This is a recipe over 3 to 5 days of the design process. It allows you to go from a challenge to a tested prototype in just one week.

Benefits of Design Sprint

With the Design Sprint, you reduce the complexity of a large company's projects by creating highly focused questions to address with a diverse working group. You reduce the risk of solving the wrong problems and therefore building the wrong solutions for months. You develop cooperation between the departments of your organization and you facilitate critical decision-making.

👉 Unpacks the complexity of the problem

When it comes to innovation or problem solving, large companies often have a higher level of complexity to manage than small organizations. More technology, more people and more customers. The Design Sprint recipe helps unravel complexity by breaking down problems into smaller, more accessible challenges, making it possible to quickly prototype and test real-world solutions.

👉 Reduces risk by providing deeper insight into the scope of a potential project

Knowing where to place your bets is a challenge that all businesses face. Bets must therefore be carefully calculated. Too big, and you lose valuable capital. Too small, and you lose the impact. Design Sprint exercises break down a project so that it can be clearly defined. This involves zooming in and out of parts of the project to reveal more detail or determine the level of risk and then take action.

👉 Increases cooperation and understanding

The participatory nature of Design Sprints improves communication between team members and between teams and users. In fact, the points of disagreement between humans are often the expression of a creative tension that gets stuck behind the debate. The Design Sprint unleashes creativity and innovation by shifting the mindset of participants, from discussions of limiting solutions to more open exchanges guided by exploration and discovery.

👉 Diminishes organizational politics in decision-making

Politics in a large organization very often boils down to a competition for resources and influence. A well-intentioned project can go wrong very quickly. Contrary to these cultural norms, Design Sprints democratize decision making by emphasizing facts and evidence rather than assumptions and opinions. Testing ideas and prioritizing customer feedback is at the heart of the process.

👉 Highlights what knowledge gaps exist in your team

Design Sprints spend a lot of time clarifying the problem. (This is unlike many other business processes that focus most of their effort on the solution.) When discussing the assumptions as a group, it becomes undeniably clear what the team knows and what they don't know. .

👉 Gets people talking

A Design Sprint often brings together different functional representatives, departments, suppliers and experts in their fields. For many of these people, they will collaborate or meet for the first time. New connections mean new ideas and possibilities.

Just getting people to talk, who are disconnected by the complex structure of an organization, is an underrated part of the Design Sprint process.

👉 Provides unbiased language for strategic discussions

A Design Sprint can give a business the language it needs to share ideas and discuss issues without bias. Individual exercises focus teams on empathetic communication, elevating facts above opinions and breaking big issues down into manageable chunks. Separating problems with the right communication tools makes them seem less overwhelming and solutions become emergent rather than dictated.

"I can’t believe you got this much work done in this short amount of time." - Greg Storey, executive director of design at USAA and previously incubator program lead at IBM.

👉 To discover some case studies and examples (fr) 📚 Go to my Notion page with partners like STIB Bruxelles, BDR therma, Renault, Adeo, Auchan, Pôle emploi, Bearing point, DS Ltd...

If you feel that the Design Sprint process can meet the needs of your project, do not hesitate to contact me directly and let's talk about it. 👇