Is someone in your business thinking about implementing a Design Sprint? Or has one of your employees asked what you think of the design print process? Maybe you want to learn more about design sprint methodology? Whatever your reasons for landing on this page, we hope that you learn a lot more about design sprints, and how design sprints might work for your organization. More and more corporations are using design sprints to cut through red tape and the time it takes for traditional methods of designing and producing unique products.
The design sprint process is an intensive, highly-focused team effort to recognize a problem, then work as a team to brainstorm solutions, and develop a realistic prototype to solve the problem. Once you gain feedback on your prototype, you can start to understand how to refine your product design for real users.
A design sprint is one business strategy that takes a lot of energy from all the members of the sprint team, but the end result is worth it. To learn more about design sprints, let's start with the definition.
A design sprint is a term initiated by GV (formerly Google Ventures) to describe an intensive design process focused on designing a single product with your design sprint team.
Google Ventures developed the sprint as a fast-paced, five-day process to build and test a realistic prototype that de-risks an important assumption or question about a product, without needing to actually build or launch that product.
And don't confuse a design sprint with a development sprint; a development sprint is specific to agile software development.
A design sprint is a small team process created to shortcut drawn-out debates and compress several months' time into one week of design thinking and testing ideas. Instead of lingering months to determine if a design is solid and ready to launch to manufacturing, you can answer critical business questions before investing significant resources toward your clearly defined goals.
This page is a Design Sprint Guide, to give you an overview of how you can use the design sprint to rapidly move your organization forward without major risks.
When should you consider running a design sprint? This is a question that your design and management teams need to consult on. But, at its core, the design sprint is a fast-paced, five-day process to build and test a high-fidelity prototype with the goal of de-risking significant assumptions or critical business questions about a product. And this is all done without needing to actually build or launch a functional, working product.
A design sprint can save you hundreds or thousands of hours and reduce your financial investment into a problematic product, long before a product goes to market. With a minimal investment of resources, you can prove or dis-prove salient assumptions or problems before any long-term production begins.
A design sprint offers several benefits for product designers.
With a design sprint, you can collapse weeks (and sometimes months!) of work into a 5-day time period. You can do this because instead of email threads, follow-up meetings, and other concurrent project distractions, all of the key stakeholders drop everything else to focus on a singular goal for those 5 days.
Reducing design time alone is a worthy consideration, but there are other benefits for designers. In addition to reducing total calendar time, sprints also use facilitation best practices to create an efficient, collaborative environment that ensures that all voices and perspectives are heard, while still driving towards a decision that moves the work forward.
Pitching a design sprint requires persuading three different teams about how a design sprint will benefit them and help them reach a long-term goal. These teams are:
Important points to use when pitching a design sprint to clients.
“It’s really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them.” — Steve Jobs
Developers need to understand why you want to implement a design sprint.
Your design team is used to your standard design schedule. A design sprint changes that.
Okay, you've persuaded all of the stakeholders that you should execute a design sprint. What does that mean exactly? Each day has a specific purpose to execute. Here is the outline of your week.
Let's break this process down step-by-step.
Before executing your design sprint, you need to prepare for the team. Considerations are:
Okay, everyone is signed on to the sprint. You've reserved the room, and have all the supplies. Let's make sure each day's sprint goal is clear.
Monday activities are all about ensuring that everyone participating in the sprint is starting from the same shared understanding of the problem.
Tuesday is when you finally get to talk about solutions!
Wednesday activities help the group narrow down to a specific solution to test with end-users.
Thursday is entirely dedicated to building a prototype that will help you test your solution.
Time to put your solution to the test! On Friday you will show your prototype to 5 - 7 real end-users that fit your target customer profile.
There are many reasons that direct feedback can help you redirect or refine your design. After all, users are critical to the design process. If potential users try out your new design and point out things that you didn't think were important, revamping your design in response to honest feedback will make it much more popular with the people you want to sell it to.
After taking your team through the design sprint process, what takeaways should you understand?
Ovyl is the ideal partner to work with from start to finish when you want to manufacture a new product. Ovyl offers services in three categories to work with your team.
Ovyl will help you when the sprint begins with your product strategy figuring out the parameters of your project. They will also help you create your industrial design for your product to accomplish the goals you've set.
Need help getting the electrical engineering figured out? Ovyl will assist you.
Ovyl will also lend a hand with your software and firmware development to make sure your product does what it's supposed to.
Mechanical engineering is of equal importance when producing a unique product. Ovyl's mechanical engineers offer their experience and guidance.
And to produce the final product, you need to source suppliers and work with a manufacturer you trust. Ovyl helps organizations across the spectrum plan, implement, and produce products. Ovyl prioritizes honesty and transparency and works with your team to create new products that you can be proud of.