Stories, updates and ideas from Jellypepper

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1. Tell me a little bit about Jellypepper – the type of work you do and the type of clients you work with

In short, we're a lean creative agency. We work closely with startups and tech companies to turn bright ideas into sleek products, brands and websites. Our work so far has primarily been with what we're calling "disruptive startups" — tech startups in fields like self-driving cars, artificial intelligence, drones, 3D biotechnology and cybersecurity.

2. Do you consider analytics and measurement an essential part of how your agency markets itself to new (and potential) clients?

Absolutely. Our proposal pitch deck template focuses on a few key things (past clients, testimonials, the team) but one of the key selling points is the case studies and the accompanying analytics. We surface changes in key success metrics as indicators of how effective our methods are.

A lot of the time, when agencies pitch and promote themselves, it's based on promises and relationships. We try to focus more on proof and analytics are one of those key concepts that help us present this. We're currently sprucing up the case studies on our site at the moment so you'll see some success metrics there soon!

3. Do clients today expect you to be tracking metrics on the work you create for them? What are the benefits of this for clients and agencies?

End-to-end, cross-platform analytics across the website and products we build are crucial for startups to measure the effectiveness of their new user journeys and prove their potential to investors.

For us, not only is it a proof point that our work is effective, but it also helps set the benchmark to improve! For example, if we see the conversion rate for the new website has moved from 10% → 20%, that means there's a whole heap of experimentation and work we can do with them in the long-term to bring it up even further.

4. What type of metrics do you typically track for clients? How do you decide which type of metrics make the most sense for each clients?

It really depends on the type of company and what their goals are, but from a baseline, we aim to track pirate metrics (Awareness, Acquisition, Activation, Revenue, Retention, Referral) through high-level behavioral events across the website and product, as well as high-level behavioural metrics for emails. We focus on the first four, as retention and referral can be a bit harder to track, particularly as an agency as you might be on the project for a limited time.

5. Do you think agencies spend enough time focused on gaining insight on how client work is performing by analyzing metrics?

I think it can be difficult as a lot of project-based agency work has a hard start date and deadline and sometimes the relationships aren't as tight as you'd like them to be after the project, making it hard to follow up.

It can also be quite daunting for radical projects, where you're rebranding and redesigning an entire site. The short-term analytics might take a dive because people aren't used to the new style (despite an improved UX) but those metrics might improve past the original in the long-term. But you'll only get to see the short-term as an agency.

That being said, I think as companies become more growth-focused and rely on data as a way of proving whether something is good or not, agencies will need to respond accordingly and start taking an interest in the long-term success of their clients and projects through analytics. Positive analytics are great for the agency and the client — everyone wins.

6. Is tracking analytics on client work easier than some agencies might assume?

Absolutely. For web and products, it's essentially 3 steps:

Identify which metrics you want to track and how you measure them. You can base this on a user journey, likely points of churn or, of course, your standard pirate metrics (AAARRR).

Identify what platforms are best for collecting and visualising these analytics. We recommend Amplitude and Mixpanel, as well as Segment to manage the pipeline. If you are working with an early-stage company, many analytics tools have very generous free or startup-focused plans. Have your clients set up the platforms of their choice and send you the API keys or account details.

Add an analytics call at each of those key areas in your codebase.

The third step can be quite large when you're dealing with a complex app or website. Email campaigns and newsletters (particularly with Mailchimp) are a lot easier to set up as they come with detailed behavioral metrics, demographics, engagement and segments automatically. ❤️

7. At what point in a project should you begin tracking? What is a good place to get started?

The sooner the better, especially since good tracking requires a bit of strategy before implementing. It's likely that the metrics will be a bit distorted when you first launch your product (the first week or so) but after that, they'll even out and you'll start to see more regular patterns.

You don't need to dive into tooling and code to get started! Just open up Notion or Word and start answering questions like:

What does "activation" mean in your funnel?

Do we have a solid referral system in place?

Or if you're using Mailchimp, just send an email 😉

8. Do you typically analyze metrics for different audiences for each project? Different channels? How do you decide what metrics are best to track for each channel/project?

