What is a design sprint?
“In design sprints you win or you learn” - Nadya Direkova, Staff Designer at Google X
A Design Sprint brings together your entire team to solve important challenges. This includes developers, designers, executives, testers, marketing, etc. Working together you tackle important questions and end up with designs that your company can focus on bringing to market quickly.
Is this event for me?
If you are interested in product design at any level (engineering, development, design, sales, marketing, etc) then the answer is Yes! This event is not isolated to developers and the Design Sprint will not involve writing any code or even using a computer.
Do I need a team to attend this event?
Absolutely not! We will split up into teams. You may partner with people you know or join a team of new friends. Teams sizes will be from 4-8 people.
What is the process?
Here is a quick look at an early version of the Design Sprint from 2012. Jake Knapp from Google Ventures quickly outlines the Design Sprint process with an example from their work with startup CustomMade.
The primary steps and the process is described in detail here.
- Before the sprint: Prepare
- Step 1: Understand
- Step 2: Diverge
- Step 3: Decide
- Step 4: Prototype
- Step 5: Validate
We’re going to take this schedule and compress it down to 4 hours!
You will:
- Be given a persona and wearables-focused topic to discuss as a team
- Individually brainstorm problems
- Integrate your ideas as a team and then vote on the problem you will solve
- Individually brainstorm solutions to the problem
- Integrate your ideas as a team and then vote on the solution that you will design
- Individually create mock-ups and user flow diagrams on paper
- Integrate your mock-ups as a team and settle on a final design
- Present your design to the conference!
Each step will be time-boxed and we will give you instructions for the next step at each break. We will have Sprintmasters going around the room to answer questions and help the teams.
If your team is exciting about your design, you can take it to Startup Weekend Space Coast on November 14! At that weekend-long event, you will be able to build a working version of your design and come up with a business plan to make it a success!
TechCrunch looks at the Design Sprint
Description:
“Google Ventures has created an all-star team of designers from Google, Mozilla and more to help portfolio startups create beautiful and easy-to-use products. Leena Rao takes a look at Google Venture’s Sprint with one of their startups, CircleUp.”
Sprints for startups and enterprises
You can learn a lot about Design Sprints with this Google I/O 2014 video: The design sprint: from Google Ventures to Google[x]
Description:
“The design sprint is a process for prototyping and testing any product in 5 days. Using real-world examples, we’ll show how to move faster and increase the overall effectiveness (and happiness!) of your whole team. And we’ll offer techniques for teams of any size, from two-person startup to giant enterprise.”
Any questions?
Discuss your thoughts in our Google+ Community.