What is a Google Design Sprint and How it works?

Last updated on June 19, 2019 by Claire D.

Reading Time: 5 minutes

Philippe Antoine did a tempting job showing the Design Sprint methodology on Google booth at Vivatech last May. What is the Google Design Sprint approach? It’s a 5 days framework, merging Design Thinking with Lean Startup, to be in motion from a customer problem to a series of creative ideas, and a tested prototype. In further words, it helps answer serious business questions through user testing and rapid prototyping.

What’s a Google Design Sprint?

It was created by Google Ventures about 5 years ago, and the Design Sprint framework is a foundation of the understanding of Design Thinking. Design Sprint is a 5-day process for answering serious business questions through prototyping, design and testing ideas with customers and final users, basically, a method to solve design problems speedily.

The Design Sprint is operated by the Sprint Master who is responsible for the event, and also accountable of the team, leading them in the direction of a much higher level of satisfaction and of deliverables. The main goal of the Sprint Master is to spot the challenges the team must be solving and also invite the right aptitude for the Design Sprint.

How Google Design Sprint Works?

The Sprint Master starts identifying the problem and once the definition of the problem is revealed, the Spring Masterworks in 6 problem-solving ways to decide the challenge.

Six Problem Solving Ways

1. Understand:-

Understand to be understood. The initial part of the Sprint requires tempting the right people to split business goals, user need, and technology capability. The aim of this stage is to increase the understanding of the product/project.

Understand: The team plans out the problem to spotlight on, and joins under a shared brain; this phase involves lightning talks, which are 20 to 25-minutes sessions set by knowledge experts, as well as the “How might we” note-taking process, and likeness mapping; the team puts himself in the shoes of the user with empathy building exercises, consumer journey mapping, user interviews, and accomplishment metrics.

2. Diverge/Sketch:-

Anything is possible. Participants in the Design Sprint ought to discover every one of the possible solutions to the user problems. Sketch answers on paper: produce a broad range of ideas, and narrow down them to a decide on group; team members are provided space and time to come up with solutions on their own: they can gaze to comparable problems for inspiration, boost idea generation, take note share and choose, and slender down to one well-defined idea for each person, generating their own detailed Solution draft.

3. Decide:-

Time to evaluate all ideas and cast your vote for the best options as a team. Make your ideas into testable theory, and Decide as a team what to sample to answer your sprint questions, after the presentation of person solution sketch, the team will spot the assumptions it wants to test, vote, and pick a direction; a decision medium can help the team calculate ideas.

4. Prototype:-

Prototyping and checking without investing a bunch of money, time, or resources. Prototype only what you need to authorize your ideas in a very little time; hammers out a sensible prototype, a facade of the knowledge you have imagined in the sketch phase. Propose the barest minimum but working prototype, taking benefit for instance of an app that alters pictures of a storyboard hooked on clickable UI, imagine of your prototype as experimentation in order to test out the theory.

5. Validate:-

Lets the team learn several ways to create in a new form, but also hears each other’s points of view on their own designs. Test the prototype with an actual live human, and validate. The team lastly gets to observe live users interact with their ideas and listen to direct feedback from the target audience. Each one on the team observes the Validation sessions: inspecting your users try out the model is the best way to discover chief issues with your design, which in return lets you start iterating immediately. In addition, the team can put in order an evaluation to gather feedback from Leadership Stakeholders and Technical Experts.

Google Design Sprints

When Do I Utilize It?

You can utilize it anytime through the design process:

At the starting of a project to describe what your product is contributing or to create a communal vision.
When you’re at a deadlock or have encountered any barrier;
To add speed in the development procedure.

Advantages of Running a Design Sprint

The advantages of running a Design Sprint are:

User rationale.
Allows you to fail early.
Solves design problems quickly.
Create perspective to responsive.
Collaboration tool.

Is Design Sprint Speed, or Haste?

Speed is one thing, and haste is another. The Design Sprint appears absolutely a wise booster for innovation.

But are there several limitations that would twist speed into haste? I propose keeping in mind 5 possible pitfalls:

On-boarding of consumers for testing: Design Sprint ends the fifth day with the confirmation of the sample with the real consumer target: but will you every time find the user aim at your door in 1 day? Some samples need real on-boarding efforts that shall not be underestimated. What if the Google Design Sprinters target farmers from the Middle-West with their artistic idea? Will they find them in the neighborhood of the Google Campus or in Silicon Valley? Most likely not.
Ambiguous innovation timeline: The tiny time frame of the Sprint can provide management a false idea of the timeline of an innovation scheme. At the end of the 5 days, you have an authenticated concept. The road can still be extensive until the market commences.
Altering concept into business: Altering the prototype into a business stream, is not only a question of product industrialization, but it’s also a matter of distribution channels, customer relationship, profitable model, partnerships, resources all things that often require the engagement of parent business unit within the company. This transformation course where your innovative notion creates an opportunity for your business partner unit and it is a delicate scale-up to grip.
Test rapidly, Fail Fast philosophy conflicting with the doubt of stoppage: Design Sprint makes use of to Test Fast, Fail Fast state of mind; this might be tricky to line up with the time frame of troublesome innovation where the innovation initially appears uncertain, more or less unappealing, and takes time and struggles to become the fresh tradition.
Testing the capability, not the usability: at the confirmation stage, this is what we’re looking for, and the prudent design of correct Minimum Viable Product targets at validating hypothesis. While in the Design Sprint, prototyping appears the only way to go.

Looking for Design Sprint Specialists?

We at Digitalogy have ensured that we have on-boarded the best pre-screened design talent on planet earth so that you don’t have to. Our designers specialize in Google design sprints and have contributed to projects for teams like Paypal, Papa John’s, Google, Lyft, Uber and many more.

What else? More than 90% of the companies hire the first freelancer or the design team we recommend. 🙂

Claire D.

In a global market awash with world-class developers (and some not-so-great developers), finding the RIGHT ones for your enterprise/startup may seem impossible if you decide to search on your own.