The Design Sprint
The design sprint was created by former Googler Jake Knapp. It’s a time-bound process of five phases typically spread over five full days, designed to solve a critical design challenge through designing, prototyping, and testing ideas with real users.
The benefits are real: it saves time, creates a path to market, keeps the user central, and lets you test before committing to a full build.
The five phases:
- Understand: map the problem and pick a target
- Sketch: explore solutions individually
- Decide: choose the best solution as a team
- Prototype: build something testable in a day
- Test: get real feedback from real users
Before starting a sprint, ask: Is there a clear design challenge? Are cross-functional perspectives needed? Is the scope wide enough to warrant five days? If yes to any of these, a design sprint is worth considering.