Design Sprint

What It Is

A Design Sprint is a five-day process for answering critical business questions through design, prototyping, and testing with customers. Developed by Jake Knapp at Google Ventures (now GV), it has been used by teams at Slack, Uber, Airbnb, LEGO, the New York Times, and hundreds of startups.

The core insight: Instead of debating ideas for months then building for months, compress everything into one week. By Friday, you'll have tested a realistic prototype with real customers and know whether you're on the right track.

A Design Sprint changes the defaults of how teams work:

• Instead of endless brainstorming: structured individual sketching
• Instead of design by committee: one Decider with authority
• Instead of building real products: realistic "fake" prototypes
• Instead of launching and hoping: testing with 5 target customers

When to Use It

Use a Design Sprint when:

• You're starting something new and need to validate direction before committing engineering resources
• Stakes are high — the project will require significant investment
• You're stuck — the team has been debating the same ideas for weeks or months
• There's a big behavioral risk — the product requires customers to change how they work
• You need alignment — stakeholders have different visions
• Time pressure exists — you have a deadline or limited runway

When Not to Use It

• You already have strong signal from existing customers (iterate instead)
• The solution is obvious and low-risk (just build it)
• Key stakeholders can't commit to the full week
• You don't have access to target customers for testing

Resources

Books:

• Sprint by Jake Knapp with John Zeratsky and Braden Kowitz
• Make Time by Jake Knapp and John Zeratsky