We typically analyze metrics for different audiences with different platforms based on the goal. If you're looking for high-level audience information like a users' country of origin, type of device and how they're moving through your site, Google Analytics is a brilliant go-to tool. If you're after something more custom (how different cohorts are interacting with your content based on traits and low-level demographics), we use tools like Amplitude.

For each channel or medium, it's important to track a mix of qualitative and quantitative metrics, as well as identify which metrics are going to answer the questions you're asking. Different channels have different methods of answering questions — engagement on email is measured by open, clickthrough and reply rates where as it's all about likes and shares on social media. There are a few metrics you should track for each channel with standards based on your industry, but beyond that it can be tailored to your product or service!

9. Do you work with clients to determine their goals for each project, so you know what to track?

We run workshops at the start of a website or product project to define the key metrics and what success looks like at the start of the project so we're able to measure it effectively. We centre the conversation around their business goals (conversion, awareness, public perception, etc.) and what tools they'll need to achieve this.

10. What are the most important metrics to track on different channels (email, social, website, direct, etc.) any why?

When it comes to email marketing, important metrics include:

Behavioural metrics (open, clickthrough, unsubscribe and bounce rates). You can find this on the report summary for a particular campaign. This helps indicate the quality of your content. Tracking this through to website or product conversions will show the ROI of your email marketing.

Engagement cohorts (which groups of people are opening your email often, sometimes or rarely?). You can find this on the Mailchimp dashboard. This will show you who which audiences you should be focusing on and who's finding value in your content.

Audience characteristics (industries, sizes and demographics). You can find this on the report summary for a particular campaign. This helps you understand who you're talking to and what they have in common so you can tailor your campaigns.

For social media marketing, you can focus on:

Engagement (likes, shares, faves). Shows how responsive and engaged your audience is.

Awareness (impressions and reach). Shows how many people you're reaching, good for tracking brand awareness and influencing public perception.

Sentiment (reactions, comments). Shows how people are responding emotionally to your content or business.

Conversion (all the 3-letter acronyms): when you know the above, you can start to measure the financial aspects of your efforts: return on investment (ROI), cost per click (CPC), cost per acquisition (CPA), click-through rate (CTR) and cost per thousand impressions (CPM).

Website design is a bit more custom, but it's handy to start by focusing on pirate metrics (AAARRR) and your North Star metric (the metric across your business most predictive of long-term success). From there, it depends on your user journey and business goals.

Direct mail is an interesting one as there's no real-time analytics you can collect. However, methods like Response rate or Conversions (through Promo / QR Codes or URLs) can pave the way to measuring the more common financial metrics such as cost per acquisition or customer lifetime value.

With OTT or CTV, you're essentially tracking video or ad analytics. For the video side of things, important metrics would include video completion rate (or identifying common churn points) and with ads, attribution tracking. With the rise of low-cost subscription OTT streaming services like Amazon Prime and Netflix, this will be an interesting space to watch.

11. Any tips for presenting data in a way that is easy and digestible for clients to understand? How can you use data to help clients see what’s working and what changes are needed, as well as highlight what a great job your agency is doing?

I'd recommend starting off by choosing a platform to help you collect and interpret this data. Amplitude, Mixpanel and Heap are great for websites. For email, check out Mailchimp's reporting feature.

From there, I'd figure out what you want to convey to your client and create a presentation that features some of these graphs and key metrics, drawing attention to specific points of interest. If you're focusing in on a particular metric, you'll want to be careful that your graphs aren't misleading.

A really cool option for the pros is to stash all your cross-platform analytics (from your emails, website, products, etc.) in a data warehouse like S3 / Redshift and use a tool like Metabase to start asking your own questions.

We sat down with Mailchimp to talk about how we use analytics to prove success.

How Creative Agencies Can Use Analytics to Prove Success

Gamification is a technique that applies game-like principles to non-gaming activities. It’s designed so your users feel more engaged or motivated while using your product, which will lead to better engagement overall!

Ever notice how some apps feel more addicting than others? Like they're almost a video game, even when they're not?

This is a UX tactic called gamification - a technique designed to insert gameplay-like elements such as progression, achievements and obstacles that make a product feel more enjoyable and engaging. It's well known now and used commonly as a growth or conversion tactic in many websites, products and apps as it has a proven track record. But how does it actually work?

