Pre-Sprint Planning

Before every sprint we take some time with the internal team to help define the people that will be involved, both from the design team and from our client. We'll setup and formalize an agenda so that everyone has a sense of what the coming week will look like and what to expect. Beyond that we'll spend time gatheing any data that we may think will be relevant to the topic. This is broad research as we dont know exactly what problem we'll be solving yet but it's always a good idea to familiraize yourself with the company and industry in general. Our first day will involve talking to experts and our last day will involve testing with users. We'll try before the sprint to work out the scheduling for our guests to participate on these days as well.

Day 1 - Understand

We spent our time on Day 1 first, going through the overall plan and timeline for the sprint with introductions and a little fun to set the stage/tone for a truely collaborative week. Next, we took a deep dive into the problem space to ensure that everyone on the team had a comprehensive understanding of the challenges and the goals. We were able to bring in experts (investors and brokers) from outside the team to share insights about the problem, the business, and the technology. This was extremely insightful for stakeholders who had never talked to some of these users and my team as well - we uncovered even more relevant information about the problem.

Result: By the conclusion of Day 1 we had landed on a specific target for the sprint. This is a crucial step where the team agrees on a focal point that is both challenging and manageable within the scope of the sprint. We decided that one of the greatest barries for users isnt gathering information (which was our assumption) but actually the interface used on the site for data entry.

Our problem statement looked something like this:
"Users of our CRE Analytics Tools find it too complex and time-consuming to upload information. Leading to frustration with the product, innacurate results, or total abandonment of the process."

Day 2 - Ideation

Once we decided on a problem. It was up to the group to come up with possible solutions. We had about 12 people involved in our sprint and had a bunch of great ideas. We run through a number of activities that involve individual brainstorming where each team member sketches competing solutions on paper.

Day 3 - Define

The third day is about making decisions. The team critiqued each solution that we were able to come up with and through a structured decision-making process they selected the best ones. We did this in FigJam with dot voting and a series of activities to arrive at a final set of solutions to prototype.

In the end, we decided we needed something that resembled an excel spreadsheet. Our interface would need to guide the user but also be flexible enough to allow for a wide array of data.

Day 4 - Protyping

At the end of day 4 we had something that looked like our sketches from the previous sessions of brainstorming. An "Excel-Like" initerface that our users would be comfortable/familiar with. We placed them within Moody's UI using Figma and prepared the files to be clicked through and used during tomorrow's day of testing with users.

Static information defined by Moody's analytics team is setup on the left with things like property descriptions and operating assesments. The middle area could be expanded and gave users the ablility to plugin information and add columns. Cells in the grid are programmed with a formula that will give results within the green area on the far-right side.

Day 5 - Testing

On the final day of our sprint, we conducted user testing for the newly developed features of our CRE application. The feedback from this session was overwhelmingly positive, marking a significant milestone for enhancing Moody's product. We engaged with a diverse group of users, encompassing various demographics and tech-savviness levels, to ensure a comprehensive understanding of how it would perform in real-world scenarios.

Results:

The insights gained from this testing phase were invaluable. They not only validated our design and development choices but also shed light on areas for further refinement. The constructive feedback received has laid down a clear path for the next steps for Moody's over the next several months to a year. We are now poised to fine-tune their CRE offering, aligning it even more closely with our users' needs and expectations, helping to solidifying Moody's position as a leader in the commercial real-estate sector.