Design Sprint Map and Target (Monday)

Try it: /pm-skills:tool-design-sprint-map-and-target "Your context here"

Produce Monday’s bundled artifact: the long-term goal that names success in 1-5 years; 3-7 sprint questions converting team fears into testable risks; a 5-15 step customer or system map from key player to outcome; expert interview notes from cameo experts run in parallel; HMW (How Might We) clusters synthesized from the team; and the Decider’s chosen target moment. Monday’s output becomes Tuesday’s design target.

Family contract: docs/reference/skill-families/design-sprint-skills-contract.md. This skill is a member of design-sprint-skills.

When to Use

It is Day 1 of the Design Sprint and the brief is locked (via tool-design-sprint-brief).
The team is together (in-person, remote, or hybrid) for the full Monday workshop.
Expert interviews are scheduled for Monday afternoon (cameo role; 15-30 minutes each).
The team needs to converge from “five days of work ahead” to “this specific target moment is what we’re prototyping.”

When NOT to Use

The brief is not locked. Return to tool-design-sprint-brief; without sprint questions, this skill has nothing to converge toward.
The challenge is so broad that “long-term goal” would be longer than 5 years. Return to problem framing.
The team is missing the Decider. The target-moment selection at the end of Monday is the Decider’s call; without that call the team disperses Tuesday with no agreed direction.
The team has already pre-decided the target moment. Monday’s value is in the convergence; if it’s been pre-decided, Monday becomes ratification theater.

How to Use

Invoke the skill by name (/pm-skills:tool-design-sprint-map-and-target on Claude Code, $tool-design-sprint-map-and-target on Codex):

/pm-skills:tool-design-sprint-map-and-target "Your context here"

Or reference the skill file directly: skills/tool-design-sprint-map-and-target/SKILL.md

What This Skill Produces

A single bundled artifact with six sections:

Long-term goal: one sentence naming success in 1-5 years. Aspirational; cannot be hit in this sprint, but should be visible from the target moment.
Sprint questions: 3-7 questions converting team fears into testable risks. Phrased as “Can we… ?” or “Will… ?” or “How… ?”; NOT phrased as solutions.
Customer or system map: 5-15 step flow from key player(s) at the left to outcome (long-term goal) at the right. Includes major actors, decision points, and current alternatives.
Expert interview notes: synthesized observations from 2-4 cameo experts interviewed Monday afternoon. Surfaced as HMW candidates for the cluster board.
HMW cluster board: 30-100+ How Might We notes from the team, clustered into 4-8 themes; voted with tool-note-and-vote heat-map mechanic to surface top clusters.
Target moment: the single point on the map (or a tight cluster of points) the Decider picks as the prototyping target. Wednesday’s storyboard begins from here.

See references/TEMPLATE.md for the canonical structure and references/EXAMPLE.md for the Brainshelf book-catalog Monday artifact.

Inference Inputs

Input	What the skill does with it
Sprint brief (from `tool-design-sprint-brief`)	Pulls the locked sprint questions as seed for refinement; pulls the challenge statement as the long-term goal seed; pulls the team roster for role assignments in note-and-vote
Existing research	Used to draft the customer or system map; researcher walks the team through key findings during the map step
Analytics	Quantitative grounding for the map’s decision-point branch points and abandonment moments
Customer examples	Concrete stories used to validate the map’s key player and surface map-step gaps
Expert interview transcripts (run during Monday)	Synthesized into HMW candidates by the moderator (typically PM or researcher) during the afternoon

Monday Time Structure

The full Monday workshop is approximately 7 hours (09:00-12:30 + 13:30-17:00). The skill’s bundled artifact emerges across the day:

09:00-09:30: Welcome + brief recap + introductions (does not produce artifact content)
09:30-10:30: Long-term goal (one sentence) + draft sprint questions (3-7)
10:30-12:30: Customer or system map draft (continuous-flow whiteboard work; team builds together)
12:30-13:30: Lunch + first expert interview slot (cameo)
13:30-15:30: Remaining expert interviews (3 slots; 25 min each); team captures HMWs continuously during interviews
15:30-16:30: HMW cluster board synthesis; team adds final HMWs; Facilitator clusters; team heat-map votes via tool-note-and-vote
16:30-17:00: Decider picks target moment; signs off; team disperses for Tuesday sketches

This skill’s 105-minute timebox covers the facilitated synthesis sections (long-term goal + sprint questions + map draft + HMW clustering + target selection). Expert interviews and silent map-extension work happen in parallel and are not counted in the timebox.

Common Pitfalls

Long-term goal too short. “Ship Brainshelf MVP by Q3” is a roadmap goal, not a long-term goal. The long-term goal is 1-5 years out and aspirational (“Become the default way 25+/year readers remember and recall books”).
Sprint questions phrased as solutions. “Build the camera-capture flow” is a solution; “Can we get sub-3-second capture without abandonment?” is a sprint question. The team must convert fears into questions, not predetermined answers.
Map too detailed. 5-15 steps, not 50. The map is for Decider orientation, not engineering documentation. If the map balloons, the Facilitator forces compression.
Skipping HMW because “we already know the opportunities.” HMW’s value is divergent surfacing followed by convergent voting. Pre-deciding the opportunities skips both halves.
Decider absent at target-moment selection. The whole point of Monday is the Decider’s target choice. If the Decider must leave early, target selection must happen before they leave, even if HMW clustering compresses.
Expert interviews skipped or run by the wrong person. Experts bring outside context the team can’t generate internally. Skipping them produces an inward-looking Monday. Running them as group calls (instead of small cameo conversations) wastes expert time and produces less useful HMW input.

Cross-Skill Usage

Prerequisites: tool-design-sprint-brief. Map-and-Target consumes the locked sprint brief and refines the sprint questions during the morning. Without a brief, this skill has no convergence target.

This skill invokes tool-note-and-vote twice during the day: once for HMW cluster heat-map voting (anonymous dot-voting to surface top 4-8 clusters) and optionally once for target-moment supervote when the Decider wants team input before deciding. The Decider’s call is final regardless of team vote distribution.

Next invocation in the sprint: tool-design-sprint-sketch Tuesday morning.

Canonical Sources

Knapp, J., Zeratsky, J., and Kowitz, B. Sprint. Simon and Schuster, 2016. Monday chapter (Chapters 4-7).
GV Design Sprint Guide. “Sprint Week Monday.” https://www.gv.com/sprint/
Character Capital. “Design Sprint Day 1.” https://www.character.vc
Google Design Sprint Kit. “Monday agenda template.” https://designsprintkit.withgoogle.com/

Decider Checkpoint

This skill ends with a Decider Checkpoint in references/TEMPLATE.md. The Decider’s call at the end of Monday is target-moment selection: a single point (or tight cluster of points) on the customer or system map that becomes Tuesday’s design target. Without that selection, Tuesday’s sketches diverge with no shared direction. The Decider also confirms the long-term goal, the sprint questions, and the top HMW clusters; these become Wednesday’s heat-map orientation.

Output Template

Design Sprint Monday Artifact: [Initiative or Challenge name]

Long-Term Goal

[One sentence. 1-5 years out. Aspirational. Names the success state the team is sprinting toward, not the sprint output itself.]

Sprint Questions

[3-7 questions converting team fears into testable risks. Phrased as “Can we… ?”, “Will… ?”, or “How… ?”; NOT phrased as solutions. The brief’s locked sprint questions seed this list; the team refines and adds during the morning.]

[Question 1]
[Question 2]
[Question 3]
[Question 4]
[Question 5]

Customer or System Map

[Key Player] --> [Step 1] --> [Step 2] --> [Step 3 (decision point)] --+--> [Step 4a] --> [...]
                                                                       |
                                                                       +--> [Step 4b] --> [...]
                                                                            (current alternative)
                                                                                    |
                                                                                    v
                                                                            [Long-term goal end state]

[5-15 step flow from Key Player on the left to the Long-Term Goal end state on the right. Include major actors, decision points, and current alternatives (the “do nothing” or competitor path). Use the whiteboard structure; render the final map as ASCII or describe in 3-5 sentences.]

