Not only corporations and large companies, but also SMEs and start-ups use the design sprint, as invented by Google. It is primarily about two things: being faster than the competition – and making customers happy.
The design sprint at Deep Impact takes four days:
There are two main drivers for running a design sprint:
To design an innovation or an optimisation in a lively and agile way in order to know as early as possible in the development process what its potential is.
Ensuring that the designed solution actually satisfies customer needs.
And of course there are numerous desirable side effects: Design sprints are much more cost-effective than a development project – the team performs at its best – the team learns to collaborate and benefit from each other – customer orientation is anchored in the company.
Fancy a few practical examples?
The seemingly unsolvable challenge was solved during the design sprint. The app on the smartphone integrates the various needs and requirements of patients, patient families, service providers and digital system providers. The “magic moment” came when the prototype was approved – a healthcare start-up was born!
How can this be changed and how can everyone be happy to participate in the change?
The design sprint develops customised forms of cooperation, a slightly different office design and proposes the increased use of digital tools. Accepting the prototype from the customers, in this case the employees, was particularly challenging. But the design sprint has become the nucleus of the transformation.
How can you bring the parties together on an online platform and thus streamline the cumbersome sales process?
The first prototype sets the most important course in terms of user-friendliness and clearly highlights a risk: the more sparse the information on an object, the less interest there is in using the platform.
After the first day of the sprint, the penny dropped. The company was to enable its customers and cooperative members to become energy landlords themselves and advise them on the construction of infrastructure. In this sprint, it took a focussed examination of the customers and their needs to discover and implement the most obvious solution.
For the agile innovator, the answer is obvious: one week’s investment in a design sprint, and the client knows how their innovation will be useful and economical! That’s how it happened, and the portal attracts its customers.
All of these examples are based on practical experience and still benefit from the key requirements of the design sprint method: focus on the customer’s needs, interdisciplinary teamwork, building solutions rather than discussing them (rapid prototyping) – and obtaining user feedback immediately.
