Design Sprint
A structured five-day process for rapidly prototyping and testing solutions to complex design challenges.
Definition
A design sprint is a time-boxed, five-phase process developed at Google Ventures for answering critical business questions through design, prototyping, and testing ideas with real users. The phases typically follow a Monday-through-Friday structure: Map the problem, Sketch solutions, Decide on the best approach, Prototype a testable version, and Test with target users.
Design sprints compress months of debate, design iterations, and development into a single focused week, producing validated insights before significant resources are committed to building a full product.
Why It Matters
Traditional product development often invests months of engineering before discovering that users don't want or can't use the solution. Design sprints dramatically reduce this risk by testing assumptions with real users within five days.
For agencies and marketing teams, design sprints are powerful tools for client workshops. They align stakeholders quickly, generate tangible prototypes, and produce user feedback that grounds decisions in evidence rather than opinions.
Examples in Practice
An event management company runs a design sprint to reimagine their attendee registration flow. By Friday, they have a clickable prototype tested with eight target users, revealing that the original three-step form should be consolidated into a single page.
A startup uses a design sprint to validate their new analytics dashboard concept before committing to a three-month development cycle, discovering through user testing that their proposed feature hierarchy was backwards from how users actually think.