Gamification relies on the same principles of behavioural psychology that you've probably encountered before:

Classical conditioning: when our actions are accompanied with a pleasurable outcome or reward, we'll associate those behaviours with happiness and want to repeat them. This is why gamifying your app can be so appealing for users as they get points, achievements, etc. which makes it feel more fun to use!

Operant conditioning: this theory follows operant behaviour where rewards reinforce certain patterns of behaviour within an individual - like how getting some likes every time you post a photo might make us want to share photos even more because there's incentive involved.

Cognitive dissonance: if we're presented two conflicting pieces of information at once (e.g. you're working out but you still see your sweat and hear the music) we'll want to reconcile these feelings by continuing with our workout.

The "Ikea effect": when we put in a lot of work ourselves, or feel like it was hard-earned, we'll value that thing more - like how people might enjoy using an app after they've spent time building their profile themselves (for example).

Expectancy theory: this is where someone predicts what will happen based on previous experiences or results. For instance, gamified apps are often designed well so users should expect them to be enjoyable because they've been designed well!

It's important for designers not only to understand these theories behind gamification, but also stay up-to-date with the new techniques and strategies that emerge.

Here are three gamification tactics you can use on your website:

Engaging: gamification can keep users on your site longer. Fun, interactive content and design will encourage them to stay logged in or return frequently.

Incentivising: the use of rewards as motivation for completing tasks is a proven technique that incentivises desired behavior with tangible recognition (such as badges). This may increase engagement and conversion rates by giving people something they want - such as achievement, digital products or access to new features - not just money!

Unexpectedness: this means adding elements into your product that are unexpected much like you would in a video game. Some examples are surprise levels where you have no idea what's coming next, hidden messages or random events unfolding while the user interacts with it

There are are few ways to gamify your app.

Incorporating gamification elements into existing features to increase engagement, such as adding a progress bar or achievement badges that can be collected.

For example, if you have an app for ordering and picking up food, gamifying the process by giving points every time someone orders anything from your service is another way of incentivising people to stay logged in or return frequently.

Or let's say there are two different types of coffee beans you offer on your website: one is more expensive than the other but has double caffeine because it's darker roast. You could provide either some kind of visual indicator (maybe with colours), where dark = more caffeinated; or actually list what milligrams per ounce each type has next to their price.

Or, if you sell clothes and want to gamify the process of finding an outfit for a work-day, then maybe show what outfits are trending in your area or offer some kind of competitive game where people can join a team.

What are some bad examples of gamification?

Some bad examples of gamification are offering coupon codes for a limited time or limiting access to your site. The best example is when you offer something that's free but make it difficult to find or use, those tactics will have poor results and annoy users rather than engage them. The challenge for UX Designers is to gamify in a way that's engaging and fun for the user.

Manipulation: this gamification technique is more like a marketing tactic where the company tricks people into buying something

Punishment: this type of gamifying aspect may be seen in video games, but it's not a recommended UX design strategy. This can frustrate and anger users as they feel their time or progress was wasted

Novelty factor: some companies create games that are engaging for one day only before getting old to the user

Exclusivity: another bad gamification example would be limiting access to certain features based on if someone pays money or has status with your site/product

The best way to avoid these pitfalls? Do research beforehand! There are plenty of articles about what good gamifications looks like so you don't have to go through the trials and tribulations of making your own.

The psychology behind gamification and how you can use it to increase engagement with your users!

Gamification: A Growth Technique With Proven Results

There are five key ways to reduce the cost of a new website. Let's explore each of them.

The easiest way to reduce the cost of your new website is to simply reduce the scope by removing sections of content or entire pages. For example, if you want a website with an events page and don't plan on holding any more than five total events per year, then it doesn’t make sense to invest in that feature.

We're usually not super keen to do this as you’ve figured out the sitemap already and you have a story you want to tell, so the solutions below are probably better.

It's more common than you might think to not know the content of your website until after we've started designing it. This is a great way for us to come up with creative solutions that work within an agreed budget, but if you're new to web design this can be frustrating.

To avoid this happening, try creating some wireframes or a sitemap before getting in touch and give us as much information about what will go on the site so we can quote accordingly.

