Traditional product development takes months or years. You brainstorm, create specifications, build prototypes, test, iterate, and finally launch. By the time you discover your idea doesn't work, you've invested significant time and money.
Google Ventures created Design Sprints to compress this timeline from months to just 5 days. The results are remarkable: validated learning in a week instead of a quarter.
What is a Design Sprint?
A Design Sprint is a 5-day process for answering critical business questions through design, prototyping, and testing ideas with customers. It's a "greatest hits" of business strategy, innovation, behavioral science, design thinking, and more - packaged into a battle-tested process.
The 5-Day Process
Monday: Map
Define the problem and choose a target. The team creates a map of the challenge, picks a specific area to focus on, and defines a sprint goal. By the end of Monday, you have a clear target for the week.
Tuesday: Sketch
Generate solutions. Each person sketches competing solutions. The focus is on capturing existing ideas, remixing them, and creating new approaches. No group brainstorming - individuals work alone to generate better ideas.
Wednesday: Decide
Choose the best solution. The team reviews all sketches, discusses approaches, and votes on the most promising ideas. By the end of Wednesday, you have a detailed storyboard for a prototype.
Thursday: Prototype
Build a realistic facade. Create a prototype that looks real enough to get honest reactions from customers. This isn't production-ready - it's a facade designed for testing.
Friday: Test
Interview customers. Five one-on-one interviews reveal patterns in how people react to your prototype. By the end of Friday, you know whether your idea works.
Why It Works
Time constraint forces focus. With only 5 days, there's no time for politics or endless discussion. Teams make decisions quickly.
Individual work beats group brainstorming. Research shows individuals generate better ideas when working alone, then sharing.
Real customer feedback trumps internal opinion. You're not guessing what customers want - you're watching them react to your idea.
Prototypes are cheap, real products are expensive. Better to learn what doesn't work before you build it.
Real Results
At SKOV A/S, we ran a Design Sprint to validate a new product concept. In just 5 days, they:
- Aligned stakeholders around a clear vision
- Created a working prototype
- Tested with real customers
- Got critical feedback that changed their approach
- Saved months of development time
The alternative? 6 months of development, then discovering customers didn't want what they built.
When to Use Design Sprints
Design Sprints work best for:
- New products or features - validate before building
- Solving big challenges - when you're stuck and need breakthrough thinking
- Aligning teams - get everyone on the same page quickly
- Testing assumptions - when you have hypotheses but no data
The PRE.DO Connection
Design Sprints are perfect for taking ideas from PRE.DO and validating them quickly. Here's how they work together:
- Use PRE.DO to capture and prioritize ideas throughout the year
- Select top ideas for Design Sprint validation
- Run the sprint to test the concept
- Update PRE.DO with learnings and next steps
- For validated ideas, continue development
- For invalidated ideas, document why and move to the next one
This combination gives you both the continuous flow of ideas (PRE.DO) and the rapid validation mechanism (Design Sprints) that great innovation programs need.
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