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the archisprint program august 2022

Day 1
 

930am
 

Introduction 30 Minutes

Review of program
 

Sprint Methodology
 

Introduce the team members and their role in the sprint
 

Rules – turning off notifications etc
 

10am

Part 0 – What we have found to date in our investigation into council conditions, survey, etc – 30 Minutes

Defining planning constraints like floor space and building envelope allowances
 

Car access if requirements
 

Compliances with other standards
 

Design and approval considerations
 

Have document prepared with building envelope and constraints noted
 

1030am

Part 1 – Understand the brief – 1 hour

Setting the big goal
 

Another way to think about it is defining project objectives.
 

  • Why are we doing this project?

  • Where do we want to be at the end of it?

  • What are the things that we can measure that will define the success of this project?

  • How will we know that this project is successful?

  • Imagine we travel into the future and this project has failed. What might have caused that?
     

Client’s experience of the existing building – their likes and dislikes.
 

Client doing most of the talking – at least ⅔ 
 

A checklist of essentials
 

Number of bedrooms, bathrooms, living zones, etc
 

A wish list of non-essentials and nice-to-haves.
 

1130am

Experience Map (60 minutes)

Although the experience map is normally to work through customer experience – like when interacting with a website, I thought about discarding it before realising it could be used, not quite as intended but could be crafted into a useful tool for architecture.

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Here is a link to some useful steps: 
 

The Design Sprint Note-n-Map. How to get started with the dreaded Map… | by Steph Cruchon | Sprint Stories

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  1. Who is the Target Client / User? 

  2. Beginning of the story: when does the target user experience begin?

  3. End of the story: what is the goal we are trying to reach? What is the function or the experience we want them to enjoy?

I thought this could be useful to identify all of the users/ actors – this could be either family members who live in the house, people that visit the house, come and stay at the house or potentially even rent or purchase the house. We can then map their experiences and needs to see how they differ. The decider can note how important each of these considerations is, how likely the event is or how much they like the user anyway to determine which map should be prioritised.

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Review and refine Key Project Objectives and rank in order of priority – by definition a key objective is something that is measurable

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Use sticky notes instead of just paper so that the clients can move them around between various lists – ie: essentials to nice to haves

1230pm

Lunch – preferably book lunch with client somewhere local to go out for lunch or pre plan uber eats delivery

130pm

Part 4 – Searching for ideas and inspiration (30 mins)

Remix and improve but never blindly copy

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Everyone researches and then contributes 1-3 ideas

200pm

Part 5 – Sketch Solutions (90 minutes)

From past experience sketching solutions was one of the highlights and most useful bits – getting everyone that was there sketching worked – but everyone did it a bit differently so the instructions need to be clearer.


Presenting one design at the end of sketch solutions

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Clients do not need to spend the entire time doing this if they feel it’s too long

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4 step sketch

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  1. Notes – gather key info – 20 mins – 

This may work better as a group activity because we’re making a bespoke solution for one person rather than the design sprint method which 

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  1. Ideas – Doodle rough solutions  – 20 mins

  2. Crazy 8’s – try rapid variation – 8 mins 

https://designsprintkit.withgoogle.com/methodology/phase3-sketch/crazy-8s

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Source:   

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  1. Solution sketch – in our case – your new home sketch figure out details on one page (maybe more pages are ok) – 30+ minutes

  2. ​

Solution sketch Key considerations

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We were in a rush and we didn’t emphasise this point

  1. Make it self explanatory

  2. Keep it anonymous

  3. Ugly is ok

  4. Words matter

  5. Give it a catchy title

330pm

Part 6 Review solutions and Decide on a direction 

  1. Art museum – hang up solutions

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Definitely this worked really well

  1. Heat map vote – dot stickers to mark most interesting parts
     

Yep this works really well

  1. Solution presentation – speed critique with standout ideas written on sticky notes

  2. Straw poll

  3. The decider decides on a solutions with super vote – in this case by telling the team which direction they want to head

Can solutions be brought together into one model?

330pm

Part 6 Review solutions and Decide on a direction 

  1. Art museum – hang up solutions

​

Definitely this worked really well

  1. Heat map vote – dot stickers to mark most interesting parts
     

Yep this works really well

  1. Solution presentation – speed critique with standout ideas written on sticky notes

  2. Straw poll

  3. The decider decides on a solutions with super vote – in this case by telling the team which direction they want to head

Can solutions be brought together into one model?

Day 2

Ask the experts (90 mins)

Here are the steps
 

  1. Introduce the sprint

  2. Review the map

  3. Ask the expert to tell you everything they know about the challenge

  4. Ask questions

  5. Fix the Map
     

In our case the experts were:

  1. Structural Engineer

  2. Civil Engineer

Rest of day Day 2 and Day 3 – The draft design completed by the architecture team

End of Day 2/ start of day 3 – design review with the client

End of day 3 – final presentation of design to the client and cocktails

Learnings from archisprint 2.0

Fix some parameters early on when there are too many variables – building heights and/ or envelope. Fixing one of these early would have meant that more team members can work concurrently. This led to some inefficiency when dealing with a complicated design, leaving one of the team members to do some heavy lifting.

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Not everyone needs to attend every meeting, team members can relay information and resourcing.

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Firmer internal schedule for day 2 and 3 – specific for project and client 

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Better resources with grid lines for sketching – more information – like a worksheet with setbacks already marked in

PXL_20220309_015723772.jpg

before the archisprint checklist

  1. get a survey 

  2. model existing site in archicad or 3d software

  3. review and understand planning parameters/ restrictions

  4. brief the team

  5. have a planning session where you run through the program

  6. book the client

  7. brief the client to be available for all of day 1 and understand what the limitation might be so you can plan around:

resources

  1. large flipchart with plenty of paper

  2. sticky notes

  3. white board markers

  4. preprinted existing plans, site plan with gridlines and any planning parameters marked in

  5. a time timer or similar to keep time

  6. sticky coloured dots

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