4 Reasons Why You Need Design Sprints

Unlike five years ago, there’s a good chance today that you’ve heard the phrase Design Sprint. But there’s also a good chance that you‘re not 100% sure what it is and why it might be useful for your business. 

Let’s change that!

It’s important you know what Design Sprints are and what they could do for your business and its aspirations. 

So, what are Design Sprints? 

Design sprints are short, intensive periods of work that bring together a number of people and use ‘design thinking’ to innovate solutions for the world’s challenges. 

Whether that be a team of people from different departments looking to solve a specific business challenge, a group of people looking to change the world with a new product or service, or a company with an existing product that just needs fixing, design sprints are a fast-paced solution that enables exploration, design, prototyping and testing with collaboration, speed and most importantly, with the user central to the process.

Most design sprints are commonly broken down into small five-day periods of work that cover five key elements of the design process: 

- Exploring and understanding the problem

- Creating design solutions

- Choosing the solutions that fits the brief

- Creating a realistic prototype 

- User testing 

Feedback gathered from the user often results in a second design sprint to refine and polish it, further or it could be used to sell the idea.

Now you've got an idea of what they are, but the question remains...

Why are Design Sprints useful?

There are both practical and creative reasons why design sprints are useful for you and your business. We’ve broken these reasons down into four key ones:

1. A starting point for innovation

Design sprints are a great starting point for innovation. The product design process has historically been an incredibly slow, painful process. This could be because there are a large number of people involved in the project or simply waiting for higher-ups to approve/make decisions. Design sprints try to kickstart decision-making and design thinking by putting members of every team in the same room and designating one person to be the official “decider.” This process encourages communication and collaboration.

2. Create better user experiences, quickly

In the product design process, companies may take months or even years to develop a product before testing it with users and figuring out if it’s what their customers want. With a design sprint, the goal is to create a working prototype and test it with users within as short a time as possible—incorporating user feedback into the very beginning of the design process.

3. Rapid innovation

Design Sprints are the fastest way to find out if a product is worth developing, if a feature is worth the effort, or if your value proposition is really valid. Don’t invest months of time, invest a week.

4. Increase team cohesion 

Design sprints fundamentally change how teams work together, prioritizing rapid ideation, iteration, and decision-making to keep the design process moving forward. Teams can apply the collaboration techniques they learn during design sprints to help team members work together more cohesively.

Want to know more?

Now that you’ve got an idea of what Design Sprints are and what you can use them to achieve, it’s time to get them working for your business. And we can help you do it. 

You can find out more about our approach and experience with Design Sprints on our dedicated Design Sprint page. 

Book yours today to make sure you don’t miss out on all the benefits that a Design Sprint can bring to your business.