It has been 6 months, which is half a year since I launched this website and started talking about the value of design sprints. The feedback has been awesome and I am only starting to see the effects of my work now. I have met so many influential and interesting people that have helped me grow and understand how sprints work in different environments such as Voice and AI and branding e.t.c.

I wanted to share a bit more on the podcast since I have not had a chance to do so. I have just launched episode 3 of the "NOT a UX Designer" podcast, I have gone solo in this episode just to speak to what the podcast is about and what's in the pipeline.

A design sprint is a 6 stage step by step framework for solving big problems as a team in just one week. The sprint helps teams answer critical business questions through design, prototyping, and testing ideas with customers.

Design sprints are a great shortcut to gather qualitative feedback from customers fast using real prototypes. This approach works for any type of product, physical and digital products even business models and strategy.

In any project, there are many things that derail us from archiving our goal and stay aligned as product teams. This could be technical issues, a decision that is not being made because of office politics or stakeholder misalignment.

The output of the design sprint is actionable and can be fed back int the product sprints to execute on new tested features allowing product teams to move quickly.

Working with a UX designer on any team or environment requires the business to shift their mindset and get better at understanding the user, their needs and frustrations. Having a UX designer on the team changes the process on how products get delivered to the market.

The UX designer role in South Africa is often confused with what we call the "UX/UI" role. This misleads a lot of humans who want to get into the career on what experience design is about.

Customer feedback is at the heart of every product I build and the digital teams I work with. Using the Google design Sprint has been my answer to most of the questions that come with getting fast, qualitative customer feedback in an agile environment.

The past year (2018) was a roller coaster ride for me as an individual, emotionally and spiritually. Gaining clarity of what I want to be in my career and how I want to run my digital business(s) has turned things around for me.