledge.

🙄 Secondly, create a list of assumption.

Note: The sh*t sandwich is the 'concept' that people need to be willing to eat the sh*t sandwich to gain something they want. It's the idea that in reality everything has consequences. For example, that you may want to start your own business and that sounds good but are you willing to work 24/7 the first few years, and live in a lot of uncertainty and pay others first leaving you with no salary sometimes, and have to wear a lot of hats, and be willing to fail…? Or if we are talking about a product, then would your user rather have this feature over this one? Or will they pay more for it?

Taking notes is the second most important thing during user interviews or group interviews.

Remember the following:

Describe the business in basic terms. What do you do?

Add concluding remarks here on who your customer is.

Feel free to ask yourself:

Add concluding remarks here on the customer relationship.

Feel free to ask yourself:

Add concluding remarks here on value proposition.Feel free to ask yourself:

Value proposition statement template:

Our [🛵product/service] helps [🙂user type/target segment] who wants to [job to be done] by [verb (like reducing, avoiding)] and [customer pain] and [verb (increasing/enabling) [customer gain] unlike [...]

Type of value:

Add concluding remarks here on key activities.

Feel free to ask yourself:

Add concluding remarks here from on key partners.

Feel free to ask yourself:

Add concluding remarks here on distribution channels.

Feel free to ask yourself:

Add concluding remarks here on cost structure.

Add concluding remarks here on the revenue stream. Feel free to answer the following: What and how is your customer paying you? What kind of pricing structure do you have? (fixed, based on segments, promotional, subscription, etc) Other considerations: Add a note here on margins for your business to provide context for pricing and cost structures. What's your margin? Is it a fixed margin? Are you keeping in mind shipping and returns? What can compromise your margins?

Do you have different revenue streams? How much does every revenue stream contribute to the overall revenue?

Discuss and identify here which item is the most expensive and add any details relating to variability.

Feel free to ask yourself:

Discuss potential affects on the businesses revenue with respect to revenue streams identified in the business model board.

Have the team identify any barriers they expect to encounter or have encountered already relating to cost structure. What barriers have you encountered or do you think you will encounter if your don't optimize your cost structure?

Add notes on what you believe the customer is willing to pay. What are your customers willing to pay? What's the ideal price? What's your price?

Team members should add their thoughts on strategy for the business as per discussions in this tool. Feel free to discuss the strategies submitted as a team and choose a favorite by highlighting that note. Feel free to answer the following: Based on your knowledge now, what would be the best strategy for your business/idea? How are you planning to increase your revenue or increase margins?

Summarize most important takeaway during this process and provide any final notes. Make sure you highlight final notes!