Launching a digital product is a long and challenging process full of uncertainty when it comes to product outcome and user reactions.
What if I will tell you there is a faster, easier and more pleasant way to release your product and predict its outcome and the results.
It’s called Product Design Sprint, and it’s can provide a dose of certainty when it comes to building your digital product.
So what is Product Design Sprint?
It is a series of 5-day workshops consist of research, design, prototyping, and testing and it’s based on Google Ventures’ design sprints methodology. It’s a combination of business strategy, innovation, behavioral science, and design thinking – connected into a battle-tested process that any product team can apply.
During the workshop, we focus on answering critical business questions and try to verify the outcomes with potential customers. Quick prototyping and testing are the fastest and yet simplest way to validate your product and minimize the risk of failure.
Who needs product design sprint.
It doesn’t matter if you’re building your first product, adding new functionalities to already existing product, or you already have some experience with all kinds of design services. Product Design Sprint is a perfect solution when you want to test your idea and answer a critical business question using a user-centered approach.
Every workshop differs in some aspect depending on the problem our client is facing at the moment.
When to apply Product Design Sprint?
- I have a rough idea for a product or service or a major problem to solve.
- I have already existing product and I want to identify any weak areas and fix it for better.
- I have already existing product or service and I want to develop additional features but I don’t know the future impact on my users.
Because every problem is different we prepare our workshop specifically for each project and client. Before the workshop starts we conduct the research and analyze the materials to get a better understanding of the problem.
So what does the process look like?
A design sprint it 5-day workshop and each day corresponds to a different stage of the solving problem stated by the client.
Day 1 Monday
The first day of the sprint is for creating structured discussion and create a path for the sprint week while getting a better understanding of the users’ needs, business needs, technology capacities. We begin by setting up long term goals and challenges – discussion at this stage is crucial for creating an accurate roadmap for the whole sprint week.
We create some exercises to show a bigger picture of the problem we want to solve with the client and at the end of the day, we let the client pick the main goal to achieve on the workshop.
Day 2 Tuesday
After the full day of understanding the problem and picking a target for the sprint on Tuesday, we try to focus on the potential solutions. We doing that by generation as many ideas as possible. We start by review of existing solutions and debate on their week and strong points. We ask participants to sketch solutions following the four-step process that emphasizes critical thinking rather than artistry. At the end of the day, each team member will propose their ideal, that will be reviewed and tested later on.
Day 3 Wednesday
At this point, you will have plenty of solutions. Sounds great, right? Actually, it’s also a problem. You can’t test and validate all of them on your users – you need a solid plan for that. With that being said you will start your morning by criticizing each solution and try to find potential pain points. Then you will decide which one have the best chance of achieving your long term goal and put them into a storyboard. Based on this selection we will design a step-by-step roadmap for building your prototype.
Day 4 Thursday
On the fourth day of the Product Design Sprint, it’s time to turn your storyboard into a prototype. A realistic facade is all you need to test your solution on the customers. The main idea on this stage is to build only the customer-facing surface of your service or product. This way the prototype will be ready to test in just one day – prepared for the review in the final stage of the sprint.
Day 5 Friday
By Friday, you have created potential solutions, choose the best one, and developed a realistic prototype. This is an impressive product week. But there is one more step and it’s called by the Google Venture “the moment of truth”. We will interview customers, business stakeholders, and experts and learn from them by watching how they interact with the prototype and ask them for direct feedback. This stage is to validate your solutions before you start to spend money on design and development of an actual product. At the end of the day, you will know exactly if your product will be accepted by customers or does it make sense to add this particular feature to your product.
During such sprint, we always provide you with Project Manager and UX Designer who leads the workshop and acts as a mentor for your team. If we need a reality check on our ideas we invite our developers and designers to participate.
Why a Product design sprint is the best solution for a digital product?
It provides you with a tailored solution and recommendations, which will help you create a unique value proposition for your customers during the product development phase. But what are the main benefits of a design sprint if you want to release a new product to the market?
Understanding your users
The sprint process is based mainly on listening to users and building a meaningful relationship with them. By acting with empathy you will start to see your product from a perspective of a potential buyer and it will enable you to identify potential pain points. We run a couple of exercises that will help you understand user behavior and needs and prioritize them in the correct order.
Recognizing Key Stakeholders
A wider perspective on the market can help you identify the key stakeholders that might have an impact on your product in the future.
We will help you choose the stakeholders that will move your project to success.
Minimize the risk
The faster you start prototyping the faster you can validate your product with real customers. The goal of the sprint is to cut months of Product Development and testing into just a few days. Through team workshops, effective communication, sharing ideas and unraveling the doubts we can get answers to complicated problems and find the solution.
Speed up prototyping
Without validating your idea the product you have in mind is less likely to achieve product-market fit. Proper validation is crucial to succeeding.
The product design sprint supposes to be short and agile to speed up the discovery of the new product. This way on the fifth day of the sprint your prototype will be ready for testing and collecting feedback from customers.
What you will get after the five-day workshop?
After the end of the Sprint, the client gets a better insight into user’s problems and frustrations and has multiple concepts on how to dissolve them. We create a detailed report on the workshop with all the materials digitalized. The report contains suggestions about the direction that the product should go as well as working lo-fi prototype for a few user stories created during the workshop. If the decision on building the product with us will be made, we prepare for the client:
- A detailed project roadmap with a description of each phase of product development.
- Pre-defined tasks for each phase ready for designers and developers to start their work.
Are you ready to create your product with Design Sprint?
Before you start to spend your budget on design and development without proper validation of your product’s market fit it’s worth to stop for a week and investigate what problems your users have and after that develop a potential solution and test it using the lo-fi prototype. This way you will save a ton of money and shape your product based on user-center approach. Increase your chances to succeed and sign up for a Product Design Sprint now.
