A Google design sprint is a highly collaborative system focused on exploration, prototyping, and testing to produce incredible results within a week. It's a proven way to test any new product or platform ideas, and we know this because leading software company Table XI has done it.
We’ll outline each step of the Google design sprint process, how to use it, and share examples of its best accomplishments in this guide.
Table of Contents
- What Is a Google Design Sprint?
- Methodology of Google Design Sprints for Products
- The Google Design Sprint Process
- Who Do You Need for a Design Sprint?
- What Problems Can a Google Design Sprint Test?
- Google Design Sprint Examples
- How To Get the Most out of Your Product Design Sprint
- Google Design Sprint FAQs
What Is a Google Design Sprint?
Google’s design sprint is a five-day workshop developed by Google Ventures to help businesses find the answers to important growth questions through design, prototypes, and consumer testing. Essentially, a Google sprint helps brands quickly cycle through their business strategy.
By pairing that strategy with design thinking, development, innovative ideas, and more, businesses can bring new products to the market faster than expected. GV design sprints enable brands to find a shortcut between idea, learning, and launching.
Methodology of Google Design Sprints for Products
GV sprints are particularly valuable when your team is trying to define new products or services, redesign existing projects, introduce new user experiences to an old platform, or simply increase conversions for your current project.
1. Gathering Your Team
To implement the design sprint methodology, the first step is to gather your skilled and experienced teammates in a room and prepare them to build a better product in a faster and more cost-effective manner. Google’s methodology says seven people or fewer can provide all the skills and expertise needed for the sprint.
To enforce maximum focus, a sprint shrinks the product timeline to a week, the decision makers to a few people in the room, and the testing down to a day. Assign a Decider and Facilitator to keep discussions from slowing down (more on their specific roles later).
2. Choosing What To Work On
A GV design sprint will hyper-focus your team on one aspect of your business or product that you want to improve or redesign altogether.
3. Making Quick Decisions
You must make quick decisions during a sprint, so endless speculation shouldn’t hold back the rest of the process. Your job isn’t to answer for every possibility, but to vote go or no-go on the feature, product, or service you’re testing.
The Google Design Sprint Process
Planning your team’s schedule for the Google Design Sprint is crucial. Once you start, you’re all in — there’s no time to press pause. The basic outline of activities below serves as a general primer you can adapt to suit your needs.
The Google Design Sprint process is broken down into five days of continuous activity:
Day 1: Understand
On the morning of the first day, set your long-term goals and the path you will take to achieve them. Start by establishing a shared understanding of the project and its target audience. As you go through structured discussions, choose a specific problem you can realistically solve within the next four days. With this information, you can map out the rest of your week.
Here’s a Day 1 checklist:
- Introduce the five-day sprint process to your team.
- Set the long-term goal you wish to achieve.
- Create a flowchart of the five to fifteen steps needed to meet your goal.
- Solicit feedback and advice from the experts in your company and update your road map with their insights.
- List potential problems and how you can turn them into opportunities.
Remember, the sprint process is meant to be quick and highly productive. If your discussions are slowing down decision-making, the Decider will make the necessary calls so you can move forward.
Day 2: Diverge and Converge
The Facilitator guides the team through hands-on exercises designed to spark ideas around the central problem. Dive deep into existing solutions from different companies and evaluate their efficacy and relevancy to your project.
The afternoon is spent separately, with each team member sketching out potential solutions and ideas. These sketches will be compiled and looked through later.
Here’s a Day 2 checklist:
- Expand your search for inspiration beyond your industry.
- Capture all good ideas as rough sketches on your whiteboard.
- Assign one team member to initiate recruitment for at least five test customers on the final day.
Day 3: Decide
The team assesses the sketches and ideas generated on Day 2 and chooses the ones most likely to solve the central problem with these steps:
- Put up all rough sketches on the wall.
- All team members can stick one to three small sticker dots on the best ideas.
- Once a heat map of the most promising ideas emerges, their positive and negative aspects are discussed.
- Each team member places one large dot sticker on their final choice.
- The Decider places three large dot stickers on their choices, and those solutions will be prototyped.
The potential prototypes should be mapped out on a rough storyboard with five to fifteen frames detailing the initial customer and the general user experience.
Day 4: Prototype
Prototyping in sprints requires quick and specialized tools like Figma and InVision. Each team member is assigned a specific role to create a piece of the puzzle (Maker, Writer, Asset Collector, Stitcher, and Interviewer). Throughout the day, the Stitcher ensures all the pieces will fit together.
The prototype does not need to be perfect, but it should evoke a reaction in test users.
Here’s a Day 4 checklist:
- A trial run and complete walkthrough are scheduled before the end of the day, with the Facilitator and Decider in the room to evaluate the team’s output.
- Team members are expected to provide feedback and identify errors in the initial prototype.
- Preparations should be completed for customer testing the following day.
Day 5: Test and Learn
Get the prototype in front of actual users and observe their reactions firsthand. This is what you’ll ultimately use to decide whether to pursue the idea further or change course. Watch all the interviews as a team to draw the best and most productive conclusions from this final phase.
At the end of the day, you can review your long-term goals and determine the next steps to take after the design sprint. It’s important to understand going in that you will not be able to build a fully functional prototype during a GV sprint. Instead, you come up with a facsimile that gives users a general idea of the product while they fill in the gaps with their imaginations.
