Design Sprints is a discovery technique created by Jake Knapp and popularized in his book Sprint – How to solve big problems and test new ideas in just 5 days, based on techniques he used helping teams while working at Google Ventures.
Design sprints are not a part of Scrum and the Design Sprint concept differs from the Scrum Sprint. Design Sprints can be used with any framework or methodology to quickly prototype and validate ideas effectively before building them. It is a technique to test hypotheses and test product/market fit.

When to Use Design Sprints?
You can run a design sprint when you are about to start working on a new product, make a big product decision, or start a new initiative. Design Sprints are not meant to run on a regular cadence like we do with Sprints in Scrum. We use design sprints when the stakes are high, or when we are stuck on an idea or coming up with new ideas or hypotheses. Because humans are unpredictable, with design sprints you can rapidly create a prototype and test it out with potential customers to see how they will react to ensure we are solving the right problem and have a usable solution.
How to Run Design Sprints?
With design Sprints, you have the right team with time set aside to focus on the right challenge. You get a small cross disciplined team together and clear their schedule for 5 days. The team is typically about 7 people and includes a decision maker, typically the product manager or the CEO in a start-up. The team works together all day, daily for the entire week. On Monday they map out the process, determine the long term goal and big questions to address, and zero in on the problem to solve, on Tuesday you recruit potential interviewees, and then sketch out possible solutions, on Wednesday you and decide on one to three solutions. On Thursday you prototype, on Friday you test out the prototype and use the insights to plan out next steps. (map->sketch->decide->prototype->test)
Here’s a step by step approach to Design Sprints:
- Map – Find the most important moment for the most important customer
- Sketch – Propose competing solutions for that moment
- Decide – decide on the strongest solution and form a hypothesis
- Prototype – Build a realistic simulation
- Test – Test the prototype with 5 customers and assess product/market fit

Map
On Monday, after a brief introduction of the team, decider, facilitator, guidelines, and an overview of the process, the team tries to identify the most important moment for the most important customer and zero in on the problem to solve.
- Identify the long-term goal
- Participants use silent writing to write a bold, optimistic, and idealistic goal. The goal is futuristic and is about what a perfect world would look like for our product or customers in 12 to 18 months.
- Each participant dot votes using 2 votes.
- The decider picks the best goal statement. It does not have to be the one with the most votes.
- Decide on metrics
- Participants use silent writing to write 1 or 2 metrics on how to determine that we reached or achieved our goal.
- Each participant dot votes using 3 votes.
- The decider picks the most relevant 2 or 3 metrics.
- Identify risks
- Participants use silent writing to write pessimistic statements on how we could fail and on what might stop us from reaching our goal and metrics. What is our biggest challenge?
- Each participant dot votes using 4 votes
- The decider picks the 2 most crucial risks or challenges
- Summarize
- Place the goal, metrics, and risks in a visible place to be referred to throughout the Sprint.
- Ask the experts
- Participants interview 2-4 experts to generate a shared understanding and insights
- Interviewees answer questions like what is the product? What does it do? Who is it for? What problem is it trying to solve? Who is currently using the product? Who would we like to use the product? What would the product look like 2 years from now?
- Participants listen and note interesting insights using How Might We (HMW) statements to reframe problems or issues into opportunities. For example, how might we get people to realize that we also offer abc service.
- Participants group the HMW into higher-level categories.
- Each participant dot votes using 5 votes.
- The decider chooses the top 3 to 7 HMWs
- Map
- Identify the top 2 to 3 customer types and place them on the left of the map.
- Start with the end goal in mind. Place it on the right of the map.
- For each customer type, think about the touch points from the customer’s perspective.
- Map out how customers discover, learn, and use the product/service to get to the goal/outcome.
- Map out the steps from left to right. Keep it high-level.
- Place the top HMWs near relevant parts of the flow to narrow the focus on a particular area of the map.
- The decider picks the target customer to recruit for the test and the target moment to prototype based on the HMW cluster.
- The decider picks an associated target risk.