At Jellypepper, we have a list of things we typically figure out during a website strategy workshop. You can browse these concepts and figure them out internally.

One of the bigger cost factors is unique templates. Rather than splitting content into low-quantity pages, we could combine them into a longer form page that optimises for quality and experience over quantity and takes your audience of a journey through your site, rather than constantly clicking around.

If you have multiple pages that don't require high amounts of content, then it's often a good idea to combine them into one. A good use case for this is the About pages or, more likely, the Careers pages. We will still need the same amount of visual assets (minus 1 or 2 depending on how they’re merged) but in the case of Careers, it saves on an entire template.

Using the same high-level structure for multiple pages with the same intent allows for launching new pages and scaling easier, as well as much faster development. A good use case for this are a Product or Service page. When you have multiple product pages, they typically follow a pretty similar pattern so we can immediately cut out a whole slew of unique templates and just focus on what’s different in the middle, which saves time.Another good example are legal pages — they’re just static content pages so easily repeatable.

As most websites are scoped off a basic sitemap, the estimate needs to be conservative and it's assumed every page is large and unique. We’d rather overestimate at this point than underestimate and be potentially misleading. If we find out there’s less content per page, it immediately cuts down the time to design and build. A great example for this is the Contact page — if we know for a fact it's super short, simple and beautiful, it saves us a lot of guesswork.

Reducing the upfront cost of a new website through thoughtful planning frees up a lot more budget for creative assets later on, which can really help your website's new design.

The upfront cost of a website quote can be quite overwhelming for young startups. So, how can you reduce it?

5 Ways to Reduce the Cost of a New Website

This post is a slightly more refined version of a talk I gave during 2019, called Branding for Disruptive Startups. It's a collection of stuff that’s in my head on a daily basis around what makes a good brand, the intersection of brand and culture, and what you can do as a startup to start creating a brilliant brand without investing a heap of cash. I also cover why branding is harder for startups, disruptive startups in particular.

Before we start, "disruptive startups" is a term we use at Jellypepper to group our clients working in deep tech or just generally cool industries - like Baraja (self-driving car tech), Corellium (mobile device virtualization) or Inventia (3D bioprinting).

The description we tend to use at Jellypepper is that your brand is what your customers think you are. It’s everything — how you act, how you present yourself, how you’re perceived. It's is shaped through their experiences and interaction with your products, services and communications and you influence those thoughts with the messages you communicate, the way you behave and, today more than ever, the experience you deliver. When a brand is consistent, it becomes believable, resulting in engagement, loyalty and success.

Back in 1975, Pepsi started a well known campaign called the Pepsi Challenge, essentially a Pepsi vs Coke blind test where they got a bunch of people to drink both drinks then tell them which one they preferred. Guess what the result was?

Around 61% preferred Pepsi. So Pepsi’s better right? They have a statistically-proven better product.

Unfortunately for them, Coke outsold them at least 2:1, 3:1, 4:1, depending on the market. So what did this challenge prove? Was it that Pepsi’s marketing team sucked, or the results were false?

No, it proved that even though they had a statistically better product, there were a lot of factors that just weren't as good, including their brand.

Coca Cola ran a really successful campaign around 2009 / 2010 called Open Happiness. Ads like these are part of the reason they're dominating the market. Frankly, it’s just sugar water. But they don’t sell sugar water — they sell lifestyle and happiness.

While Pepsi was busy telling people that they could have a better drink, Coke was telling people they could have a better life.

When most people think of a brand, they think of the logo. Fair enough since it’s the most visually identifiable mark for a company. I'm positive if I showed you the logo, you’d be able to tell me the company right away.

But what else is a brand made of? What about colour? Can you tell what company I’m mimicing right now?

Hundreds of companies use these colours, but it’s these specific hex values that make it unique.

It's also the order in which they're shown. Are you able to tell between these two words which one is correctly Google?

If you picked the bottom one, you're a perceptive cookie. You’ve seen this order so many times in their logo that you can recognise when it’s wrong. That's pretty amazing if you think about it.

How about tone of voice? Here's two descriptions of laptops, one of them was written by Apple. Can you tell which?

