What is Design Sprint?
Depending on who you ask it can be identified a little bit differently. But the essence of the term should stay the same – a Design Sprint is a unique process for validating ideas and solving big problems through prototyping and testing ideas with key stakeholders.
At Curated Soft, we use Design Sprint approach for almost every custom software development or mobile application development project, unless the idea has been already worked on thoroughly and some version of the design sprint deliverables already exist.
This approach is a win-win for start-ups and beyond, producing a prototype of a product or feature and providing a company with valuable, actionable testing data. Often times it also helps highlight the areas of the product that haven’t been thoroughly considered, and make sure there is 100% clarity around the functionality, design, feature set and further development costs.
Typical Design Sprint Team
- Facilitator. The facilitator is responsible for empowering team to collaborate with each other, stay on track, and encouragу creativity. Coming to a project with an open mind and ready to lend an ear is key for a facilitator. They need to be able to make a step back and think strategically Instead of burying themselves in details. They encourage everyone in the team to participate and create an open and thriving work environment. At Curated Soft, we strongly believe in building relationship with our clients, and that is why we strive to assign the facilitator role during the design sprint to a future Account Executive for the same client, meaning that the same person stays with the client from the very first step of the project, into its development, release and finally ongoing support.
- Designer. The presence of a designer in a Design Sprint makes an obvious sense. It ensures that a designer’s perspective is considered, as well as their skills are crucial to the prototyping stages. The success of a design sprint hugely depends on their input.
- Engineer. At Curated Soft, we assign Team Lead level engineers to our Design Sprints as we truly believe it is key to make sure the project follows the best possible path from the ground up. An engineer at this early stage will help with technical feasibility of the project and its features, and efficient approach to their development.
- Product Owner. A product owner can be the founder, CEO, or Vice President of product. In a nutshell, the product owner will be the person who has the most tangible exposure to the product issue you are solving. Their involvement and opinion can make or break the success of the Design Sprint.
Design Sprint Outcomes
As the result of successful Design Sprint, here is what one can expect:
- Prototypes of all sections of the solution, including mock-up screens. For that we use a product called Figma
- Logical structure and Solution architecture
- Description of integrations and used APIs
- Detailed description of functional requirements
- Detailed estimate
Why do we do it?
As you can see from the above description of the main aspects of Design Sprint project, it is meant to fill in crucial gaps in the project planning, as well as become the basis for the future development work. We also find that it sets the expectations and the pace for the whole project, as we continue working on the projects using sprints approach – break out full project into smaller chunks (sprints) with clear deliverables, and present those to the client at the end of each sprint. That brings transparency, clarity and accountability to the project.
If you are interested to learn more about how Design Sprint can help with bringing your idea to life, feel free to reach out to us!