I had the opportunity to attend the Design Sprint Workshop in Calgary last week, organized by Chic Geek YYZ and led by Brittni Bowering from AJ&Smart .

A Design Sprint is a format to drive product research/ideation to user tested prototype in 5 days, popularized by Jake Knapp who worked at Google Ventures.

The workshop simulated a 2 and half hour condensed session of how a typical Design Sprint is executed. We focused on the exercises usually involved in the first two days: Mapping and Sketching. The style of facilitation was geared more on individual work and valued tangible results instead of having long discussions.

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The outcomes were one-pagers of concrete concepts that solved the sprint goal (“increase revenue for a scooter sharing business”). The simulation ended with members silently voting the 1 idea, in their teams, that solved the problem the best.

The whole experience was very efficient and I learned new tricks. I already applied it 3 times with my graduate students and we found a lot of success. 2 out of 3 teams were dashing into prototypes to get good feedback on how to move forward on their project. The 1 team was not a slam dunk success, in comparison, because some exercises did not fit to the context of the project goal. However, it still seemed to work out with getting concrete concepts which they’re in the process of prototyping. We’ll get to see if they reap the benefits of it too.

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The workshop was based on the following principles:

  • Go for 10x impact ideas. Not 10%.
  • Don’t rely on creativity. Rather concrete exercises that centre on the core problem.
  • Getting Started > Being Right
  • Most exercises will be done individually
  • Timebox Everything
  • Tangible Items > Discussion
  • Research is Overrated

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