If you picked the left one, well done. How did you know? I didn’t even note what the product is. I didn’t have a logo and they both used the same font and colours.

Fun Fact: they're both the same laptop - a Macbook Pro.

Branding is comprised of a lot of different things - layouts, imagery, typography, colours, logos, tone of voice, messaging, iconography and patterns. All these things add up and you can recognise a great brand from any one of these. Although, these are mostly visual things - they’re just a gateway, method of delivering your brand.

Real branding is about creating a relationship and being approachable. You want your customer to identify with your story and the problems you’re solving, create that relationship based on values you both share.

Most brand relationships are an illusion, but to be fair if you cant tell the difference between illusion and reality which most people can’t, then it doesn't matter anyway. They’re invested in you, that’s what matters.

But of course, that relationship is much easier if you’re not faking it.

Brands are about stories. I love stories - they're how we understand and make sense of the world around us. The stories you tell can inspire people, educate them, give them hope. This can make them love you, loyal to you. Think about any book or movie that's stuck with you your entire life, given you direction or changed how you think.

Branding is also about culture - they’re two sides of the same coin. The only way your brand is persistently represented throughout your company and beyond is by instilling your company’s values into your team. That’s what will make them your best advocates.

I tend to find the best brands are authentic, honest and simple. 202X is going to a very interesting time - it’s an era of post-truth, politically endorsed fake news and deepfake videos. Being authentic and having your audience believe you is going to mean more than ever. How you decide to adopt to this new trend is going to say a lot about your brand.

A lot of what we do at Jellypepper is branding disruptive startups. Branding can be particularly difficult for these startups as the the lack of precedence and sources of inspiration means there’s nothing to draw off. How do you brand a self-driving car company or a 3D bioprinting company? What’s the right tone to go for? What should it look like? What can we say, or not say?

The flip side of that is whatever you make might just dictate the industry standard and influence whether people reject or adopt the new technology. There are 100 wrong ways to brand a 3D bioprinting company for example, by talking too deep about the technology to regular people (which weirds them out) or designing your website too casual or edgy so customers think you’re flippant.

It's always changing, but there are 3 core issues we generally have to face when branding or rebranding these companies:

The first one is the knowledge gap, where nobody understands what you do. At least when you’re rebranding a bank, a food delivery or a chat app, people get the core concept which means you can focus on what makes you different. With startups, especially the disruptive ones, your difficulty tends to lie in explaining your core concept or product.

The second one is relationships. First impressions really matter here - people don’t know anything about you and it can be hard for them to grasp what you’re about, sp you have to use whatever’s at your disposal. Without press or testimonials, this can be tough. That’s where your story, culture and mission come in, to encourage that personal attachment.

The third is content. Most scrappy startups can get away with using stock photography and reworking their competitors copy. It’s much harder if you’re working in a totally new field - there's not much stock footage available on 3D bioprinting. So when you’re on a tight budget, a little photoshop compositing goes a long way.

So, how can you create a great brand? One of my favourite quotes here is that "it’s not inspiration, it’s perspiration". It’s like anything - it gets better over time the more effort you put into it. You can structure your approach to branding by creating a Brand Strategy which is what we do for our clients at Jellypepper. So what the hell is a Brand Strategy?

Well, it's essentially the principles and direction behind your brand. It’s all the emotional and psychological traits of your company - what people think of you, what you think of yourself... that sort of thing and using that as a rationale for your visuals. Culture, perception, vision, mission... how do these influence the fonts that we pick, the words we use, the shape of our logo?

There are a bunch of tools we have at our disposal to help with this, here's a couple:

One simple and effective tool is the elevator pitch. Most good startups have one, less so in big companies. They’re a quickfire way of bringing together your team’s messaging and company’s positioning so it’s great for folks to understand what the hell you do.

Here are 4 good elevator pitch examples from very big tech companies - they’re short and sweet. Any idea who they belong to?

We help businesses and organisations communicate with a simple chat interface.

We help individuals get from A to Z with a simple ride-sharing app.

We help people buy and sell things online.

We help individuals stay connected and share experiences online.

