How Google Design Sprint Works

Thaisa Fernandes
PM101
Published in
4 min readDec 14, 2016

I spent almost a month in India, I visited some cities there, and when I was in Hyderabad, I had an opportunity to participate in a Design Sprint workshop presented by Googlers at UX Reactor. The purpose of the workshop was to show how Google conducts Design Sprints.

What’s the meaning of it?

Design Sprint is a shortcut to learn without building and launching.

Photo by Google Design Sprint

Details about it

It was created by Google Ventures about 5 years ago, and the Design Sprint framework is based on the understanding of Design Thinking. Design Sprint is a five-day process for answering critical business questions through design, prototyping, and testing ideas with final users and customers; basically, a way to solve design problems quickly.

The Design Sprint is run by the Sprint Master who is in charge of the event, and also in charge of the team, leading them toward a much higher level of satisfaction and of deliverables. The primary goal of the Sprint Master is to identify the challenges the team should be solving and also invite the right talent for the Design Sprint.

What are the Stages?

The Sprint Master starts defining the problem and after the definition of the problem is revealed, the Spring Master works in six problem-solving ways to resolve the challenge.

Photo by Google Design Sprint

Six Problem Solving Ways

Understand

Understand to be understood. The first part of the Sprint requires inviting the right people to share business goals, technology capability, and user need. The goal of this stage is to expand the understanding of the product/project.

Diverge/Sketch

Anything is possible. Participants in the Design Sprint should explore all possible solutions to their user problems.

Decide

Time to review all ideas and vote for the best options as a team.

Prototype

Prototyping and testing without investing a lot of time, money, or resources.

Validate

Allows the team to learn different ways to design in a new form, but also hears each other’s points of view on their own designs.

When Do I Use It?

You can use it anytime during the design process:

  • At the beginning of a project to define what your product is offering or to create a shared vision;
  • When you’re at an impasse or have encountered impediments;
  • To inject speed in the development process.

Benefits of Running a Design Sprint

The benefits of running a Design Sprint are:

  • Solves design problems quickly;
  • User validation;
  • Allows you to fail early;
  • Design perspective to Agile;
  • Collaboration tool.

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Thaisa Fernandes
PM101
Editor for

Program Management & Product Management | Podcast Host | Co-Author | PSPO, PMP, PSM Certified 🌈🌱