Key player: [Who is at the leftmost node? Cross-checked with the brief’s target customer.]

Map narrative: [3-5 sentences walking the reader through the map: who starts where, what major decisions they make, where they currently abandon or substitute, and where they would land if the long-term goal succeeded.]

Expert Interview Notes

[Synthesized observations from 2-4 cameo experts interviewed Monday afternoon. Each expert gets a sub-section.]

Expert 1: [Name, role, why-they-were-invited]

[Observation 1]
[Observation 2]
[HMW candidate surfaced]

Expert 2: [Name, role, why-they-were-invited]

[Observation 1]
[Observation 2]
[HMW candidate surfaced]

Expert 3: [Name, role, why-they-were-invited]

[Observation 1]
[Observation 2]
[HMW candidate surfaced]

HMW Cluster Board

[Total HMWs surfaced during morning + expert interviews; clustered into 4-8 themes; heat-map voted via tool-note-and-vote. Show top 4-6 clusters with vote totals.]

Cluster	Theme	HMW count	Heat-map votes
C1	[Theme name]	[N HMWs]	[V votes]
C2	[Theme name]	[N HMWs]	[V votes]
C3	[Theme name]	[N HMWs]	[V votes]
C4	[Theme name]	[N HMWs]	[V votes]

Top cluster HMWs (verbatim, 3-5 per top cluster):

C1: [Theme]

HMW [verbatim]
HMW [verbatim]
HMW [verbatim]

C2: [Theme]

HMW [verbatim]
HMW [verbatim]
HMW [verbatim]

Target Moment

[The single point on the map (or tight cluster of points) the Decider picks. Tuesday’s sketches and Wednesday’s storyboard begin from here. Render as a circled position on the map narrative + a 1-3 sentence rationale.]

Selected target: [Map position; e.g., “Step 3 (Decision point: capture or skip)” or “Step 2 plus Step 5 (capture moment plus first recall surface)”]

Decider rationale: [Why this point, why not the alternatives, what assumption the team is choosing to test through prototyping here.]

Sprint questions the target moment most directly tests: [Reference question numbers from the Sprint Questions section above; usually 1-2 of the 3-7.]

Decider Checkpoint

Decider sign-off required before Tuesday begins.

Decider confirms the long-term goal (1-5 years out; aspirational).
Decider confirms the final sprint questions (3-7; converted from fears to testable risks).
Decider acknowledges the customer or system map represents the team’s shared understanding (not “the truth”; the prototype Friday will adjust this understanding).
Decider confirms the top HMW clusters from the heat-map vote (those clusters orient Wednesday’s heat-map).
Decider selects the target moment and accepts that Tuesday’s sketches will be drawn against this target (and not, by default, against the un-selected clusters).
Decider commits to attending Wednesday morning for heat-map plus supervote (the load-bearing Wednesday window from the brief).

Signed: [Decider name, role], [ISO date and local time]

Example Output

Design Sprint Monday Artifact: Brainshelf Camera-Capture Validation

Monday 2026-06-01. The Brainshelf team’s sprint brief was locked Friday 2026-05-29 with 6 customer slots confirmed for Friday 2026-06-05. The team is together for the full Monday workshop: Jamie + Sam in-person at Capitol Hill Coworking; Alex + Riley remote on Zoom + Miro. Three cameo experts scheduled for the afternoon. This artifact captures the team’s Day 1 convergence from the brief’s 4 sprint questions to the chosen target moment.

Long-Term Goal

Become the default way 25+/year readers remember and recall every book they have read or want to read, with no friction at capture time and total trust at recall time, within 3 years.

