So what’s a Design Sprint?
Developed by Google Ventures, a Design Sprint is a series of workshops and a structured process for teams to define and validate new business ventures and solve big challenges through co-design, prototyping and testing with real customers.
It's a battle-tested and time-trusted tool that gives tangible results and compresses months of work into a few days.
Is my challenge right for a design sprint?
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Business model validation
Breaking into new markets
Academic Programs and online learnings
App Design & Web projects
Hardware products
New startup ideas
Any challenge that carries a degree of risk and relies on consumer feedback to be a success
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Design sprints are effective to validate new ideas, existing solutions, emerging problems and testing new opportunities.
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If your project only touches on one small facet of your business then you probably don’t need a design sprint. But if you’re working on something that would benefit from involvement from the marketing department, customer support centre and the product team, then a Design Sprint is your answer to getting buy-in from multiple stakeholders.
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If so, a design sprint is a great way to validate your assumptions before spending a hefty amount of time and resources only to find that it’s a non-starter. A design sprint enables teams to learn and pivot fast before any damage is done. Ask yourself, how much would it cost the business to invest in this idea and for it to go wrong? Medium to high-risk projects are well suited to a design sprint.
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In 5 days you’ll have a tested high fidelity prototype of your big idea, including quotes and gut reactions from your target market, giving you the evidence that you are tackling the right consumer problem and the confidence to move forward with your idea.
Some challenges we’ve
helped solve with our Design Sprints:
Can we turn an
8-month in-person program into an
8-week online course and double our revenue?
Can we shift mindsets in regards to succession law and encourage more people to make plans?
Can we apply our existing HR tool to a completely new sector?
Can we reimagine the public sector procurement process to solve civilian challenges faster?
DESIGN SPRINTS ARE A RECIPE FOR SUCCESSFUL VENTURES AND A SOLUTION TO COMMON PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT PITFALLS LIKE…
Cross-functional teams finding it hard to align with common business objectives.
Teams working to unclear goals as project scope changes repeatedly.
Teams lacking real data on which to base their business decisions, relying instead on their gut and endless internal discussions.
Product development cycles running too long causing teams to lose enthusiasm and focus
Discover a product process that causes less waste, helps you reach market fit faster and keeps your team energised and focused on the ultimate goal.
The Anatomy of a Design Sprint
Our version of Design Sprint happens over three weeks or phases but we only need you for a few days.
Our process in a nutshell:
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🔦 We kickoff getting to know the organisation and how it operates today through desk research, workshops, one-to-one meetings and surveys.
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⚡️ Phase two is where the magic happens, a multidisciplinary team of 5-7 people come together to align on a challenge, ideate solutions and storyboard how we will test our solution to validate our riskiest assumptions. The Korero Studio team will then bring the chosen concept to life through a high fidelity interactive prototype and test it on 6 representatives of or chosen target market. After presenting back the insights from the first test group we will conduct a following user test on the second most important stakeholder group.
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🗺 Phase three, we take all our findings and learning and create an action plan to fast track development. We'll invite you all back to present the report.
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By the end of our Design Sprint...
Your team will be aligned on the long term vision
We’ll have identified the riskiest assumptions to overcome to reach that goal
We’ll have brought to life the value proposition in an interactive prototype
We’ll have tested the prototype on 6 representatives of your primary user group
We’ll wrap up the findings into an executive report complete with recommendations to fast track development
We’ll end the Design Sprint with boosted team morale and the momentum to make this project a reality
The success of the Design Sprint is reliant on key team members participating for the duration of the workshops, so you’ll need to block time for these, we’ll take care of the rest.
One of our client’s recent experience sprinting with us:
There's sometimes a danger that consultants can ask people what they want to hear, and play it back to them.
The workshop was focused on a major initiative CivTech had been briefed to investigate, and the danger was that the many existing paradigms to 'solve' the question at hand could all too easily come to dominate thinking. Having Korero's supremely effective methodology was one thing; but what really added huge value was the discipline and the fierce [though friendly!] independence of thought and action Korero brought to the piece.
There's sometimes a danger that consultants can ask people what they want to hear, and play it back to them. We could not risk this, and Korero gave us the confidence that what was being uncovered was the real situation, with genuine solutions emerging.
If you want great design sprint results; if you want expertise allied to wonderful delivery methodology; if you want to take your thinking beyond the norm to truly discover what your project, initiative or business might be capable of... talk to Korero.