A Design Sprint can be a highly efficient working format for innovating and is very popular around the world. “Benno what is a Design Sprint?” these and some other questions have reached me often lately – especially in the new virtual times and under New Work aspects, Design Sprints get an additional meaning. The most common questions were:
- What is a Design Sprint?
- How do design sprints work?
- When does a design sprint make sense?
- Why a Design Sprint?
- How does a Design Sprint work?
- What are the benefits of a design sprint?
- What are the disadvantages of a design sprint?
- When is a design sprint worthwhile?
- When is a Design Sprint the right tool?
So here are thoughts and experiences that we at verrocchio Institute have gathered on Design Sprints over the past few years.
How do design sprints work?
You could say a DesignSprint is a structured, time-bound innovation process that enables small and medium-sized teams to find goal-oriented challenges, design innovative solutions, create initial prototypes and validate them using rapid user tests – they are traditionally based on the Design Thinking method.
I got to know design sprints as an efficient way to create a design solution without investing weeks or months and many loops in product development. This classic five-day process, originally developed by Google Ventures, is actually used by companies around the world, including many of our international clients, to enable rapid innovation and improvement.
To clarify how a Design Sprint works and to give you an idea of the exact procedure, I have created a small guide that can be the basis for your first Design Sprint.
Day 1: Understanding phase
The first day is typically about fully grasping the problem area or challenge, sharpening the specific goal of the project, or even defining the goal precisely. The day usually begins with a series of synchronizations and group work to gain a deep, equal understanding of the challenge.
Your team should bring together experts from different fields and perspectives to gain broad insight into your challenge. These can be colleagues from product development, marketing, user experience, sales, and engineering. Expert interviews can help you better understand the context and challenges. Anyone who has been in a workshop or project with me knows that I would have now also said, “Be sure to define your challenge at the right and suitable level of detail!”
Proven tools and methods from this first phase include:
- CATWOE
- 5 Meter View
- 6W Method
- AEIOU
- Trends Matrix
- Problem Tackler
- and many more
It’s also almost always helpful to do a competitor analysis to see how other companies are addressing similar challenges. Gather as much information as possible and make sure everyone on the team understands the problem and the context.
The result, as in design thinking, is a“how might we – question”, or a guiding question, problem statement or hypothesis.
Day 2: Idea generation phase
The second day is classically dedicated to brainstorming and creativity. The idea here is that you generate a wide range of new solution ideas or draft ideas to create as many different solution perspectives as possible.
Depending on the challenge, you will apply very different creativity techniques such as brainwriting pool or innovation digging. Each team member or small group also has the task of outlining their ideas individually without being influenced by the others. This promotes diversity of ideas and ensures that all voices in the room are heard.
Day 3: Evaluation and decision phase
On the third day, the focus is on evaluating or filtering the ideas. Here, the ideas from the previous day are evaluated and those that seem attractive to us are selected to be turned into a prototype.
Methods and tools that are often used here are: First Filter, Flash Rating, and Visual Rating Maps. A fundamentally democratic process ensures that the selection is based on the strengths of the individual ideas and not just on the opinion of one person.
After selecting the ideas to pursue, a storyboard is created. This storyboard, which often consists of post-its or whiteboard drawings, serves as the starting point for prototyping.
Day 4: Prototyping
On the fourth day, the prototypes of the selected ideas are created. This prototype should be simple enough to be created in one day, but still represent the core concept and key features of the solution. Typically, many different materials and tools are used here: paper, scissors and glue, Lego or, in the case of digital solutions, tools such as Marvel.
The key is to focus on the user’s Jobs, Pains, and Gains and make sure the prototype has enough detail to provide purposeful and helpful feedback. The prototype should also animate the user to tell deep, behind-the-scenes stories that let us understand Jobs, Pains and Gains even better.
Day 5: Testing
On the last day, the prototypes are tested with real users (users / customers). These user tests are crucial to see how the solution works in practice and to gather valuable feedback.
During testing, the team observes user behavior, listens to their feedback, and takes notes. These findings are then collected and analyzed to identify improvements and plan the next iteration of the design. These test interviews should be conducted by at least 2 people. One person shows the prototype and conducts the interview and the other records the remarks, feedback and findings.
Conclusion – When is a Design Sprint worthwhile?
A sprint is a powerful tool for innovation challenges and small to medium problem solving. By combining design thinking and agile methods, it enables teams to quickly and efficiently create solutions based on real user feedback.
Although it’s an intense process, the structured nature of a design sprint can help minimize risk and ensure that a team’s time and resources are focused on the best ideas.
My experience: The sprint must fit the size and importance of the challenge set – only then is it really worthwhile!
What are the disadvantages of a design sprint?
In my experience, the following major disadvantage arises: Once the sprints are running, the team sticks to it, no matter what, and the participants or the project owner does not recognize or reflect when the sprint does not fit.
For a Design Sprint to deliver a really good result, the Design Sprint must fit the challenge. Very often, companies tend to tackle challenges that are too big and actually require a month-long project with the comparatively too small Design Sprint. The result is overly shallow, one-dimensional solutions that are not implemented and frustrated employees who have no intrinsic motivation to participate in a Design Sprint again.
Where can design sprints be learned?
The sprints are also offered in some learning formats from various vendors. In the master module of the innovation coach training of the verrocchio institute, a design sprint is also deepened and run through in a very practical way.
