Design Sprints for Innovation
Design thinking is a philosophy to internalize and a mindset to building innovative products & services. Design Sprint is a methodological process, based on design thinking, which tackles and solves the problems in the most efficient way within a specific time range.
A Design Sprint offers a framework for making progress and decisions when you have a new customer proposition or need to build insights for your business case. Made up of a collaborative five-day engagement, you’ll prototype and test your ideas with real customers to make sure you’re investing in the right things. Armed with realistic customer insights you can then make informed business decisions based on real data instead of assumptions or opinions.
CGI Innovation Framework is a structured approach to problem solving. Design Thinking is used to find a Business Model (Problem / Solution Fit) that solves customer problems. Lean Startup & Agile methods are used to achieve Product / Market Fit. Growth hacking techniques including Blitzscaling is used to pull a hockey-stick growth (or to achieve Business Model Fit).
CGI Innovation Framework is strategic level framework,whereas the tactical & operational details are covered through Design Sprints. Product Design Sprints & Product Delivery Sprints will become your way of life for rest of your life — whether you are a corporate or a startup. Only Product Design Sprint is covered in this article.
Design Sprints are a 4–5 days process for answering critical business questions through design, prototyping, and testing ideas with customers. Jake Knapp’s book Sprint: How To Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just Five Days popularized Design Sprints. Sprints are mix of ideas from the Agile, Lean, and Design Thinking. Sprints provide a structured approach to deliver performance in Innovation Projects both at Startups & Corporates.
Jake Knapp had covered in his best-selling book a five days Design Sprint. AJ&Smart a Berlin-based product design studio that specialises in Design Sprint and work closely with Jake Knapp, have revised Design Sprint down to four days — and they call new framework the Design Sprint 2.0.
Design Sprints allow you to gather key decision makers in one room: from the CEO, to salespeople, marketers, and designers, and really make things happen in just 4 days — Brittni Bowering, Head of Media, AJ&Smart
Design Sprint consists of the following five phases.
Day 1: Understand (long-term goals, product roadmap)
Day 2: Sketch (lightning demo, sketch a flow)
Day 3: Decide (Sticky decisions, storyboarding)
Day 4: Prototype (must appear real)
Day 5: Validate (triple validation, users, stakeholders & engineering)
In Design Sprint 2.0, Understand & Sketch both are achieved on Monday.
You can move from idea to learning in just five days — and remember the idea of learning is at the core of Design Sprint methodology. If you succeed, at the end of the sprint you will have a design prototype that you can take to developers to turn into a real product.
The sprint is a five-day process for answering critical business questions through design, prototyping, and testing ideas with customers. Developed at Google Ventures, 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.
About the Author: Imran Jattala is Co-Founder of Center for Global Innovators (CGI), contributing towards development of an Impactful Startup Ecosystem in Pakistan. He is Co-Founder of UrbanBazaar a Dubai based e-Commerce Startup. He tweets at: @ImJattala
