Design Sprint

Design Sprints were created by Jake Knapp whilst working at Google and helping several startups to innovate their products. The method takes a rapid design and prototype approach with quick customer feedback to refine an idea within 5 days.

Based upon customer design principles, the approach uses several practical techniques to understand the problem, understand possible solutions and then produce a quick prototype of the solution, all with quick feedback and instant decision making. Design Sprints are usually within a 3-5 day format for teams and customer advocates to focus on providing viable solutions that can be productionised.

Understand

This phase is about understanding the customer context, the problem space and the technical landscape.

• How Might We... Note Taking
• Lightening Talks
• User Journey Mapping
• User Interviews

Define

This phase is about defining the problem to be solved and the focus area of the Design Sprint.

• Personas
• Empathy Mapping
• Empathy Exercises & Scenarios
• Success Metrics

Sketch

In the Sketch phase teams are challenged with sketching possible solutions to the focus area.

• Comparable Problem
• Crazy 8s Sketching
• Assumptions as Questions

Decide

This phase challenges teams and the customer advocates to select which of the sketch ideas should be progressed further.

• Silent Review
• Heat Map Voting
• Story Boarding

Prototype

Prototyping is about exploring solutions with prototypes and mock ups that can be used and interacted with, in order to enhance our understanding and derive some deeper insights.

• Prototyping
• Dog Fooding

Validate

This is the final pitch and critical evaluation of the solution to the problem and focus area with stakeholders and customer advocates, to determine the next steps towards making these ideas a reality.

See Also

• Customer Research

References

1. Sprint:How To Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just Five Days, Knapp j., Zeratsky j., Kowitz B., 2016
2. Design Sprint Kit, accessed December 2018