Disclaimer:

I couldn’t agree more with Dan Brown’s opinion in the above article about ‘Repeating the same old design advice’. Keeping in line with the same philosophy, this article is my long but honest attempt at helping readers understand when to use an exhaustive and expensive Design Sprint. If you have the time, and are willing to delve a bit deeper, stay with me. This article is for you.

Why?

Most designers today understand “How” design thinking/doing methods like The Sprint are helpful in sculpting digital products. However a lack of understanding about “Why” these methods came into existence in the first place, prevents their application in the right contexts.

My hope is that by the end of this article, we will emerge with a better understanding of “Why” Sprint-like methods were developed (through some brief design history in each section), and when should one really use them.

Is Sprint really a new mantra?

Today, Design Sprints seem like a revolutionary method to digital companies (kudos to the GV team for packaging the tools in such a brilliant way). However, Sprint isn’t a new magic potion, it has been brewing for almost 3 decades now.

Most of the tools borrowed by the Sprint method have been used in design circles ever since the birth of popular design studios like IDEO. The video below, briefly captures some of these tools and shows how folks at IDEO design and test their idea for a shopping cart in just 3 days.

How IDEO designed a cart in 3 days.

So, when is it a good idea to run a Sprint?

The fact that your team might have spent over 200 - 400 man hours on a Sprint can bias you, and lead you to overestimate very ordinary ideas.

The best way to protect yourself against such bias is to honestly evaluate if Sprint is actually the right exercise for your company or client.

So the next time you’re about to run a Sprint, ask yourself the following questions -

1. Are you solving a fairly complex interdisciplinary problem?

To understand this a bit better, let’s go back a few decades.

By the 90s, companies like Apple and Microsoft had become quite popular. The idea that small groups of smart people can make giant leaps and disrupt major markets was no longer bizarre. It’s at this time, when the likes of Bill Moggridge and David Kelly decided that they were going to attempt doing the same, but for a lot of different products at a very rapid rate. In the early 90s IDEO was born (along with some other popular design companies), where new product development was to become a daily phenomenon.

The problem was that studios like IDEO wanted to design everything from a computer mouse to an MRI machine.

Such complex problem solving required a framework where people with different subject matter expertise could come together and build products which could not be conceived by experts in one subject alone. Thus, a number of tools and techniques were created which could bring experts from different fields on the same page, and Sprint-like methods which could facilitate the solving of such complex interdisciplinary problems were born.

However these days, designers use Sprints flagrantly for ‘simple subject specific problems’.

Subject specific problems often require in-depth ideation and brainstorming, which are better addressed using ‘Deep Work’ methods, than they are by group exercises like Sprints.

So the next time you run your Sprint, make sure that you’re solving a wicked problem which requires multiple perspectives, otherwise you risk the chance of leaving a group of talented individuals feeling stupid and unproductive (which is completely counter productive to the cause of innovation — the reason why you want to run a Sprint in the first place).

2. Are you sure that your cost of testing ideas in production is greater than your cost of running a Sprint?

Let’s take our discussion back to the 90s. Methods like 3D printing were not as accessible as they are today. Producing even a batch of a few hundred samples for user testing required a considerable investment in tooling, soft molding etc.

Poor design decisions had a major negative impact on production costs as well as timelines. These decisions could not be reverted by merely pushing a new version of the product to the app/play store which got updated on the users’ phones overnight.

Rapid prototyping wasn’t just about having fun during brainstorming and creating quick mockups. Designers had to use Sprint-like methods for every tiny design decision to insure themselves against irreversible failure post production.

However today, it’s a different story. You can test your hypothesis by simply pushing changes to your product and seeing if you get the expected response. The cost of making changes in production might actually be much lower than the cost of running an expensive week long 200–400 man hour Sprint. Plus you get the added advantage of testing your ideas directly in the real world with a much larger sample size.

3. Are you looking for a series of small improvements or are you looking for a major pivot?

“Agile and Lean are so last decade dude! You should try running a Sprint ”— Hipster designer at a conference.

Let’s continue our history lesson and jump to the early 2000s. Methods like Agile and Lean had been evolved to a point that their use was picking up pace in software development quite rapidly. The ethos of these methods were in perfect harmony with the design methods developed a decade earlier.

However, today these methods are no longer in vogue. In a recent conversation with a young designer I learned that Agile and Lean are “so last decade”, while Sprints are “so cool and fast”. This understanding is a bit flawed. No doubt that Sprints are ‘cool and fast’ but they are not a replacement for mature software design and development methods.

It’s unwise to hold your team hostage and make them go through a Sprint every time you want to make a series of small improvements. Methods like Agile and Lean are perfectly capable of handling these small improvements while never halting actual product development. Sprints on the other hand are a lot better for making major pivots which really require you to go broad before you converge to a few ideas worth trying out.

If you’re going to run a Sprint, make sure you either see chances for colossal improvement or catastrophic failure. If it isn’t that big and you’re looking to innovate incrementally, it’s best to leave it to the un-hip methods from the last decade.

Final thoughts

Although powerful, Sprint isn’t a ‘one size fits all’ solution to all design problems. If you’re going to use the method, understand why it exists, and ask yourself the above questions. If the answer to any one of them suggests that you should run a Sprint, then go for it.

Got questions ?

If you’ve got questions, write to me at dhruv@uncommon.is

Find more of our writing at blog.uncommon.is.