By now, you’ve probably heard about GV’s Design Sprint process. Jake Knapp and colleagues have effectively married the best of design and product thinking into a lean, thoughtful process.

Design-hipster alert: I first read about Jake’s process about 3 and a half years ago in an early blog post he wrote for Fast Company. At the time, our startup had just launched our first product and we were trying to set up a sustainable product development process. Unfortunately, GV’s method wasn’t a fit for us.

Especially in our understaffed startup, we needed something more sustainable for ongoing product development.

Clearing your entire team’s schedule for a week is a great way to kick-start a new project with singular focus, but it’s not realistic for every development cycle. Especially in our understaffed startup, we needed something more sustainable for ongoing product development.

A Hybrid Sprint Methodology

I started hybridizing ideas from GV’s Design Sprint, Jeff Gothelf’s Lean UX philosophy, and more. Eventually, we landed on the one-week lean UX sprint project plan you’ll find below. This structure was the template for a lot of the research and design behind Muse: the brain sensing headband.

As you read through the plan, you’ll notice a lot more time for independent work and remote collaboration compared to GV’s method. This way, each member of your product team can stay connected to other projects and manage their time accordingly. Instead of a one-week intensive, the process feels more like a sustainable rhythm for UX in an agile development environment.

The Team

Product Manager (PM)

Defines scope for the UX sprint based on metrics, goals, roadmap, existing research, etc. Provides feedback to the team during the sprint. After the sprint, translates test results back into the roadmap.

UX/UI Designer (UXD)

Benchmarking, facilitating design workshops, designing wireframes, prototyping, and observing the research sessions.

UX Researcher (UXR)

Recruitment, session planning defining test scenarios, writing moderator guide, moderating, analysis, and documenting results/insights.