Design Sprint

The Design Sprint is a five-day process, developed at Google Ventures, for going from a business problem to a tested prototype without building the real product first.

The idea

Rather than debating a product decision in meetings for weeks, a Design Sprint compresses design, prototyping, and validation into a single week with a small, focused team. Each day has a fixed goal. The week moves from the problem to a solution that testing has validated or invalidated.

On Monday, understand the problem. Map it and pick a target.
On Tuesday, sketch. Each person sketches possible solutions alone.
On Wednesday, decide. Critique the sketches and commit to one direction.
On Thursday, prototype. Build a realistic-looking fake prototype.
On Friday, test. Put the prototype in front of real users and observe.

When to use it

A high-stakes product or feature decision where building the real thing first would be expensive
A team stuck debating a direction without real user data to settle it
Kicking off a new product, feature, or major redesign with alignment across stakeholders

How to apply it

Assemble a small cross-functional team and a facilitator for the week.
Block five consecutive days with no other commitments.
Follow the Monday to Friday structure. Understand, sketch, decide, prototype, and test.
End Friday with real user feedback on a realistic prototype. Do not stop at opinions.

Watch out for

It requires a full week of dedicated time from the whole team, which is a real cost to clear
A sprint is only as good as the problem framing on day one. Sprinting on the wrong question wastes the week
Prototype feedback from a handful of users is directional, not statistically conclusive

Lean Startup. A related philosophy of validating ideas quickly before fully building them.
ICE Framework. Useful for choosing which problem is worth a sprint in the first place.
Problem Framing. A sprint is only as good as the problem framing on day one.

Sources

Jake Knapp, John Zeratsky, and Braden Kowitz, Sprint: How to Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just Five Days (2016).