Design sprint on:
[Wikipedia]
[Google]
[Amazon]
A design sprint is a time-constrained, five-phase process that uses
The creators of the design sprint approach, recommend preparation by picking the proper team, environment, materials and tools working with six key 'ingredients'.
# Understand: Discover the business opportunity, the audience, the competition, the value proposition, and define metrics of success.
# Diverge: Explore, develop and iterate creative ways of solving the problem, regardless of feasibility.
# Converge: Identify ideas that fit the next product cycle and explore them in further detail through storyboarding.
# Prototype: Design and prepare prototype(s) that can be tested with people.
# Test: Conduct 1:1
A design sprint is a time-constrained, five-phase process that uses design thinking
Design thinking refers to the set of Cognition, cognitive, strategic and practical procedures used by designers in the process of designing, and to the body of knowledge that has been developed about how people reason when engaging with design prob ...
with the aim of reducing the risk when bringing a new product, service or a feature to the market. The process aims to help teams to clearly define goals, validate assumptions and decide on a product roadmap before starting development. It seeks to address strategic issues using interdisciplinary expertise, rapid prototyping
A prototype is an early sample, model, or release of a product built to test a concept or process. It is a term used in a variety of contexts, including semantics, design, electronics, and software programming. A prototype is generally used to ...
, and usability testing
Usability testing is a technique used in user-centered interaction design to evaluate a product by testing it on users. This can be seen as an irreplaceable usability practice, since it gives direct input on how real users use the system. It is mo ...
. This design process is similar to Sprints in an Agile development cycle.
How it started
There are multiple origins to the concept of mixing Agile andDesign Thinking
Design thinking refers to the set of Cognition, cognitive, strategic and practical procedures used by designers in the process of designing, and to the body of knowledge that has been developed about how people reason when engaging with design prob ...
.
The most popular was developed by a multi-disciplinary team working out of Google Ventures. The initial iterations of the approach were created by Jake Knapp, and popularised by a series of blog articles outlining the approach and reporting on its successes within Google. As it gained industry recognition, the approach was further refined and added to by other Google staff including Braden Kowitz, Michael Margolis, John Zeratsky and Daniel Burka.
It was later published in a book published by Google Ventures called .
Possible uses
Claimed uses of the approach include * Launching a new product or aservice
Service may refer to:
Activities
* Administrative service, a required part of the workload of university faculty
* Civil service, the body of employees of a government
* Community service, volunteer service for the benefit of a community or a ...
.
* Extending an existing experience to a new platform.
* Existing MVP
MVP most commonly refers to:
* Most valuable player, an award, typically for the best performing player in a sport or competition
* Minimum viable product, a concept for feature estimating used in business and engineering
MVP may also refer to:
...
needing revised User experience design
User experience design (UX design, UXD, UED, or XD), upon which is the centralized requirements for "User Experience Design Research" (also known as UX Design Research), defines the experience a user would go through when interacting with a compa ...
and/or UI Design.
* Adding new features and functionality to a digital product.
* Opportunities for improvement of a product (e.g. a high rate of cart abandonment)
* Opportunities for improvement of a service.
* Supporting organizations in their transformation towards new technologies (e.g., AI).
Phases
The creators of the design sprint approach, recommend preparation by picking the proper team, environment, materials and tools working with six key 'ingredients'.
# Understand: Discover the business opportunity, the audience, the competition, the value proposition, and define metrics of success.
# Diverge: Explore, develop and iterate creative ways of solving the problem, regardless of feasibility.
# Converge: Identify ideas that fit the next product cycle and explore them in further detail through storyboarding.
# Prototype: Design and prepare prototype(s) that can be tested with people.
# Test: Conduct 1:1 usability testing
Usability testing is a technique used in user-centered interaction design to evaluate a product by testing it on users. This can be seen as an irreplaceable usability practice, since it gives direct input on how real users use the system. It is mo ...
with 5-6 people from the product's primary target audience
The target audience is the intended audience or readership of a publication, advertisement, or other message catered specifically to the previously intended audience. In marketing and advertising, the target audience is a particular group of cons ...
. Ask good questions.
Deliverables
The main deliverables after the Design sprint: * Answers to a set of vital questions * Findings from the sprint (notes, user journey maps, storyboards, information architecture diagrams, etc.) * Prototypes * Report from the usability testing with the findings (backed by testing videos) * A plan for next steps * Validate or invalidate hypotheses before committing resources to build the solutionTeam
The suggested ideal number of people involved in the sprint is 4-7 people and they include the facilitator,designer
A designer is a person who plans the form or structure of something before it is made, by preparing drawings or plans. In practice, anyone who creates tangible or intangible objects, products, processes, laws, games, graphics, services, or exper ...
, a decision maker (often a CEO
A chief executive officer (CEO), also known as a chief executive or managing director, is the top-ranking corporate officer charged with the management of an organization, usually a company or a nonprofit organization.
CEOs find roles in variou ...
if the company is a startup
A startup or start-up is a company or project undertaken by an entrepreneur to seek, develop, and validate a scalable business model. While entrepreneurship includes all new businesses including self-employment and businesses that do not intend to ...
), product manager
A product manager (PM) is a professional role that is responsible for the development of products for an organization, known as the practice of product management. Product managers own the product strategy behind a product (physical or digital), ...
, engineer
Engineers, as practitioners of engineering, are professionals who Invention, invent, design, build, maintain and test machines, complex systems, structures, gadgets and materials. They aim to fulfill functional objectives and requirements while ...
and someone from companies core business departments (Marketing, Content, Operations, etc.).
Variants
The concept sprint is a fast five-day process for cross-functional teams to brainstorm, define, and model new approaches to business issue. Another common variant is the Service Design Sprint, an approach to Design Sprints created in 2014 that usesService Design
Service design is the activity of planning and arranging people, infrastructure, communication and material components of a service in order to improve its quality, and the interaction between the service provider and its users. Service design m ...
tools and mechanics to tackle service innovation.
References
{{Design Sprint Software development process Agile software development