Adapting Design Sprints
6 minute read
Introduction.
Design sprints have revolutionised how companies can approach product development by placing emphasis on a focused and uninterrupted period of problemsolving, rapid prototyping and user testing. The processes makes it possible to condense months of work into a single week by devoting a team’s resources into a single week with the goal of solving a problem and producing a working prototype to test a concept or idea in 5 days.
As great as this sounds, dedicating an entire week to these tasks can be impractical for many companies, especially those with team members juggling multiple roles, and this is particularly relevant for young startups that are trying to scale on a tight budget.
In this article I’ll introduce you to the concept and explore how we can adapt the traditional design sprint framework to be more flexible for startups and businesses with little wiggle room in their capacities, and how to make it an applicable process beyond product development, including marketing research.
What is a Design Sprint?
A design sprint is a five-day process for answering critical business questions through design, prototyping, and testing ideas with customers. It was developed by AJ&Smart to help teams quickly gather data and make informed decisions about product direction. The benefits of design sprints are clear: they facilitate quick data gathering, informed decision-making, and rapid iteration.
It’s not all about data.
Data only ever tells us what happened, it rarely conveys why.
Relying exclusively on data causes assumptions to be made based on trends.
The beauty of the Design Sprint is that, if conducted well, it will provide a huge amount of qualitative data and you will be able to observe the physical behaviour of the user as they explore the product or new feature.
Data is great to have, but it’s important to remember that it’s the what that backs up the why, not the other way round.
The problem with traditional Design Sprints.
Despite their advantages, traditional design sprints pose significant challenges. Dedicating an entire week to a design sprint can be difficult, especially for teams with other responsibilities, and the primary issue is the time commitment required to make it possible and sustain the design sprint process; for many, allocating eight hours a day for five days is often unrealistic.
Real-world constraints, such as overlapping projects and limited resources, complicate the implementation of traditional design sprints and can lead to time and money being wasted trying to implement a process that just doesn’t work for your business.
Adapting the Design Sprint framework.
All is not lost.
We can still reap the benefits of the design sprint without sacrificing other work that is key to daily business operations. We can make design sprints more feasible for startups and companies by adapting the framework:
Flexible scheduling
One approach is to spread the design sprint activities over a longer period, such as two weeks. This extended timeframe allows team members to balance sprint tasks with their regular duties.
We can also define who needs to be involved, for how long, and when they will be needed. Core team members can work on the meat and bones of the sprint while others contribute at critical points, ensuring continuous progress without overwhelming the team. This leads me to…
… focused roles
Identify one or two individuals who can focus intensively on sprint tasks. These key contributors ensure that the sprint moves forward steadily. Meanwhile, other team members can engage at specific touchpoints, such as brainstorming sessions or user testing, allowing for valuable input without full-time commitment.
Integration with expected daily workloads
Integrating sprint tasks with daily work is essential. Strategies such as concurrent tasks and regular check-ins help maintain momentum and ensure alignment with broader company goals. This approach enables the team to stay on track without neglecting other responsibilities.
Broadening the application of Design Sprints.
Design sprints aren't limited to product development. They can be effectively applied to marketing research and other areas:
Marketing research
Design sprints can be used to test and refine user onboarding processes, experiment with marketing messages, and optimize sales funnels. By applying the sprint methodology, teams can gather insights into what resonates with users and identify the most effective approaches for engaging potential customers.
Inter-departmental collaboration
Encouraging collaboration between product, marketing, and other departments ensures unified goals and shared insights.
At its core, the design sprint process is designed to build and test ideas quickly, and this doesn’t necessarily relate exclusively to a digital product, app, or feature rollout. We can use it to develop marketing funnels and define messaging, to test backend solutions that might be invisible to most people, or to test a proof of concept for an internal workflow. The data and information we can gather from this provides valuable insight that can benefit multiple areas of the business, leading to more cohesive strategies and better overall outcomes.
Conducting effective user research.
User research is a critical component of design sprints. Observing users in realistic settings provides invaluable insights. For example, during a design sprint, one company noticed that male testers used a company-provided phone naturally, while female testers manipulated the phone flat on the table with one finger, indicating discomfort with an unfamiliar device. By providing the app on users' personal phones in subsequent tests, the company obtained more accurate data reflecting natural usage patterns.
Environment and conditions
The environment and conditions of user testing significantly impact the results. Ensuring users are comfortable and using devices naturally leads to more reliable data. Adapting the testing environment to mimic real-world usage helps in gathering meaningful insights.
Case studies and examples.
Example 1:
A tech startup with a small team (1 product owner, 1 back end dev, 1 front end dev, and 1 UX designer) successfully adapted the design sprint framework by spreading activities over two weeks. Core team members focused on sprint tasks part-time, while others contributed during key sessions. This approach allowed the team to still gather valuable insights without disrupting their regular workflow. The UX designer, in particular, mentioned that it was the most useful feedback she’d ever managed to gather on the design and userflow.
Example 2:
A marketing team for a German contract and service aggregation app used a design sprint to optimise the onboarding process of new users into an app from the moment of first interaction with the user. By testing different messaging approaches and user flows, they identified the most effective strategies for engaging new users for key target demographics - interestingly the different user groups reacted and engaged with completely different messaging.
The German users just wanted to find the cheapest and most reliable options for different services. The English speaking users didn’t care so much about price, they just wanted help and to lower the stress involved in finding services in Germany as a non-native speaker.
The sprint led to a 20% increase in user retention, demonstrating the value of applying design sprints to marketing challenges.
Practical tips for implementing adapted Design Sprints.
Preparation
Define clear objectives for the sprint and choose the right mix of team members for core and touchpoint roles. Preparation ensures that everyone understands their responsibilities and the sprint goals.
Facilitation
Effective facilitation is crucial. A strong facilitator guides the process, ensuring that activities stay on track and objectives are met. Utilize appropriate tools and resources to support sprint activities, such as collaborative software and user testing platforms.
Evaluation
Implement feedback loops to collect insights and iterate on solutions. Measure outcomes to assess the effectiveness of the sprint. Continuous improvement ensures that the sprint process evolves and delivers value.
Conclusion
Adapting design sprints for flexibility and broader applications can help companies overcome the constraints of traditional sprints. By spreading activities over a longer period, involving team members part-time, and integrating sprint tasks with daily work, companies can reap the benefits of design sprints without disrupting their day-to-day operations.
Applying design sprints to marketing research and fostering cross-departmental collaboration further enhances their value. Experiment with flexible design sprint models to drive innovation and efficiency across your business.
Contact us if you want to find out more about how design sprints could improve your understanding of the data you gather. We can help you facilitate your first design sprint :)