If you said Slack, Uber, Amazon and Facebook, you'd be a winner. Easy right? They’re factual, relatively straight to the point and help people understand what you do. Interestingly, they all follow the same pattern: here’s what we do, here’s how we do it. Unfortunately, these aren’t good for developing a long-term brand strategy because they focus on the what and the how... but not the why.

There's a great TED Talk by Simon Sinek that explains that all companies know what they do, only some companies know how they do it and very few know why. The best campaigns and all the best brands start with why — they’re emotive.

Most companies work inwards because it’s easy: here’s what we do, here's why we’re different.

we’re a law firm -> biggest clients, great performance

we sell this car -> leather seats, aircon

we sell Pepsi -> 61% of people prefer us to coke

Factual, but uninspiring. Companies who are brilliant at branding and advertising, such as Apple, start with the why.

“everything we do is about challenging the status quo”

“those who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones that do”

How do we do it? We invest in simplicity, empathy and beauty. These folks sell laptops and phones remember, but if you couple that mindset with a great logo and a well-directed campaign: inspiring. People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it. Let’s see an example of this in action:

Apple’s 1984 Superbowl Ad, comparing the “big brother” concept from George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four to their main competitor, IBM.

Fun fact: Apple’s market research company said this was probably going to be one of their worst ads ever (rating it 5/43). The Ad cost $650k and ended up making them $155M. Why? The riveting story, strong modern cultural references and production values made it one of the most talked about topics in America.

So why even bother with branding? Is it all just to make a sexy website and logo? It’s really difficult for companies to see the ROI of branding and design because it’s not as easily measurable like sales or code, but we tend to think there’s 3 key reasons to invest in a brand:

The first is navigation. Every popular industry is an oligopoly:

Soft Drinks: Pepsi, Coca Cola, Dr Pepper?

How do you decide where to go? Part of it is what you feel like, but the majority is brand loyalty.

The second is reassurance. Once a customer opts to go with you, you want to make them feel like they’ve made the right choice. This is where delightful moments and great experiences come into play. If you choose a brand and they disappoint you with a bad product or customer service, you’re unlikely to go with them again.

The last one is engagement. Once a brand has you, they need to do everything they can to keep you. They use their brand strategy and visual devices to keep that relationship open with you - the same tone of voice, messaging, the logo, the same great experience.

The most common thing I hear from startups is that they can’t afford a good brand right now and that’s a fair enough statement — if you’re pre Series-A, you’re probably concerned with staying alive. The difficulty with branding startups for us (and disruptive startups in particular) is there’s a minimum vector where we’re best suited to help them. Anything before seed, it’s just not financially viable unless you cheap out, but then what’s the point?

So where do you start if you want an amazing brand without dropping a bunch of cash on an agency? The first step is workshopping - figure out what sort of company you want to be and how you want people to perceive you. These things define your brand just as much as a logo. Turn this into a brand strategy. You don’t need an agency for this (though it does help). Figure out your values, mission, culture, market positioning, things like that. Focus on creating a good strategy - it will make the visual part a lot easier later on.

Hopefully you’ve got some idea of branding for startups now. We run workshops like this every so often at Jellypepper with our clients. It’s the foundation of every great branding project we do.

So you know... I’ll send you an invoice.

What makes a great startup brand and why branding disruptive startups can be challenging.

Branding for Disruptive Startups

The Design Sprint is a framework developed originally by Google Ventures and has been used in many great startups and companies to rapidly ideate, test and launch new ideas. They're flexible and can be used to solve a whole range of problems and address opportunities, such as:

Designing better products and services by asking the right questions in a focused time frame.

Generating new creative ideas for solving problems, instead of relying on old ones.

Getting feedback quickly from your friends, family or customers to make sure you’re building what they want/need.

Design Sprints are based on traditional Design Thinking methodologies which consist of employing logic, imagination, intuition and systemic reasoning to solve tricky problems.

IDEO, the design firm co-founded by Apple's late CEO, Steve Jobs, developed are large advocates and thought leaders in the Design Thinking space. While Design Thinking was first introduced in the early 1990s, but it wasn't until 2011 that Design Sprints were introduced.

The first design sprint was a competition to solve an urgent problem for Google's AdWords team. They wanted to make sure the new version of their product would be ready and launched by January 2012. The winning team used this time-crunching new approach to quickly prototype and test out their ideas.

