The Design Sprint is a process for answering critical business questions through design, prototyping, and testing ideas with customers.
The Design Sprint relies on a consecutive row of workshops that supports co-creation and empowerment.
Itās a āgreatest hitsā of business strategy, innovation, behavioural science, design thinking, and moreāpackaged into a battle-tested process that any team can use. It comes from the āSprintā book written by Jake Knapp and John Zeratsky at Google Ventures.
The formats recommended below are updated from AJ&Smart, a more efficient and condensed version, aptly named Design Sprint 2.0.
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ā 1. Decide
The design sprint process isĀ notĀ a silver bullet. There are other methods, such as service blueprint and different design workshops, that could be a useful alternative.
However, there are situations where design sprints are likely your best option. Here are a few examples where a design sprint approach might be the most effective framework to choose:
Setting direction on a new effort
New (and often important) projects require a lot of alignment. Sometimes this need for alignment comes in the form of extensive documentation, long presentations, informational meetings, and follow-up conversations. Sometimes they donāt come with any documents, which can be worrisome.
The design sprint process gets everyone critical to the success of the project on the same page from the start. They can learn together as a team, or leverage pre-sprint research and techniques (such as problem framing) to set direction on gain understanding of a new project initiativeā¦ without a lot of time and effort.
Establishing an initial process
Several activities and techniques with the design sprint process lend themselves to mapping and exploring processes. Mapping, storyboarding, user flows and other activities can help visualise how different types of process (hiring, finding requirements for projects, conducting user research, etc.) can be worked out.
Aligning a diverse project team
Working on complex products and applications naturally draws in a wide group of people and professionals. Designers naturally gravitate toward working and collaborating with other designers, developers toward other developers, etc. When the circumstance calls for it, you engage with other disciplines.
Design sprints require a diverse set of professionals to work on big challenges, ideas or problems. When working in this condensed, collaborative environment, thereās a greater chance for understanding and alignment.
In the ideal situation, there is a natural appreciation of other points of view, constructive criticism of ideas, and active dialog about the problem space. Subject matter experts (SMEās) in particular become vital to establishing perspective for the entire team to align on.
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Gaining speed, efficiency and focus.
Majority of sales and marketing professionals will emphasise speed and time to market over getting everything right. Product owners and managers will want a certain level of quality to go out the door before they feel comfortable releasing something to their customers. Those in design and research emphasise product quality, with a keen focus on understanding the customer and what they react to.
Design sprints address all three of these approaches in just 4 days. Sales and marketing can have their hands on a realistic prototype they can shop around by the end of the week. Product owners and managers can feel confident that the highest value features are represented in the sprint teamsā prototype. Design and research can focus on the UX in their designs, with validation (or invalidation) of their approach through 1 on 1 user interviews. All of this, in 4 days (or less).
Reducing the risk of failure
No one wants to risk losing their job over a failed project or initiative. In most companies, itās must easier to shift the blame of an expensive, time consuming initiative to a person, group or entire department. In short, no one ever wants to admit they made a huge mistake. Thereās no upside to corporate courage and professing failure.With design sprints, you can short circuit or eliminate this scenario from even happening. By reserving a full week of time to explore a high risk / high reward endeavor, you essentially give everyone concerned ādecision insuranceā to stop bad ideas in their tracks.Moreover, you empower those who make critical business decisions with informed perspective. Thatās mission critical for gaining trust and acceptance for those you work for.
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If you find yourself in any of the above situations, you certainly want to consider the Design Sprint. Hereās a diagram to help you decide if this process is for you:
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ā 2. Format
The Design Sprint can be used to tackle lots of different problems. Depending on their complexity of the project or size of the challenge, the exercises can be broken down and tailored your specific needs. Here are some recommend formats:
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1ļøā£Ā 1-Day Sprint
ā Ā Pros
Easiest to setup
Perfect for busy teams & smaller groups
Requires 1 beginner facilitator
Provide immediate ideas & solutions
Sell the process to stakeholders that havenāt entirely bought in to the value of the Design Sprint
How to run Design Sprint step-by-step has been written about extensively. After leading numerous Design Sprints, here are the best tips to help you become an expert facilitator.
1ļøā£ Focus on the Big 3
Ask questions, write stuff down, and mind the clock. When feeling overwhelmed, get back to the basics.
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2ļøā£ Trust the recipe
Constantly refer to the process to remind you of the next steps. The recipe sets you free to do your job well.
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3ļøā£ Get commitment in advance or donāt do the sprint
People coming and going to other meetings will ruin the sprint and it is painful and hard to stop once it starts. Get commitment in advance for people to be in the room 10amā5pm orĀ donāt do the sprint at all.
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4ļøā£ Explain the sprint before you start
Sprints are much easier to facilitate when people know how the activities fit into the whole. On the first morning of the sprint, before you begin, tell a quick story about what the sprint is going to be like. And on the beginning of each subsequent day, you remind the team whatās going to happen that day.
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5ļøā£ Ask for permission
Once youāve explained the sprint, tell the team youāre going to facilitate, keep things on schedule, and move everyone from step to step. Then say āSound okay?ā Donāt expect a chorus of enthusiastic responsesābut there is something powerful and symbolic about getting the teamās permission.
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6ļøā£ Write names on the board
Itās important for the facilitator to learn peopleās namesāconversations go so much better when you call people by name.
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Pro Tip
Go around the room and ask everybody to introduce themselves and write their names in a corner of a whiteboard, making a little map of the room.
The Design Sprint is a series of consecutive workshops that supports co-creation and collaboration. The Sprint is playful, geared towards fast decision making, and keeps everyone in the loop.
However, the days-long workshop format is not for everybody. In a provocative way, the Design Sprint is purposefully uncomfortable and brings people out of their comfort zone to reach new standards of working together.
There are plenty of design thinking approaches and processes that might align better with you, your team or your organisation. Nevertheless, more and more organisations are adopting, refining and modifying the Design Sprint process for their own purposes.
Whether itās research, marketing, growth design, branding, strategy or any other disciplines related to building product or exploring market impact, the Design Sprint process is slowly being accepted as a viable, efficient, and cost saving option.
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