Design Sprint
Creatively solving problems on short timelines
The Design Sprint seeks to solve big problems in a rapid fashion, over a week’s timeline, using Design Thinking tools. In many ways, the Design Sprint is similar to Lean’s Kaizen event improvement methodology.
A common framework for applying Design Thinking to solve a problem is use of a Design Sprint.
The primary focus of the Design Sprint is to get a small team of Designers (usually 8-10 people, from cross functional areas of the organization) together to create and test a working prototype that will solve a business problem.
Over the course of the week, the Design Team will immerse themselves in the problem to understand the opportunity from the customer’s perspective. Then, after reframing the problem the Designers will prioritize their ideas for improvement, develop prototypes, and test their ideas.
The key focus of the Design Sprint is to apply empathy to understand the problem through the customer’s point of view. Through this lens, the Design Team is able to more effectively create solutions that better serve the customer’s needs.
Some tools that are commonly applied during the Design Sprint include:
- Deep Dive Interviewing
- Empathy Mapping
- Customer Journey Mapping
- User Needs Statement
- How Might We Statements
- Sketching
- Prototyping
- Role Playing
- Customer Feedback Sessions
To learn more about the process of facilitating a Design Sprint, and the benefits the method can provide to your organization, please refer to the provided video.
The Sprint method is all about accelerating the organization’s learning around what unmet needs might exist or significant opportunities might exist within the customer’s experience. Through this fast-paced application of Design Thinking, the team can quickly create a test solutions to identify what innovative ideas have the most merit for being deployed full scale.
An important thing to remember is that Design Thinking is not meant to replace an organization’s improvement methodology, but is meant to compliment how an organization is already driving internal change initiatives.
Download the Free "Design Sprint Overview" File (PDF)
Facilitating a Design Sprint is a key topic discussed in our Design Thinking Fundamentals course. To learn more about the course and the other Design Thinking tools, please visit our Design Thinking Fundamentals Certification Course.
Learn the core concepts of Design Thinking through the Design Thinking Foundations class.
This course will help expose the learner to various design thinking tools and mental models – all with the emphasis on innovating through creative problem-solving.
Want to start using Design Thinking to solve problems?
Schedule a 30 minute coach call today and let’s talk through the details.
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