A five-day structured process for solving design problems through prototyping and user testing. Developed at Google Ventures, a design sprint compresses months of work into one week by focusing a cross-functional team on a single, well-defined challenge.
Common contexts
- Validating a new product direction with real users before committing to a six-month roadmap
- Breaking a cross-functional team out of a months-long debate about competing feature approaches
- Rapidly exploring a risky UX concept that would otherwise require full engineering build to test
Use when
When the team has a specific, high-stakes question that can be answered with a realistic prototype in five days, and the right stakeholders can commit to full participation for the entire week.
Avoid when
Don't use a design sprint as a substitute for ongoing discovery — it answers a specific question efficiently, but won't replace the foundational research needed to know which question to ask.
The most valuable output of a design sprint is often not the prototype itself, but the shared team vocabulary and alignment on the problem — even if the tested solution is thrown out entirely.
Real-world examples
- Google Ventures (GV) developed the Design Sprint methodology and used it with portfolio companies like Slack and Nest to rapidly prototype and validate product ideas in five days.
- Lego used a Design Sprint facilitated by AJ&Smart to redesign parts of their digital experience, compressing months of potential iteration into a single week.
- The United Nations used Design Sprints to rapidly develop and test solutions for humanitarian challenges, including digital tools for refugee services.