Courtesy Sidekick Creative
Creative KickStart uses the "design sprint" to help a business with a new design in one weekend.
Sidekick Creative of Glens Falls has taken the concept of the “design sprint” and turned it into pro-bono work. For the second year, the company will give a lucky small business in the area a redesign of their website, logo, and more.
And they’ll do it in just one weekend, for free.
“It’s our way of giving back to the community,” said the company’s business director, Cara Greenslade. She said that more businesses may need a redesign this year because COVID forced them to pivot their business model into something else entirely.
Although the design sprint takes just one weekend--the company calls it "Creative Kickstart"--the preparation is significant, Greenslade said.
They based their plan on the basic design sprint model. According to articles, the model was created by Google and is intended to quickly create a design, prototype it and test it, skipping the launch-and-collect-data phase of many projects.
For this to work, Sidekick must make sure they have the proper client and then have all the pieces in line before the weekend begins.
Applications are due at the end of month, and from there, Sidekick will use a bit of crowdsourcing--in this case online voting--and then interview the top three vote-getters. What can look like a popularity contest is also "a way to see how much effort an organization was willing to put into it.”
If they cannot put in the energy to vote and recruit supporters to vote, they might not have the energy for the weekend either.
Greenslade said they take time to learn whether the company is ready to make the decisions. For instance, if the applicant has a board of some type, is the board OK with employees making decisions in one weekend?
“We need to make sure that they are comfortable making quick decisions,” Greenslade said. The objective is to make design changes that get implemented immediately and are promoted throughout the company, which means all the decision makers must be OK with the process.
There is a direct benefit to the weekend, beyond the free work.
Designs can lose their best look if too much time is spent, Greenslade said, adding, with more people picking designs apart, decisions can go the wrong way.
Last year the company helped Glens Falls Community Theatre redesign its website.
Sidekick Creative has taken some of the lessons from last year’s weekend and put them to use in other settings. Greenslade said they probably work harder with clients up front now and look for places where a design process might run into trouble or slow down.
The sprint can help with the creative process, too: “You buckle down. You don’t have time for a creative block.”
Applications are due Jan. 31. The weekend runs April 9 to 11. For more information or to apply: https://www.sidekickcreative.us/kickstart
Full disclosure: Sidekick Creative designed the logo for FoothillsBusinessDaily.com.