Buckle Up: It’s Sprint Time

Design Sprint

May 23

What comes to your mind when you hear the word “sprint?” You might think of fast runners on a track, zooming past each other in a race to the finish line. And while that is an extremely good connection to make to the term, I will not be referencing running in this post.

Instead, I will be writing about a new process I’m currently in the process of learning more about: the design sprint.

The design sprint is attributed to Jake Knapp, who worked for Google Ventures (GV). In his book, Sprint, Knapp defines the process as “GV’s unique five-day process for answering crucial questions through prototyping and testing ideas with customers.” In five days, a challenging and complex issue can have a feasible – and successful – solution. A design sprint allows for a fast-tracked route, much like a fast dash to a finish line.

According to GV – the search engine company’s venture capital arm – Knapp first started conducting sprints at Google as early as 2010 before introducing it to the venture team two years later. Other GV members – Braden Kowitz, Michael Margolis, John Zeratsky, and Daniel Burka – then made other contributions to the process that is known today.

Connections to Design Thinking

A sprint consists of five different stages – one for each day of the workweek. In The Sprint Handbook, Pattie Belle Hastings outlines the original sprint stages:

Day 1: Understand and Define
Day 2: Diverge
Day 3: Decide
Day 4: Prototype
Day 5: Test

The steps to a design sprint have a clear similarity to the steps of the design thinking Process. According to Rikke Friis Dam in an article for the Interaction Design Foundation, the design thinking process “consists of five core stages Empathize, Define, Ideate, Prototype and Test.”

Design thinking is a proven process for problem solving. The design sprint takes this same process further by adding in a time factor. According to an article by designer Behrad Mirafshar, “Design sprint is derived from design thinking and offers a prescribed way to leverage the design thinking mindset.” If you’re familiar with design thinking, the design sprint takes the same concept and applies it to a framework made to create new solutions quickly.

Sprints are Proven to Work

It’s easy to come up with an idea and call it revolutionary, but it’s much harder to actually prove that it is.

Suggesting a five-day plan to create a solid solution to a problem is an ambitious (and somewhat gutsy) undertaking. When I learned about how design sprints operate, I thought it was too good to be true. Many other individuals have thought the same thing – some have even attempted to make their point in the Amazon reviews of Knapp’s book.

However, these doubts can easily be proven wrong. There are tons of documented successful design sprints. GV keeps a medium.com publication, sprintstories.com, which features real-word examples of the process in use.

There are also tons of other examples on the web written by “sprinters” on how they have used the process to come up with solutions to problems. Jonathan Courtney is a designer whose agency used a virtual design sprint to redesign a meditation app named Oak. Courtney documents the entire process in his medium.com article – from the virtual sticky notes, to voting, to prototyping, and the end result.

The results of design sprints are truly inspiring – and intriguing enough for me to want to try a sprint myself.