Sprint Questions

The brief’s 4 questions seed this list; the team refined wording during the morning and added Q5 + Q6 from the customer-map walkthrough.

Will 25+/year readers complete sub-3-second camera capture without abandoning, and is the resulting library something they describe as valuable for personal recall?
Does OCR + cover-recognition accuracy in the Figma prototype feel acceptable, or do mis-resolutions break trust?
When asked “what would you pay for this and how often?”, do customers self-describe a sustainable price point above USD 4 per month?
Do customers describe “did I already read this?” as a frequent, painful problem?
When customers capture a book, do they understand within 15 seconds where it lives in their library and how to find it later?
Do customers see the value proposition as “fast capture” or as “trustworthy recall”, and does the answer depend on use context (at home, at a bookstore, at a friend’s house)?

Customer or System Map

[25+/year reader] --> [encounters a book they want to remember]
                       (at home, bookstore, friend's house, online)
                                |
                                v
                         [decides to act on this book]
                                |
                  +-------------+-------------+
                  |             |             |
                  v             v             v
              [does nothing]  [buys]    [adds to system]
              (most common)              |
                                +--------+--------+--------+
                                |        |        |        |
                                v        v        v        v
                            [Goodreads] [StoryGraph] [paper] [memory only]
                                                              |
                                                              v
                                          (3-12 months later)
                                                              |
                                                              v
                                          [needs to recall: read or not? what was it about?]
                                                              |
                                                +-------------+-------------+
                                                |                           |
                                                v                           v
                                        [searches their system]    [does not find / gives up]
                                                |                           |
                                                v                           v
                                        [LONG-TERM GOAL]              [pain repeated]
                                        (recall succeeds, decision made)

Key player: 25+/year reader who treats personal library as memory rather than identity (cross-checked with the brief’s target customer profile).

Map narrative: A 25+/year reader encounters a book they want to remember in any of 4 contexts (home, bookstore, friend’s house, online). They decide whether to act; “do nothing” is the most common path today. If they act, they either buy the book (separate from the capture problem) or try to add it to some system. The current alternatives (Goodreads, StoryGraph, paper journals, memory only) all impose friction at capture; that friction is why “do nothing” wins so often. 3-12 months later, the reader hits the recall moment (“did I already read this? what was it about?”) and either recovers the memory (long-term goal) or gives up (pain repeated).

Expert Interview Notes

Expert 1: Dr. Mira Chen, UX researcher who published 2024 study on mobile capture flows (15 min, 13:30 PT)

Sub-3-second capture is the threshold below which users perceive the action as “free” rather than “transactional”; above 3 seconds, drop-off accelerates non-linearly.
The “did it work?” feedback loop matters more than the capture speed itself. Users tolerate slightly slower capture if confirmation is unambiguous.
HMW candidate: HMW make the post-capture confirmation feel like “yes, the book is in your library” rather than “processing”?

Expert 2: Karen Iwasaki, indie bookstore owner with 15 years observing reader behavior (20 min, 14:00 PT)

Readers who track books are usually motivated by social anxiety (book club Tuesday) or completion-anxiety (did I finish this trilogy?), not memory per se. Memory framing may not resonate.
Counter-observation: a quieter cohort exists who track for personal recall (the books-as-memory framing); they often don’t post on social platforms. They are hard to recruit but high-LTV.
HMW candidate: HMW design the capture-and-recall loop so it feels rewarding without requiring social sharing as the reward mechanism?

Expert 3: Devon Park, mobile engineer who shipped two camera-OCR products at scale (15 min, 14:30 PT)

The Figma prototype CAN convincingly fake OCR if the team scripts the recognition to “succeed” for prepared books and “ask for correction” for others. Customers will believe the simulation if the latency feel is right.
Real OCR shipping accuracy is 88-94% depending on lighting; below 85% trust collapses; above 92% trust is binary “always works.”
HMW candidate: HMW make the “ask for correction” path feel like a helpful collaboration rather than a failure?

