What is it?
Based on the framework conceived by Google Ventures our collaborative product design sprint is a one-week, intensive “hackathon” style process for answering critical business questions through a rapid process of product design, prototyping, and testing ideas with real users and customers. Basically, a way to solve design problems quickly. It’s a “greatest hits” of business strategy, innovation, behavior science, design thinking, and more—packaged into a battle-tested process that any team can use.
Working together in a sprint, we will shortcut the endless debate cycle and compress months of time into a single week. Instead of waiting to launch a minimal product to understand if an idea is any good, you’ll get clear data from a realistic prototype. The sprint gives you a superpower: You can fast-forward into the future to see your finished product and customer reactions, before making any expensive commitments.
You are your colleagues will need to block out your calendar for a full week to get the most out of this workshop. But it will be worth it. It’s important that a decision maker is involved but they don’t necessarily need to attend every day.
Who's it for?
Founders or startups looking for investment
Internal digital teams looking to get board sign-off
Tasks
Prior to the week you’ll need to pick a big business challenge that could be solved by digital product. This could be anything. An example could be something like:
Challenge - In our fitness centre we have a very human intensive, paper based approach to managing our kids swim lesson programme. Currently both time consuming and frustrating for parents and staff.
Potential role for product - What if this analogue process was made 100% digital with parents being able to book, pay for and manage their childrens swim lessons via an easy to use, mobile friendly web portal.
Monday
Monday’s structured discussions create a path for the sprint week. In the morning, you’ll start at the end and agree to a long-term goal. Next, you’ll make a map of the challenge. In the afternoon, you’ll ask the experts at your company to share what they know. Finally, you’ll pick a target: an ambitious but manageable piece of the problem that you can solve in one week.
Tuesday
After a full day of understanding the problem and choosing a target for your sprint, on Tuesday, you get to focus on solutions. The day starts with inspiration: a review of existing ideas to remix and improve. Then, in the afternoon, each person will sketch, following a four-step process that emphasizes critical thinking over artistry. You’ll also begin planning Friday’s customer test by recruiting customers that fit your target profile.
Wednesday
By Wednesday morning, you and your team will have a stack of solutions. That’s great, but it’s also a problem. You can’t prototype and test them all—you need one solid plan. In the morning, you’ll critique each solution, and decide which ones have the best chance of achieving your long-term goal. Then, in the afternoon, you’ll take the winning scenes from your sketches and weave them into a storyboard: a step-by-step plan for your prototype.
Thursday
On Wednesday, you and your team created a storyboard. On Thursday, you’ll adopt a “fake it” philosophy to turn that storyboard into a prototype. A realistic façade is all you need to test with customers, and here’s the best part: by focusing on the customer-facing surface of your product or service, you can finish your prototype in just one day. On Thursday, you’ll also make sure everything is ready for Friday’s test by confirming the schedule, reviewing the prototype, and writing an interview script.
Friday
Your sprint began with a big challenge, an excellent team—and not much else. By Friday, you’ve created promising solutions, chosen the best, and built a realistic prototype. That alone would make for an impressively productive week. But you’ll take it one step further as you interview customers and learn by watching them react to your prototype. This test makes the entire sprint worthwhile: At the end of the day, you’ll know how far you have to go, and you’ll know just what to do next.
Output
By day five, you'll have an interactive and high-def prototype. This isn’t just a mockup – it looks, feels and acts like a real-world digital product that can be taken forward to user testing.
The overall sprint process is an effective use of time and budget, but there’s so much more to it than sending you away with a wrap-up report and some wireframes. Design Sprints enable you to fast-forward through your project and answer the key questions in days, not months.
What will you learn?
Solves design problems quickly
Get User validation
Allows you to fail early
Understand potential challenges and complexities
Who will run it?
You will be working with our specialists:
