What Are Design Sprints & Why Should You Try Them?

For anyone who uses agile project management methods, a sprint is no new concept. The 5 day design sprint is a concept developed at GV, to answer critical business questions through design, prototyping, and testing. The main idea behind using sprints is to prioritise tasks and efficiently manage time, while adopting an iterative approach to the design process.

If just the concept of a 5 day Design Sprint is not exciting enough to give this process a try, here’s 3 really good reasons to sway you:

Minimise Risk

One of the key highlights of the sprint process is the ability to test your prototype with real users, before spending time and money on building anything. However, just adopting a 5 day sprint process for your project won’t result in a product that users will love and need. But the process will help you validate or correct assumptions and alert you if you’re progressing in the wrong direction.

Improve Your Product In The Beginning Stages

The 5 day Design Sprint is a process designed to fast-forward into the future and get a clear picture from a realistic prototype. The underlying principle of a sprint is to continually assess progress, find pain points, make changes and adapt as necessary.

Encourage Action

Sprints are meant to be short and vigorous. The process calls for ideas and action from all participants of the team, regardless of hierarchies. Design Sprints are a battle-tested process to make rapid headway and discover new solutions by efficiently working together with people of different backgrounds and specialties. Design Sprints call for excellent planning, effective discussions and impeccable organisation. These core principles of Design Sprints save time and money, in addition to helping uncover a range of fresh solutions to a problem.