Sprint, Run or Walk: When to choose a Design Sprint?
By Peter FullagarWhat are the differences between Design Sprints and design thinking? We explore some of the defining characteristics that make Design Sprints different and help understand when to choose them.
The Rise of Design Sprints
The rise of Design Sprints in recent years has been a welcome antidote to the large and cumbersome insight approaches to innovation that had become dominant over the past two decades. This hybrid child of hackathons and design thinking is both familiar and something unique at the same time. Design sprints arrived as the snappy upstart, much like the tech start-ups that have popularised its use, thanks to the ventures team at Google, with the promise of significant results in just five days. The dream of all innovators with a wicked problem to fix.
Even before Jake Knapp and team codified the method in their 2016 book Design Sprint, the desire for faster, more agile methods for innovation had been surfacing for some time. I’ve seen, led and experimented with multiple versions of this ‘project-in-a-week’ formula for more than a decade. For me, it is a classic example of simultaneous innovation - many people and agencies identifying the same solution in parallel.
What has been different is the growing traction thanks to its simplicity and regimental clarity. Presented as a consecutive five days programme with clearly defined tasks and roles, all outlined in the book, a far cry from its more holistic but ambiguous parent - design thinking. So, given the shared genes, one of the critical questions is to understand the differences from design thinking and when to choose to run a Design Sprint. We’ve picked out eight defining characteristics, a checklist of sorts, to help select when a design sprint is a suitable method to choose:
1. Step-by-Step Convenience
One of the most appealing factors of the Design Sprint is having all aspects, stages and roles defined. Even down to the brand of clock you should buy (TimeTimer by the way - although downloading a similar free app works fine as an alternative!) The benefit here is that there are no questions to ask about the process; it’s innovation by numbers. You know what you need to do at each step of the process. However, for those of you familiar with design thinking processes, you will notice some distinct omissions and edits. Like the results of a management consultant applying a cost rationalisation to a standard design thinking process and removing anything considered ‘fuzzy’. It’s efficient but not without sacrifice. You can, of course, customise your sprint. More on that later.
2. Shortcutting Empathy
One of the defining tenets of design thinking is the empathy stage. Spending time understanding user, consumer and stakeholders to put the ‘people’ you are designing for at the centre of your process. By understanding pains, needs, desires you get to the core of the problem that needs to be solved, not just responding to the external symptom you see on the surface. Involving an empathy stage is what makes design thinking a deeper, more involved, and therefore sadly more expensive and time-consuming process. But it also makes it more valuable and ensures you stay human-centred, uncovering the unmet needs and desires. Design Sprints bypass the large empathy stage, replaced with brief stakeholder sessions, so choosing a Design Sprint assumes you already have sufficient understanding of the user problem at hand.
3. Bullseye Problems
The fact that Sprints start with a very targeted problem differentiates them from broader projects that can better suit a design thinking style approach. Typically, design thinking focusses on the total product or service, along with all the users in the system. Design Sprints instead focus on a specific user and a particular interaction step. This narrowed brief is a significant difference. It means you are concentrating on a small slice of a larger problem space and not the whole pie. The good news is that this means you can more comfortably manage that slice in the five-day time frame to a suitable depth.
4. Convergence or Divergence
Having cut out the empathy stage, the inspiration instead comes from the stakeholder discussions and some three-minute ‘lightening demos’ to showcase related examples to your challenge. Ideation is brief and efficient, run as solo, focussed exercises. Jake Knapp et al. correctly call out the rationale that unstructured brainstorming can be less productive than solo brainstorms - delivered in this instance through a ‘crazy-8s’ exercise. However, this is restrictive by not including any other activities to stimulate divergent thinking or allowing new combinations through cross-fertilisation or dialogue. Don’t get me wrong; this is an efficient use of time. It’s just another sacrifice of the time limitations. If it’s quality of ideas that you’re after, Design Sprints may not be right as you may need more time, exercises and dialogue to increase the divergence of thinking.
5. Different types of prototype interactions
When you break down the activities in the five-day process, there is a heavy emphasis on building (storyboarding and prototyping) and testing. There is also strict stipulation on the format of your prototype, in that it must look ‘real’ to the participant you test with on the final day, even if it’s just a one-page website mock-up, app or sales brochure. The goal being feedback on a ‘real’ offer. The big assumption here is that the purpose of your design research is to validate a fixed solution rather than iterate or co-create with your user. We’ve found these are different, both valid, but different. So we would suggest considering alternatives in the roles you might want your user to play and about the different types of prototype you might want to make. You can read more in Kate Dowler’s article four hats, exploring the different hats users can wear in your design research.
6. Singular Outcomes
The outcome of a GV Design Sprint is to test a primary hypothesis, via a believable singular prototype to help stage-gate a decision to progress the idea. For specific problems, with speed to decision critical this can make perfect sense, but what it misses through a minimum viable testing format (five users for 1 hour each) is the ability to test a wide variety of options. More prototypes equal more time to build and more time to test, breaking the neat five-day structure. The sacrifice here is range for efficiency. So the question to ask yourself; are you happy to test only one main option? Do you mind this will cut out any of the more risky but inspirational wildcard ideas that you would include in a design thinking approach?
7. Deliberately Undemocratic
Decision making is a fascinating aspect of all innovation processes, and in the most part runs on democratic principles (that’s democratic in the way modern politics is democratic, but I’m not going to get into that debate!). Where the collective brain evaluates, selects, ranks, debates and ultimately agree on what ideas to develop. Purist Design Sprints are deliberately undemocratic. Much like start-up founders or Mark Zuckerberg and his totalitarian control over Facebook, the ‘Decider’ is the autocrat. Having facilitated many workshops managing the tensions between stakeholders with opposing views, the autocrat has definite appeal. However, despite the convenience, you lose the value that authentic dissent brings to the creative process, especially around decisions. So think about if your project suits this autocratic decision-making structure.
8. Intentional Intensity
After more than ten years experimenting with Design Sprint style approaches, I remain torn by these intense innovation processes; they seem to have benefits and drawbacks in equal measure. It’s great for team bonding, accelerating the team through the storming, forming, norming stages, guided by the predefined roles, from ‘decider’ to facilitator. Some of the strongest teams I’ve worked in developed through Sprint processes. The downside is that the intensity is not without exhaustion. Five continuous high-pressure days take its toll on the team. Jake Knapp et al. argue for shorter workdays to adjust for this, but for me, work always tends to fill the available time. So being aware of this intensity, preparing ahead and allowing recovery time afterwards is essential. I, for one, would not recommend running multiple Sprints back to back!
Conclusion: Adjusting the Formula
I’ve been evaluating the features of the ‘purist’ GV Design Sprints, as outlined in the book. Over the years we, like many other consultants, designers and innovators have been adapting and tweaking the formula; adding short empathy activities, additional ideation methods, adjusting what to prototype, user test formats, extending to two weeks even. Each step is ultimately a base recipe ready to be customised. However, even with the variations, what it all comes down to is one central question of time vs depth of exploration. Do you want to spend a shorter, more intense period on a specific problem? Or do you want to slow down aspects to gain added depth, time to think, explore more ideas and possibilities?
Our checklist for when to choose a Design Sprint approach:
There’s a need for step-by-step convenience
User need is well understood
There is a specific bullseye problem
Convergence is more critical than divergence
Minimum viable user input is acceptable
The goal is getting to a singular outcome
The problem suits an autocracy!
It justifies the intensity and time commitment