Question 1

What are Google sprints?

Accepted Answer

The sprint is developed at GV and is a five-day process for answering critical business questions by design, prototyping and testing ideas with the customers. It is used by working together in a sprint, that can shortcut debate cycles and compact a lot of time in only one week. The great idea is to launch a minimal product to understand the benefit of an idea by getting clear data from practical prototypes. With the sprint, you can quickly evaluate your finished product and customer reactions, before spending a lot of time and money. Basically, the sprint covers business strategy, innovation, behaviour science, design thinking and more tested processes any team can use.

Question 2

How do I use Google Sprint design?

Accepted Answer

You can start using the Google Sprint design by setting the stage, by finding the challenge, choosing your team, time and space to conduct the sprint. Afterwards you have to divide the sprint in the five weekdays from monday to friday which are the time for conducting your sprint.

The first day of the sprint is Monday which is structured to discussions and deciding the long-term goal that will be the base of the challenge to solve. At the end of this day your team should understand the challenge, and choosed the target of the sprint.

Tuesday is used to get focused on solutions. The day will be used to review, mix and improve existing ideas. This also is the day where each person on the team will make some sketches and you all will begin planning and recruiting customers for the Fridays test.

Wednesday is the day to go through each idea and decide which ones have the potential to reach the long-term goal. Later in this day you will choose the winning idea from the sketches and put a storyboard together for planning your prototype.

On Thursday you turn the storyboard into a realistic prototype that can be tested with customers. You will also use this day to prepare everything for Friday’s test by confirming the schedule, writing an interview script and reviewing the prototype.

Friday is the last day and you have found solutions, chosen the best, and built a prototype. Now you are ready to interview customers and learn by watching them use and test your prototype. The test is the last step and you will by this day know what you need to do next to solve your challenge.

Question 3

What is the purpose of a design sprint?

Accepted Answer

The purpose of using the design sprint is to get concrete and measurable outcomes in a few days through user tests. It is a design method you can use to solve difficult problems by rapid prototyping and testing with targeted users. The framework of the Design Sprint is developed to align teams under a shared vision with chosen goals. The essential benefits of using the Design Sprint are getting the challenge to find a solution without running failed tests and spending useless time and thereby faster avoiding developing unnecessary risk and features and maximising your time and ROI.

Question 4

What companies use design sprints?

Accepted Answer

There are no specific types of companies that use Google Design Sprint. All types of companies use the Design Sprint and have success with it. Small, medium and huge companies can use the Design Sprint to reach their goals. It is all about using the steps in the Design Sprint to solve a challenge without using a lot of resources.

Question 5

When should I use the design sprint?

Accepted Answer

You should use The Design Sprint if you have a meaningful and challenging problem that you need different people from different departments to work together to find a solution. It is effective and allows you to work structured and fast to brainstorming, prototyping and testing the solution in a short time with low cost and risk.

Question 6

How much does a design sprint cost?

Accepted Answer

The price depends on the firm that facilitates the design sprint. Some firms charge between 20 and 30k$, but some charge more or less. The prices vary and depend on the number of days, attendants, complexity and impact of the project. You can also find the Google Sprint guide and follow it, then it would be free. It is basically up to how you want to handle it. Make sure to have some specialists or experienced members in the sprint, if it is new for you.

Question 7

Who should be in a design sprint?

Accepted Answer

The Design Sprint works best with teams that are no larger than seven people. This is the guideline according to Google Ventures. If the team is larger than seven people the process could be put in risk of having too many personalities and opinions. If the team is smaller it could put too much workload on the few members, which would have a bad effect on the output of The Design Sprint. Also there are some roles that are a must to have an effective and great sprint team. In the team there should include these 6 roles, Product Manager, The Facilitator, The Customer Expert, The Design Expert, The Engineer and Marketing Expert.

The product manager is the informal leader of the sprint team, which could be a VP, lead engineer, CEO or sales executive of a company. This person contributes with the competence and experience with the challenge from the real-world, and can thereby help to resolve the challenge.

The facilitator has the responsibility of getting the team to function. This person has to make the team dynamic to work. This person is the engine for the whole sprint because the team has to keep the pace and be focused.

The customer expert is the person who conducts business with your clients. This person should have customer service experience and the competence to handle your client base.

The design expert in your team should be a person with experience from other sprint teams. This person's speciality is to tell what is possible and not, also what makes sure to make things appealing and help the team visualize and grounded ideas to solve your challenges.

It is important to have an engineer because this person will design the prototype for testing your solutions.

At last you need to have a marketing expert who is the person to market your solution and the benefits of it.

Basically, no design sprint teams are the same as every product and sprints are unique due to the ideas and teams. That is why you have to build a team with those six roles in mind, to build and make your product unique.

Question 8

How do I design a Sprint plan?

Accepted Answer

The preparations of your Design Sprint is as essential as conducting the sprint. The time spent on your Design Sprint is based on the end goals and the needs of your team. Make sure to take the time to prepare for your sprint and follow the guides for each day of the Design Sprint model.

Question 9

Who invented the design sprint?

Accepted Answer

The Design Sprint was invented by Jake Knapp in 2010 at Google. He was inspired by many places, including the culture in Google’s product development, IDEO’s design thinking workshops, other idea thinking and his experience in building products such as Gmail and Hangouts. Between 2010-12 at Google, Jake rectified the Design Sprint with teams like Chrome, Google X and Search. Later in 2012 he then brought Design Sprint to Google Ventures where the Design was updated with the expertise from the team. Then the Google Ventures team published a how-to series about Design Sprint in 2012 and 2013, afterwards the process started to get spread out in the world. Then in 2016, The Sprint book was published, and now today thousands of teams in big and small companies around the world have run sprints.

Category: Business startup

Google Design Sprint – How to develop & test a business idea