Design Sprints have been used from the smallest startups to the biggest tech companies.

Facebook used Design Sprints to create a cleaner-looking design for their platform.

Blue Bottle Coffee Company used Design Sprints to create a new customer experience, ensuring their coffee was fresh and delicious.

Netflix has also used design sprints with clients like DreamWorks Animation to come up with ideas for TV shows.

In addition to startups and tech companies, the Sprint framework is embraced by government agencies, NGOs and corporations — such as Nike and GE — to innovate faster than ever before.

The Design Sprint process breaks down into a series of tasks that are completed in five days (or less). The sprint is split up based on the day.

☀️ Morning: long-term goals, questions, risks, assumptions, map that shows general user journey

🌥 Afternoon: talk to experts on parts of the problem, interview them (timer) to improve our map. take notes with HMW, aggregate by category and vote on most useful for prototyping. Pick a target customer, spot on the map, questions from the morning to focus on for the sprint.

☀️ Morning: Lightning demos (solutions from your / other companies, tours of products) and draw good examples on whiteboard.

🌥 Afternoon: Sketching. Taking notes, jotting down ideas, crazy 8s, finished sketch (solution). Aggregate all the sketches.

☀️ Morning: review sketches in silence, parts they like and don't like. structured critique on which parts we should bring in to prototype and dot voting. then decide on what's going in.

🌥 Afternoon: put concepts head to head in a rumble. combine sketches + map from first day into storyboard.

☀️ Morning: Pick the right tools to make your prototype (like Keynote or Figma), divide and conquer and start prototyping

🌥 Afternoon: Gather the team, trial run the stitched prototype, review and test

☀️ Morning: Bring in customers and interview them with the prototype, watch their reactions. Rest of the team will be watching and taking notes.

🌥 Afternoon: Combine notes, look for patterns, draw insights and prepare for the next sprint. Make a plan for the next sprint.

Design Sprints are a perfect fit for anyone who wants to make the best decisions quickly, create new ideas that haven't been explored before or get quick feedback from the people they're building their product/service for.

They're perfect to use when you're on a tight timeframe or working in a super agile environment. Traditional design thinking is more open ended - it can take as much time as you need to solve problems from scratch.

Where can I learn more about Design Sprints?

Jake Knapp, Mike Donoghue and John Zeratsky, the creators of Design Sprints have been teaching workshops all over the world. They've also written a book about it which you can purchase online or in stores!

You can also explore Google's Design Sprint Kit which includes supporting documents and templates, as well as new methodologies and examples.

Design Sprints take traditional design thinking methodologies and compress them into a five-day process of rapid ideation.

Design Sprints: The 5-Day Process for Rapid Ideation

A great explainer video can do wonders for your startup. It's a chance to explain what you do in the most engaging and interesting way possible, which helps people understand why they should care about it.

It can help customers or clients better understand how to use your product or service, too - but there are common principles that you need to consider when creating an explainer video.

The first thing you need to decide is what your goal for the video is. Are you trying to inform people about a new service? Or are you just looking for some unique content that would be good on social media? Once you have decided on your goal, then it becomes much easier to write copy and make decisions about mediums, type of video (promotional or informative), tone, style and constraints.

Here are some examples of what your goal might look like:

Dive into the product and giving a medium to low-level overview of how it works and the different features

Reach a general audience who will never use the product but are curious about it

Create a video that is informative and doesn’t try to convince people of anything, or entertain them in some way.

Figure out your goal for this explainer video before you create one because all these decisions will stem from what you want most. From here, think about how will you measure the success of these goals? Is it views, impressions, clicks (link under video)?

Next up are the specifics of the video, how long it is, where it will be posted. When we work on a new video at Jellypepper, we usually come prepared with these questions:

Call to Action: What are we encouraging the viewer to do?

Copy: Are we using voiceover, or just text?

Duration: How long will this video be? We recommend a maximum of 90 seconds.

Style: Do you have a brand styleguide? Other videos you like?

Constraints: Do you have a budget and/or deadline in mind?

When we create a video, we typically break it down into 3 key pieces:

Creating a video is hard work, so we've assembled a few tips and resources to get you on your way.

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