Design Sprint: The Best Investment That Your Company Can Make

Jake Knapp, a designer who worked at Google, moved on to Google Ventures with Braden Kowitz and John Zeratsky, to create the Design Sprint. The sprint is essentially a five-day process that serves the purpose of answering critical business questions by testing ideas with customers and through new designs and prototyping. Design Sprint is widely regarded as one of the greatest hits of business strategy and design thinking. It is an innovative tool that is based on behaviour science and packaged as a rigorously tested process that can be used by any team. This highly structured five-day process has predefined activities for each day that help the participants to come up with insights and actionable solutions that can aid their project.

One the first day, experts work with the team to identify the end goal of the sprint and help the team create a clear plan for the rest of the week. The second day consists of the team exploring potential solutions and sketching out the various approaches that they can take. The third day is when the participants analyse the possible solutions to determine which one has the highest probability of fulfilling the week’s target and expands that solution to a storyboard. On the fourth day, the team will turn the storyboard into a functioning prototype that is designed to work just like the final product. On the last day, the prototype is ready for testing, and its viability is tested by showing it to prospective users.

The entire process is highly experimental, but it is interactive and user-focused. Design Sprint is a prime example of how design thinking can be used to produce a tangible result that is beneficial to the organisation.

Why Does Your Company Need A Design Sprint?

The entire Design Sprint process is user-centred, which means that it is your best shot to build products and services that your user wants. With Design Sprint, your business will be able to create a solid understanding of the user’s needs by asking them for feedback and validating your prototype directly with them at the end of the sprint. Let us have a look at some of the many advantages of Design Sprint.

Broader Perspective

The sprint process gathers all the important people in your company in one place. For the process to work efficiently, all participants must contribute their thoughts. This will allow your organisation to gain a broader perspective, increase workplace collaboration, and develop an inclusive solution.

Increased Efficiency

By removing back-to-back meetings out of the equation, the sprint process cuts out any ineffective or inefficient discussion. Your entire team will be focused on working towards a realistic goal by the end of the week.

Manage Stakeholder Expectations

Right from the first day of the process, your team is well-aligned, and they have a clear vision of the final goal. As the sprint discussion builds trust and respect between all participants, your stakeholders will be encouraged to buy-in early on.

Faster Product Development

Since the sprint process helps you gain clarity of your goals right in the beginning, your team will be forced to solve complex problems and make crucial decisions faster than usual. Hence, you will not only save design and engineering time but also save on development costs. As a result, you will be able to get your product to the market faster.

Though there are numerous benefits of using Design Sprint, it can also prove to be quite demanding on your company. This process requires you to get all the right people in one room, but identifying them is one of the hardest tasks. It will also be challenging to find a week during which all the participants will be able to block out their calendars. As a result, you could end up with more junior staff members in the room, with senior executives only being present when the team speaks with experts. Sometimes, the problems faced by the group might be too complex to resolve in just one week and results in an unsuccessful sprint process.