Whether you’re working at a startup or a large organization, developing the right product or service for your customer is key to your success. We can’t afford to wait for a product to launch in order to understand if it’s the right thing to be investing time and money into.
A design sprint is a process for answering critical business questions and getting customer feedback in a compressed amount of time, leading to breakthroughs that might otherwise take months.
Sprint teams will typically get together in the same place and focus on the problem for 5 days, but with this template, hybrid or fully remote design sprints can be just as productive. You don’t always need to run a 5-day design sprint, either. While this is the most common format, you can use this template to split up the sprint into five phases across a longer period, if needed.
The design sprint template helps you:
- Adopt a user-centric approach
- Build alignment and buy-in with stakeholders
- Improve cross-functional collaboration and teamwork
- Accelerate problem solving
How to run a design sprint with the template
Use this template to answer critical business questions in a five-phase process.
1. Pre-work
If needed, assign a facilitator to manage the preparation and pre-work required to run a design sprint. The product manager or owner will often act as the facilitator for the other team members
Add resources, outline the challenge and purpose of the design sprint, outline the agenda, add customer personas, and create introduction cards for each member of the sprint team involved in the design sprint.
Be sure to input user feedback and group together similar learnings and questions to identify common themes.
2. Introduction
As you start the design sprint, you’ll need to set the stage. Outline the agenda, establish sprint guidelines, and run a quick team check-in.
Next, outline the purpose of the design sprint and introduce the challenge. This may involve discussing any feedback or testing results, reviewing the initial problem statement, or even brainstorming with the team different questions they may have so you can drill down further.
Break out into teams and conduct a warm-up so everyone can get more comfortable with each other.
3. Define and ideate
In breakout teams, review each customer persona overview and start building out assumptions about their behaviors and actions, demographic and psychological details, and their needs and pain points.
Start generating questions and opportunities you can address to solve the challenges each persona faces at various stages of their user experience. Once you have a good batch of questions and opportunities, conduct a brainstorming exercise and have each team vote on and present their favorite idea.
Now create a storyboard that visualizes the persona, the journey they take as users, and how the teams’ ideas solve a problem in the user’s journey.
4. Prototype and testing
Now, start turning your ideas into prototypes. Start with lo-fidelity prototypes that can help illustrate a basic idea and get feedback from your stakeholders. Your storyboard can help guide the design of the prototype based on user needs. Once you have confirmation that this might be a good solution, create a better-quality prototype using tools at your disposal.
Before you get direct feedback from your user on the new prototype, start outlining key questions and creating a script to follow as an interviewer. This helps to standardize the testing process and ensure you don’t forget any crucial questions during the interview.
Next, you’ll conduct the interview, compile feedback and learnings, and present what you found with the rest of the team. If your team has the time, this is a good time to iterate if the prototype doesn’t solve the user’s problem as intended.
5. Wrap up the design sprint
Give the design sprint team 15 minutes to reflect and discuss the design sprint. What are the top takeaways, what did they find challenging, what are they excited about coming out of the design sprint? Compile these learnings in the mural template.
Tips for running a design sprint
- Set clear goals and expectations: Define what success looks like and communicate these objectives to your team. This clarity ensures everyone is aligned and working towards a common purpose throughout the sprint.
- Prioiritize user insights and feedback: Ensure that real users are involved early on to provide insights and validate your ideas. Actively listen to their feedback and make necessary adjustments to enhance the user experience.
- Foster a creative and collaborative environment: Create a safe space where team members feel comfortable sharing their ideas and perspectives. Embrace a mindset of openness and curiosity, valuing diverse opinions and fostering a culture of innovation.
