Frequently Asked Questions

What is a Design Sprint?

The Design Sprint is a proven methodology for answering critical business questions rapidly through esigning, prototyping, and testing ideas with users. Design Sprints save four to six weeks of development time by aligning teams under a shared vision with clearly defined goals,deliverables, and validated solutions.

What is a good challenge for a Design Sprint?

Not every challenge needs to be addressed with a Design Sprint; there are plenty of situations where the Design Sprint is not the right tool to use. A good challenge for a Sprint can range from something broad like, “Define the future vision for my product 5 years out” or “Explore opportunities to better meet the needs of children and technology” to more tightly scoped challenges like, “Improve the onboarding for new users of my mobile app” or “Increase engagement for high volume users of my app”. A Sprint will be most valuable when scoped to the needs of your business and team.

If you don’t have very much user research and are just starting to build an understanding of your customer base it is a good idea to conduct research first. nce you have useful insights to fuel your Sprint, you can begin the planning stage.

Alternatively, if you have a clear product direction and agreed upon feature set, you probably don’t need a Sprint -- you just need dedicated working time for your UX Designer and Developer to create the product. A Design Sprint is best used when you have a set of conjectures or questions that you need to explore to make sure you aren’t investing time building out a full solution based on a hunch.

For examples of Design Sprint challenges, explore our Case Studies for inspiration.

Resources
Case Studies

How long does a Design Sprint take?

The Google Ventures model outlines a 5 day schedule, but we know it can be a challenge to get that much time from a team in a large organization. Our philosophy is to start with your goal and the deliverables that your team needs, then craft a clear challenge statement and agenda based on that. While it is possible to conduct a Sprint with all 6 phases of the methodology in 1 day, it is definitely harder to do then if you are able to allocate 3-4 days. Visit the resources section to look at the different Agendas we have run.

Keep in mind that it takes time to plan a Sprint. You can expect to spend at least one full day planning each day of your Sprint. We also recommend that you plan for post-Sprint next steps, or allocate time during the end of the Sprint to do it as a group in order to keep your team on track.

Planning
Planning your Sprint

Who should I include on my Design Sprint team?

Building your Sprint team is an important element in the Sprint planning process. Your team should include the people who will be responsible for executing the product, process, vision or strategy after the Sprint. There is a sense of shared ownership that is generated in a Sprint, as well as the development of a shared vocabulary and vision which helps to streamline communication and collaboration throughout an entire project. During the process of a Sprint, decisions are made as a team that can influence the strategic direction of a product and any stakeholder who has the power to outright reject the decisions should be part of the decision-making process. If a stakeholder is not able to participate for the whole time, you can arrange for them to check in and review work at critical moments throughout the Sprint.

Teams typically include a UX Designer, a User Researcher, a Product Manager, an Engineer, Marketing, Content Strategy, or others depending on the problem space you are working in. You will want to be sure to recruit the maker skills that you need to create the deliverables you agreed upon with your leadership in your planning process. For example, this means if you decided that creating a short video to tell the story of your idea would be the most useful outcome, you will want to have someone who can shoot and edit video on the sprint team.

The biggest benefit we have seen from Design Sprints is improved cross-functional collaboration, so whenever possible you want to bring together a range of roles. This will maximize the opportunities identified and solutions generated.

Does the whole team need to be present for the entire Design Sprint?

Yes, Design Sprint participants need to be present for the entire Sprint. With continuous participation, the team builds a shared knowledge base and vocabulary, driving towards solutions together.

However, knowledge experts who participate in Lightning Talks or the Validation phase may only join for specific exercises. You might consider checking in with a key stakeholder at critical points in the Sprint as well.

What happens after a Design Sprint?

A Design Sprint is the beginning of generating new ideas and developing solutions for a challenge, not a single moment or the end of the process. Planning for what happens after your Design Sprint should happen before the Sprint even begins and should include the steps necessary to drive your solution forward.

See more on what happens after a Design Sprint here.

Planning
Post-Sprint

I’d like to contribute a method. How do I do that??

We welcome your contributions! Submitted methods will be reviewed on a quarterly basis and you will be notified once your contribution is approved for publishing. Each selected method will include an attribution, so please include an accurate source for your content. Submit your method here.

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