HMW Cluster Board

Total HMWs surfaced: 67 (team + expert interviews). Clustered into 6 themes. Heat-map vote via tool-note-and-vote with 5 dots per voter (4 voters; 20 dots total).

Cluster	Theme	HMW count	Heat-map votes
C1	Confirmation feedback at capture moment	11	7
C2	Recall framing and the moment of remembrance	14	6
C3	”Did I already read this?” detection and surfacing	9	4
C4	Capture across contexts (home / bookstore / friend)	12	2
C5	Social vs personal-only loop framing	8	1
C6	Onboarding and first-library setup	13	0

Top cluster HMWs (verbatim):

C1: Confirmation feedback at capture moment (7 votes)

HMW make the post-capture confirmation feel like “yes, the book is in your library” rather than “processing”?
HMW design the capture confirmation so a user knows within 1 second whether the system succeeded?
HMW make a failed capture feel like a helpful correction moment rather than a system failure?
HMW give the user enough trust in the capture that they don’t feel the need to verify it later?

C2: Recall framing and the moment of remembrance (6 votes)

HMW make the recall surface feel like browsing a personal bookshelf rather than searching a database?
HMW surface “books I read that mentioned topic X” in under 5 seconds when the user asks?
HMW make the recall surface compelling enough that users open it without a specific recall task in mind?
HMW design the recall feedback so the user trusts they’re seeing everything (no missed memories)?

C3: “Did I already read this?” detection and surfacing (4 votes)

HMW detect a probable duplicate at capture time and surface “you already have this” warmly?
HMW make the duplicate-check feel like a memory aid rather than a gating mechanism?
HMW handle the ambiguous duplicate (same title, different edition or translation)?

Target Moment

Selected target: The capture moment + the immediate post-capture confirmation surface (Steps 2 plus 3 on the map; the “decides to act” + “adds to system” transition). Wednesday’s storyboard will cover this transition plus a 2-step recall flow from the confirmation surface.

Decider rationale: Jamie chose the capture-plus-confirmation moment over the recall-only moment for three reasons. First, the lead sprint question (Q1, FS-A1) lives here: if capture-plus-confirmation invalidates, the entire camera-first direction pivots regardless of how good recall would be. Second, C1 had the highest heat-map vote count (7), giving the team confidence the capture-confirmation pair is where the most reusable design insight lives. Third, the recall surface depends on the capture flow having produced meaningful captured books; testing recall in isolation would have required scripting fake library state for each customer.

Sprint questions the target moment most directly tests: Q1 (lead; sub-3-second capture without abandonment, library valuable for recall), Q2 (OCR accuracy + trust), and Q5 (capture-to-library-location understanding in 15 seconds).

Q3 (pricing) and Q4 (recall pain frequency) will be addressed in Friday’s Act 2 (Context) and Act 5 (Debrief) of the Five-Act Interview, not directly via prototype testing. Q6 (capture vs recall as value prop) is addressed via observation across Friday’s 5 interviews.

Decider Checkpoint

Decider sign-off required before Tuesday begins.

Jamie confirms the long-term goal (3 years out; default way 25+/year readers remember and recall books).
Jamie confirms the final sprint questions (6; converted from brief’s 4 plus 2 added during morning).
Jamie acknowledges the customer or system map represents the team’s shared understanding (not “the truth”; Friday’s interviews will adjust this understanding).
Jamie confirms the top HMW clusters from the heat-map vote (C1, C2, C3 will orient Wednesday’s heat-map).
Jamie selects the target moment (capture + immediate post-capture confirmation; map Steps 2 + 3 transition; includes a 2-step recall flow from the confirmation surface).
Jamie commits to attending Wednesday morning 09:00-12:30 PT for heat-map plus supervote.

Signed: Jamie (founder, PM), 2026-06-01 16:55 PT.

Monday closed. Tuesday sketches begin 09:00 PT 2026-06-02 against the capture-plus-confirmation target.