5-day process for problem-solving: Understand, Sketch, Decide, Prototype, Test.
A Design Sprint compresses months of discussion, prototyping, and user testing into exactly five days. Teams follow a fixed sequence: Monday understand the problem, Tuesday sketch solutions, Wednesday decide, Thursday build a realistic prototype, Friday test with real users. The format enforces focus and prevents projects from getting lost in endless alignment loops.
A typical use case: a product team faces the question of whether to build a new feature. Instead of spending weeks collecting requirements, a clickable prototype is created in the sprint and put in front of five users on Friday. The results provide reliable evidence about whether the direction is right — before a single line of code is written. Critically, a decision-maker commits to a direction on Wednesday so the team can build on Thursday without further debate.
The Design Sprint was developed by Jake Knapp at Google Ventures and described in his 2016 book of the same name. It is particularly suited for situations with high risk and limited time, but requires discipline in maintaining the timeframe and roles.
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