Masa Okunishi
What is a design sprint?
So if design thinking helps you think like a designer, what is a design sprint? It sounds like running fast with fashionable equipment, right? That would be fun to see but that isn’t what a design sprint is.
A design sprint is:
- a five day design process that helps you answer product problems
- a design shortcut that relies on fast, repeated prototyping and user testing from the later part of the Design Thinking methodology.
- a way to quickly spark innovations that consider what people need in a product
- The Sprint drops the bulk of User Research (Empathy and Define) to guess what the Designs should be via brainstorming sessions. It repeats prototyping and iteration over and over in a “Fail Fast, Fail Often” process.

What is the Design Sprint process?
Design Sprint is made up of five phases spread over five days: Understand, Diverge, Decide, Prototype, Test/Learn.
These closely align to the phases of a typical Design Thinking process of Empathy, Define, Design, Prototype, and Iterate.
Day 1: Talk to key business people& experts to Understand both business & customer needs.
Day 2: Diverge by sketching a lot of product ideas
Day 3: Decide on which idea to focus on.
Day 4: Prototype a simple, working version of the idea.
Day 5: Test one idea with customers and Learn what would make it better.

While Design Sprints sound like a good solution for any problem, it is not very useful when:
key stakeholders and subject matter experts don’t possess enough understanding of the customer to inform a design.
a problem falls outside of product design (like services or branding)
an effective prototype can’t be produced in a day
Would you like to read more about Design Sprint?
https://www.tandemseven.com/experience-design/ux-agile-run-product-design-sprint/
https://medium.muz.li/design-thinking-vs-design-sprints-whats-the-difference-47f490402077
Do you have a product, service or business idea? Join us for a Design Thinking workshop and learn how to make it real! http://ow.ly/YLUh30cIj8Y Offered by @ifconnyc and facilitated by politemachines.com.