Why?

Why we use sprints?

Our 5 day innovation sprint allows us to tackle critical business issues head on in a short focused time frame.

Waiting to learn until your product gets to market can be expensive. We reduce that risk by starting projects with a product design sprint. It’s an exercise which starts with design thinking and ends with a user-tested prototype.

How a sprint works

A Product Design Sprint (pioneered by Google Ventures) is a 5-phase exercise which uses design thinking to reduce the inherent risks in successfully bringing products to market. We’ve done many product design sprints and have made them a standard part of our consulting engagements.

Participating in a Design Sprint orients the entire team and aims their efforts at hitting clearly defined goals. Sprints are useful starting points when kicking off a new feature, workflow, product, business or solving problems with an existing product.

Integrating design sprints and design thinking into our product development process keeps us aligned with our goals, and helps us invest our time and money wisely.

COMPANIES WE'VE SPRINTED WITH

Agenda

Day 1

Mapping out the problem

Develop a common understanding of the working context including the problem, the business, the customer, the value proposition, and how success will be determined. By the end of this phase, we also aim to have identified some of our biggest risks and started to make plans for reducing them.

Day 2

Ideas for the solution

Generate insights and potential solutions to our customer’s problems. Through a series of rapid creative exercises, we can develop and question functionality, problems, and solutions. This phase is crucial to innovation and marketplace differentiation.

This gives us a baseline of ideas and visuals with which to evaluate and identify potentially viable solutions in next phases.

Day 3

Deciding what to build

Take all of the possibilities exposed during phases 1 and 2, eliminate the wild and currently unfeasible ideas and hone in on the ideas we feel the best about. We come up with a realistic prototyping storyboard and develop an assumptions table to guide our prototyping and testing phases

Day 4

Building a prototype

Build a prototype that can be tested with existing or potential customers. The prototype should be designed to learn about specific unknowns and assumptions. Its medium should be determined by time constraints and learning goals. Framer, Marvel, and simple HTML/CSS are all good prototyping media.

Day 5

Testing the solution

Test the prototype with existing or potential customers. It is important to test with existing or potential customers because they are the ones you want your product to work and be valuable for. Their experiences with the problem and knowledge of the context have influence on their interaction with your product that non customers won’t have.

What we need to start

Getting ready for a sprint is one of the most important stages.

For a successful sprint we need a few things from the get go and we’ve listed them out here for you.

Facilitator
Leads the design sprint. Guides the sprint from start to completion.
Recorder
Takes notes, photographs and is in charge of the documentation for the sprint.
Product Owner
Typically the client and the person with the initial product vision. This person has final say in the product.
Space
Organise a space which you can use for the entire sprint, we can usually help this
Research
Any existing research and captured existing competition information
Most importantly – You
Your complete commitment

Don't run before you can walk

Sprinting may not be for everyone and that’s fine, if you’re not quite ready to run let’s schedule a brief walk’n’talk about how we can get you moving.

Coffee or tea?

Go!

5 DAY PRODUCT INNOVATION SPRINT

Test ideas fast and solve critical business problems.

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