22/01/2025
Design Sprint Methodology
The Design Sprint follows six phases: Understand, Define, Sketch, Decide, Prototype, and Validate.
Setting your Sprint up for Success
Write a Sprint Brief
The Sprint Brief is a tool for aligning your team and your stakeholders on the goals and deliverables for the Sprint. As a shared document, it is a great place to work on crafting your Sprint Challenge and outlining the Agenda and methods that you will use to achieve your goals. It should also include the background for the project, the decision-makers and help you organize Lightning talk experts and participants.
Identify the Challenge – Is It Right for a Design Sprint?
Each Design Sprint is centered on a single, clearly defined Sprint Challenge. This acts as a northstar throughout the Sprint to keep the team focused on the problem they are trying to solve. Reviewing the Sprint Challenge and goals with your team’s leadership early in the planning process ensures your Design Sprint has the necessary support for the outcomes after the Sprint.
Examples of good challenges for Design Sprints include:
Redesign a user flow to increase conversion
Explore new models for discovering products in your e-commerce app
Improve the process for approving new projects
Define the vision for a new product offering
Design Sprints are a great tool for aligning teams, making insights actionable, and testing ideas really quickly with users, but they are not a silver bullet. There are plenty of situations when a Design Sprint may not be the best use of a team’s time.
When to Sprint
At the Start of New Project to define your product or create a shared vision
When Time is Critical To inject speed into your development or decision-making process
At an Impasse, Roadblock or Fork when your product or team needs to get unstuck
After Uncovering New Insights To leverage new findings, data or research
When not to Sprint:
If you don’t have user research or a strong understanding of your customer base, you can consider running a Research Sprint, or conducting a Research study.
If you have clear product direction and just need dedicated design time
If you don’t have leadership buy-in
Assemble Your Design Sprint Team
The value of a Design Sprint comes from bringing a cross-functional team together to collaborate in-person. The ideal Design Sprint group size is five to seven people. If you have a larger team, break up the team into smaller groups of five to seven people each. Don’t feel limited to only one small team. More people can be a positive, as you’ll have more resources for building out multiple versions of a prototype.
A Design Sprint team should include people who will be responsible for executing the product, process, vision, or strategy after the Sprint. This is important because the work that happens in a Design Sprint often sets the strategic direction for the entire project. Every person whose input is required in setting this strategic direction should be involved in the Sprint. This includes those who can reject impractical ideas or outcomes and those who will drive the project forward after the Design Sprint. Teams typically include a UX Designer, a User Researcher, a Product Manager, a Developer, and if possible key members of leadership.
Creating your Sprint Agenda
While it is advised that every Design Sprint follows the six phases of the methodology, the amount of time you’ll need for your Sprint may vary based on the challenge at hand and the project Deliverables. We recommend starting with the Challenge Statement and working backward to select methods that suit your Design Sprint’s needs, planning time accordingly. Most Design Sprints are between three and five days long.
Explore Case Studies to learn about different ways of structuring a Sprint or visit our Resources section for templates
Build a Deck
Some people like to lead their Design Sprints with a deck, others might prefer to use a drawn visual Agenda. If you do like to use a deck, our resources section has some templates you are welcome to use. Participants may not be familiar with the methodology and the deck can help support the facilitator.
