Design Sprint

We swear by our design sprints and we’re experts at facilitating them.

Google’s Design Sprint is an effective and collaborative process that helps you solve any design problem in a short amount of time. At RUBICON, we effectively organize and host design sprints to collaborate with our clients and come up with clear solutions. We’d be happy to facilitate a design sprint with your team to help you solve any business problem before we head into the development phase of your project.

What is a Design Sprint?

A design sprint is a productive five-day process used for validating ideas through strong communication, prototyping, and testing with real users.
The design sprint eliminates endless discussions and makes the product development process both fast and productive. At the end of the five-day process, participants are left with a complete prototype that has been tested and produces real data. After the sprint, the data can be analyzed ensuring a final decision can be made and the development process can begin.

Design sprints can be used for a variety of reasons such as to design a new feature, help a business enter a new market, or visualize a product. If you believe that the design sprint would give you more clarity and help you prepare for product development, we’re ready if you are!

The 5-Day Design Sprint Process

Before starting the design sprint we build a diverse team of individuals that can bring us a variety of ideas and skills from RUBICON’s side and the client’s side. Our design sprints usually consist of 7-8 people at most including CEOs, designers, product owners, and developers. In addition, we nominate a responsible RUBICON facilitator to guide everyone through the process and keep things flowing in the right direction.

The design sprint consists of five detailed days with different activities that will include discussion, brainstorming, sketching, and voting that will bring you closer to your business goal.

Here is what the usual design sprint looks like:

Mapping Monday

• Start off by welcoming the client’s team to our office and introducing the design sprint process rules and guidelines.
• Make a map of the challenge by having the client explain and discuss their business idea/problem.
• Choose a target to focus on and solve during the next five days.

Tuesday Sketches

• The day starts with reviewing existing ideas to remix and improve.
• Time to divide up the map and decide who sketches what.
• Sketching time where everyone takes turns conveying their solutions and ideas.
• At the end of the day, you’ll begin planning Friday’s customer testing by finding the ideal customers that fit the profile.

Wednesday Decisions

• Sticky Decisions - Review, analyze, and discuss each presented solution.
• Note & Vote - Quickly gather ideas from the group and narrow it down to one final decision.
• Create a storyboard to plan the prototype.

Thursday Prototyping

• Based on the storyboard, the team spends the day developing a realistic prototype.
• Share the prototype with the client’s team and seek feedback and approval.
• Prepare for Friday’s testing by confirming the schedule, reviewing the prototype, and creating the interview script.

Friday Testing

• The team has created a realistic prototype and now it’s time to test it on real users and observe them as they use the product.
• Both teams measure, analyze, and organize the data to discuss it.
• The observations, data, and MVP product are discussed so a conclusion or solution sums up the design sprint.

Design Sprint to Software Development

By the fifth day of the design sprint workshop, you will have more insight on your business idea, feature, or goal. The design sprint will answer all of your questions, give you clear ideas and launch you into the software development process with our team.

Check out some design sprint workshops we’ve run with our clients here.