You will be surprised how insightful test users can be even without the final product in their hands. By employing the design sprint methodology and building something close to the real thing, you can get valuable insights from your customers in a short amount of time.
Who Do You Need for a Design Sprint?
You need the right people for an effective design sprint. Much like the short timeframe forces results, a small team forces close collaboration and avoids death-by-committee.
Google sprints were developed in part to combat groupthink. When everyone falls in line, it limits individual creativity and independent thinking, as no one wants to raise controversial issues or propose alternative solutions. In contrast, a small team eager to collaborate and share ideas promises to be more productive.
The most important person in the design sprint team is The Decider. They are given the privilege (and burden) of breaking ties and finalizing decisions. While everyone contributes to the decision-making process, it’s ultimately on the Decider to make the final call.
As such, this role should be given to a particular type of person.
Things to look for in a Decider:
- Someone with experience to consider every element when making decisions and a deep knowledge of the business and the industry at large.
- Someone whose decisions are the least likely to be reversed by other members of the organization.
- Someone available for the first and third days of the sprint. While you can elect a proxy decider for the other days, you absolutely need the Decider in the room for days one and three.
Other valuable team members:
- Subject matter experts such as technologists, department heads, customer support representatives, sales team members, or writers
- Outside moderators who are experienced in running Google Design Sprints
What Problems Can a Google Design Sprint Test?
Design sprint frameworks can be adapted based on your team composition and the specific problem you’re trying to solve. That said, here are four scenarios where we recommend implementing a Google Design Sprint:
- When you're trying to reach a new audience: Because design sprints start with user research and end in user testing, they’re a great way to reorient your thinking — and your product — toward a new audience.
- When you're looking to add a feature: A sprint can tell you whether it’s worth pursuing a full build around a proposed feature, so you don’t commit only to find out the market isn’t interested.
- When you know there's a problem, but you don't know what the solution is: A sprint will give your best minds the space to explore possible solutions and a specific schedule and framework to pick one and run with it.
- When you’re trying to improve a specific feature or flow: By focusing on one element of the user experience — like onboarding, checkout, or signup — or a function of the product or service, a sprint creates clarity around what works and doesn’t. This kind of clarity can be hard to come by and is sorely needed in the middle of a big project.
Google Design Sprint Examples
1. Tyson
Table XI worked with Tyson to create a snack to reduce food waste while appealing to traditional consumers. To develop and test the initial idea for Yappah, they used a five-day Google Design Sprint.
Throughout the Google sprint, Table XI worked with the brand to:
- Understand the consumers and brand objectives
- Identify product problems
- Develop user journeys
- Create solutions to the problems
- Prototype a package design and protein crisp
- Test the prototype on consumers
- Analyze findings and user feedback
2. Rice University
Rice University enlisted Table XI to build a platform to bring their students’ attention to the Doerr Institute for New Leaders. To figure out how to really connect with busy, distracted college students, Table XI worked with Rice University through a five-day Google design process.
The integrated team interviewed students, tested solutions, and landed on an idea that would better meet their needs. The end result was a mobile chatbot that could interact with students on a personal level and connect them with programs at Rice’s new institute.
How To Get the Most out of Your Product Design Sprint
The five days of a design sprint method go by very quickly. Once you are up and running — and have a deadline in the form of real users on day five — the adrenaline rush to finish an entire design will keep everyone buzzing.
Here are some best practices to get the most out of your sprint:
- Assemble a team of seven or fewer with diverse skills and expertise.
- Ensure all team members can be fully dedicated to all five days of the sprint. Brief everyone about what will be expected of them in the following days.
- Equip your workspace with all the supplies you will need (whiteboards, markers, sticky notes, dot stickers, etc.).
- Focus your prototype on the user experience and its value to the customer.
- Manage your time wisely and ensure the Decider and Facilitator can keep you on track.
- Document all the insights and decisions during the sprint and share them with the larger development team.
Whatever the results of your Google Design Sprint — trust them. If you find out your surefire idea for improving your company’s product didn’t end up satisfying users, that’s great! Now, you don’t have to waste time and resources chasing a path that won’t help anyone. An effective sprint will give you a ton of information to build out the best possible version of your product and bring it to the market.
Google Design Sprint FAQs
1. What is Scrum sprint vs design sprint?
Scrum sprint is a time-boxed period in the Scrum framework for iterative software development, aiming to deliver a potentially shippable product increment. In contrast, a design sprint is a 5-day structured process for solving design and innovation challenges. It involves rapid prototyping and user testing to validate ideas before full-scale development.
2. Why use a design sprint?
A design sprint is used to rapidly validate and test ideas, solve complex problems, and make informed decisions before investing significant time and resources in full-scale development. It enables teams to achieve quick results, gain valuable user feedback, and reduce the risk of building products or features that may not meet user needs or business goals.
3. What is the best tool for design sprints?
The best tool for a design sprint depends on your team's specific needs and preferences. Some popular options include Miro, Sketch, Figma, InVision, Adobe XD, Axure RP, and Marvel. Choose the tool that aligns with your team's workflow and facilitates effective collaboration and prototyping.
