Close up of people's hands as they work on a design sprint

Design Sprints

Design Sprints are used by the world's leading organizations to solve critical business problems and drive digital transformation. They not only let you test digital product ideas before you pour too many resources into a project, they also help everyone get on board—whether they're team members, decision makers, or potential users. You'll know within days whether a particular product idea is worth pursuing.

Design Sprints are a proven method to jumpstart a new product, project, or feature. They can be completed in just a few days. The five phases will guide your team to:

  1. Define the right problem

    Getting a deeper understanding of your challenge's root causes with context of your business will help pinpoint the exact problem to rally around.

  2. Create a potential solution

    Rapidfire brainstorming will produce a lot of exciting and viable ideas. Your team will select one that has the most promise to create impact on your product.

  3. Test to validate or invalidate the idea

    Validating your product concept increases speed to market and lowers chance of failure.

Design sprint materials on a table

Why use a Design Sprint?

Design Sprints produce valuable answers, reduces risk and costs of discovery. They produce actionable outcomes by establishing user desirability and tested functionality. The prototype, which is way more than a wireframe or a low-fidelity mockup, tests the real-world interactions of users.

People working on a design sprint

Immediate Insights and Actionable Steps

Design Sprint results go beyond prototypes and user testing feedback. You’ll create vision-led goals and align your team around those goals as a by-product of the five phases. Your perspective will change in how you work, see your customers, and create future products. We’ll guide you through that process each step of the way.

When we started the Design Sprint process, I was worried how this was going to turn out. But after the second session, I trust you guys completely. I know your team ‘gets’ us and what we’re trying to do. We’re now on a different course than we planned at the outset, but it’s exactly what our company needs right now.

Doug Mitchell, CEO Of OfferLogic
A team working on a design sprint

The five phases of Design Sprints

  1. Understand

    Our teams will work together to define the customer, the user and their problems. Relevant business context and any past research your team done is important information for this phase.

  2. Diverge

    Together, we’ll explore the range of possible solutions now that we’ve clearly defined the customer and their problem. It’s more than brainstorming, it’s about generating as many ideas as possible.

  3. Converge

    As a group, we’ll collaborate to narrow down solutions from the Diverge phase to pick one to prototype and test with customers. There will be differing opinions, but in this case conflict is good. It will help align the team and choose the best idea to move with going forward.

  4. Prototype

    We’ll build a low-fidelity prototype to test with customers. It will not be perfect but that’s okay. Remember, Design Sprints are more about validating (or invalidating) a concept more than about creating a prototype.

  5. Test

    Tapping into your users or customers, our collective teams test the prototype to get feedback you need to validate or invalidate your idea. If you’re successful, this feedback will be helpful in creating your final product.

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Fresh Ideas Is a Design Sprint Right for You?

Answer these questions to determine if a Design Sprint would be a good fit for your challenge.

Fresh Ideas What Do You Get Out of a Design Sprint?

In addition to the answers to your biggest and most important strategic questions, you will get the following deliverables from a Design Sprint.