A Human Sprint

Many of you will be familiar with the concept of a Design Sprint - the process first created by Jake Knapp in 2010 whilst working at Google, and developed further with the team at Google Ventures, including Braden Kowitz and John Zeratsky. Their original book, Sprint, how to solve big problems and test new ideas in just five days, describes how a small and focussed team can effectively build and test a prototype in just five days.

In recent years, Design Sprints have become very popular within the innovation and design community and beyond, as a way of making rapid progress from problem to tested solution using a structured process that can be quickly iterated.  The five key stages of a Design Sprint are as follows:

Monday - Map the problem

Tuesday - Sketch potential solutions

Wednesday - Decide on a route forward

Thursday - Prototype

Friday - Test with potential customers

Having re-read the book recently, I found myself reflecting on the human aspect of the Design Sprint process. There are a several subtle, behavioural aspects at play which create some interesting tensions and contribute to making the process an effective one.

Why Short works

Speed is one of the obvious benefits of a Design Sprint - making rapid progress on a particular challenge in a very short time period. Keeping things short and sweet also works from a behavioural perspective - for two key reasons…

Firstly, there’s nothing like a deadline to focus the mind. You may well have heard of Parkinson’s famous Law, that “Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion” As an example, try and think of the last time you completed a work project or assignment well ahead of the deadline…. Having trouble?! Most people are more inclined to procrastinate, or delay rather than get stuff done ahead of time (the elusive pre-crastinators). In a Design Sprint, the days and activities are highly structured and time-bound - the customer test on Day 5 is a hard deadline that the team needs to work towards in a focussed way.

The short time-frame also helps to ensure the team do not become too wedded to a particular idea, or invest too much time and energy into developing it. As humans, we have a tendency to place value in the time and effort spent, even if the logical next step is to abandon the idea or change course - this cognitive bias is known as the sunk costs fallacy. On long projects, this bias can make project teams reluctant to give up on an initiative or idea because they’ve invested so much time, effort or resource in it.

Balance of ownership

Research has shown that people value ideas more if they have been personally involved in their creation or if they have some existing ownership of the idea, a cognitive bias known as the IKEA effect. Building a sense of ownership in a project, initiative or idea is a powerful tool, but there’s an important balance here. The Design Sprint process plays with the concept of ownership in different ways:

Key stakeholders are involved at an early point in the process: on Monday, a number of internal experts are asked to come in and share their wisdom and perspective on the challenge. This exercise, known as ‘Ask the Experts’, ensures that key knowledge is shared, whilst building a sense of ownership and involvement in the challenge. These experts often become some of the strongest advocates as ideas are progressed through the organisation later on. 

However, too much ownership can also be destructive, particularly if it means the project team become too attached to an idea, and unable to take criticism or see how it could be improved. Again, the short-term timeframe helps here. Rapid prototyping and testing doesn’t allow for teams to get too wedded to a particular idea or execution, making the ability to pivot much easier.

Persuasion in check

Humans can be highly persuasive, and group creative sessions can be vulnerable to Groupthink, a concept first described by psychologist Irving Janis, where individuals have a tendency to conform and agree, either due to internal politics, hierarchy or the social need to belong. There are various ways to can overcome this, such as priming participants to be more challenging in their thinking, carefully selecting group members for diversity of experience or background, or allowing time for individual input and reflection.

The Design Sprint tackles the Groupthink challenge by putting a large emphasis on individual work and creativity. Although the group are working together over the 5 days, for large parts of the Sprint they are working individually. Interestingly, all of the generative work (Day 2 - sketch potential solutions) is done solo - at no point do the team work together to generate new ideas.

Limiting the power of persuasion also happens during the sharing of individual ideas. When the ideas from Day 2 are shared back on Day 3, it’s the facilitator not the individual creator of each idea who presents the ideas back to the group, based on what they can see and read on the idea sketches. The focus is very much on the content and quality of the ideas, rather than the persuasive power of the creator.

In summary…

Design Sprints have become highly popular in recent years as a way of making rapid progress from problem to tested solution using a structured process. As a team, we’ve delivered many over the years, and have seen their value, when applied to the right challenge. From a behavioural design perspective, there are a number of elements that contribute to enhancing the outcome and likelihood of success: the focussed timeframe, the careful balance of ownership, and limiting the power of persuasion.

In our work, Design Sprints are one of various innovation processes that we use and build on, along with Design Thinking, Double Diamond, Integrative Thinking, CPS, Jobs to be Done and others.  For a more in-depth comparison of Design Sprints to other models of innovation and creativity, read Peter Fullagar's article Sprint, Run or Walk: When to choose a Design Sprint.