Serah Giarusso, Blue Bottle Coffee’s customer support lead, looked uneasy. And she wasn’t the only one. James Freeman, the CEO, furrowed his brow.
It was Tuesday afternoon of Blue Bottle’s sprint. Sunlight made rectangles on the carpet. Somewhere on the street below, a car honked. And there, in the middle of the sprint room, on a coffee table, was the source of the team’s consternation: a stack of paper, a dozen clipboards, and a paper cup filled with black pens.
Somebody cleared his throat. It was Byard Duncan, Blue Bottle’s communications manager. As everyone turned, he cracked a sheepish smile.
“So . . . ,” he said. “What if I can’t draw?”
On Tuesday afternoon, it’s time to come up with solutions. But there will be no brainstorming; no shouting over one another; no deferring judgment so wacky ideas can flourish. Instead, you’ll work individually, take your time, and sketch.
Even though we’re total tech nerds, we’re believers in the importance of starting on paper. It’s a great equalizer. Everyone can write words, draw boxes, and express his or her ideas with the same clarity. If you can’t draw (or rather, if you think you can’t draw), don’t freak out. Plenty of people worry about putting pen to paper, but anybody—absolutely anybody—can sketch a great solution.
To show you what we’re talking about, let’s take a look at one of the sketches that came out of Blue Bottle Coffee’s sprint—a solution called “The Mind Reader.” Each sticky note represents one page on Blue Bottle’s website.
The big idea behind “The Mind Reader” was to organize the online store the same way a barista might talk with a customer. As you can see in the three frames, this solution leads with a welcome, then asks how the customer prepares coffee at home, before offering recommendations and a brewing guide. There’s a lot of complexity to the idea, but the drawing itself was straightforward: mostly boxes and text, the kind of thing anyone can draw.
Later in the week, the team made a realistic prototype based on “The Mind Reader,” with details filled in from some of the other sketches. The prototype is on page 106.
On Friday, when shown to real customers, “The Mind Reader” was remarkably effective. Customers grew confident in the quality of the coffee as they clicked through the website. They found beans they wanted to order. They described the prototype as “way better” than competing retailers and mentioned that “clearly, these people know coffee.” It was the big winner of Friday’s test, and it became the foundation for Blue Bottle’s new website.