No. A Design Sprint’s greatest strength, and what makes it truly exciting, is that it can be used for different types of projects and products. We have also run design sprints for experiences or processes.
The origins of Sprint are to be found in Design Thinking. Companies such as IDEO have widely used collaborative approaches to design physical products such as the first computer mouse for Apple, sneakers for Nike, kitchen appliances, furniture, and more.
For the last few years, our team has worked with more than 80 companies. We’ve facilitated Sprints within industries such as education, software development, tech, medical, luxury beauty care, energy, and security.
The first three days of the Design Sprint are the same for any type of product or industry. The three workshop days will allow you to design innovative products, new experiences, service design or even, in some cases, rethink how an entire organization works.
The last two days may differ depending on the type of the project. For example, we can successfully prototype retail spaces using 3D renderings, present a new customer experience through a video, or create a printed brochure to present a future product. In many cases, a clickable prototype simulating a website will give the product the necessary realism.
During the Design Sprint we will typically use just one day for prototyping. When a prototype is to be a physical object, it is possible to extend the time to two or three days, due to simple practical reasons (3D printing or manual labor hours). The key idea is not to waste any time and to prototype “Goldilock quality“.