Sketch
On Tuesday, the team recruits people for the Friday interviews, brainstorms ideas, and sketches out solutions
- Recruit
- Participants plan on how to recruit the interviewees and confirm 5 interviews. According to Jacob Neilson, 85% of problems where observed after just 5 interviews. Interviewing more will provide diminishing returns.
- Participants make sure to screen and filter candidates to match the target customer.
- Lightning demos
- Participants individually research ideas from within or outside the industry to come up with inspiration and possible solutions.
- Each participant demos their solution and labels it with the key idea.
- Participants dot vote using 4 votes.
- Notes
- Each participant takes notes on things that interest them and jots down on a sheet of paper. This can be the goal, the HMW, risks, key demo ideas. No one needs to see this sheet.
- Brainstorming ideas
- Participants individually brainstorm possible ideas on another sheet of paper. They take ideas from their 1st sheet and combine or mix them in a way that is unique. No one needs to see this sheet.
- Crazy 8s sketch
- Each participant folds a sheet of paper 3 times to create a 3 by 3 grid.
- Each participant works on their idea and sketches out 8 different variations, 1 in each grid, and 1 minute per variation. This doesn’t have to be pretty. Participants need to keep writing, keep drawing, and keep moving. No one needs to see this sheet. It’s just to help with the concept or solution sketch.
- Solution sketch
- Each participant draws a detailed solution for the target moment using a 3 panel story board.
- Participants include a description to make it self-explanatory.
- Participants give it a nickname so that it stays anonymous. This removes bias when deciding in the next step.
Decide
On Wednesday, the team critiques the solutions and decides on the top 1-3 most promising solution, establishes hypothesis to test, and storyboards the solution.
- Decide which solution to prototype
- Participants create a heat map by placing dots next to ideas they like (unlimited dots). Participants add questions.
- The facilitator speed reviews the clusters and labels each area and answers any questions.
- Participants write down what they think the best solution might be. Participants use the format: we should test this idea because…Participants make their case.
- The decider picks 1 to 3 ideas to prototype, 1 main, and 2 possible alternatives.
- Hypothesis
- Participants write a hypothesis about what we are testing.
- Participants dot vote using 3 votes
- The decider picks the top 2 hypothesis
- Storyboard
- Participants determine the flow for the first 6 steps of the prototype.
- Participants dot vote using 1 vote
- The decider picks the flow
- Add images to create a storyboard. Reuse ideas/images from the lightning demos and sketching exercise. It is important not to add any new ideas or anything that is unnecessary. The focus should stay on what needs to be tested.
- The purpose of the storyboard is to leave no open questions. Get all the details out so that we have all the information needed to build the prototype.
Prototype
On Thursday, the team creates the prototype from the storyboard. The prototype needs to look like a finished product to gauge people’s initial reactions. Examples of prototypes include a landing page, a video, a brochure, a single feature MVP, a wizard of Oz, a fake website, a modified existing product, or a fake app.
Test
On Friday, the team conducts the interviews, analyzes the results, and determines next steps based on whether the hypothesis was validated or invalidated.
- 1 participant runs the interviews while the others watch
- The interviewer asks open-ended questions and focuses on surprising details. The interviewer should find out what they are feeling and what they are thinking and emphasize that negative feedback is welcome and important.
- Participants watching take notes of positive and negative observations.
- After each interview sprint participants complete a feedback form based on their observation and try to address market/product fit, hypothesis, target risks, and specific questions.
- After all interview results, participants sum up the results from each interview for each category being validated.
Next
- Summarize the results and determine if we build or let’s run another sprint to learn more.
A design sprint forces the team to focus on the most pressing questions and learn from a rapid prototype before building. If the hypothesis is invalidated, the team can run another Sprint to explore other options or refine the existing option based on the feedback. Start using design sprint to illicit and validate product ideas to ensure you are addressing your customer’s needs and learn more about discovery techniques in the Advanced Certified Scrum Product Owner (A-CSPO Certification).