Unlocking the Magic of the Design Sprint: Four Design Leaders Share Their Tips

Stellar design sprints start with structure. But the scaffolding of time constraints, phases and processes are intended to stoke something less tangible: serendipity.   

Michelle Canning, EPAM Continuum Director of Experience Design, sees the sprint as a thrilling vehicle for melding the stakeholders' expertise with the team's design skills, resulting in something unforgettable for both the business and its partners.

“There’s so much excitement that comes from the cross-functional ideation sessions,” she said. “By partnering with us as an outlet, we build on stakeholder ideas in a human-centered way.”

Built In NY sat down with Cai, Marshbank, Canning and Hu to learn more about the steps they take in their respective design sprints to capture lighting in a bottle.

What does a design sprint look like at your company?

Our end-to-end approach is much more robust than a typical design sprint because we are committed to holistically understanding the problem and opportunities. As researchers, strategists and designers, our primary goal is to ensure our human-centered and data-driven approach includes enough time to truly understand the market, brand, business objectives and user needs. This allows us to create successful solutions and have a true impact on those who work with us.

At a high level, the stages are similar to a traditional five-day design sprint. Our robust, holistic approach to design sprints leads to true experience transformation for large-scale redesigns, space designs or when introducing something revolutionary to the market.

Our process begins by framing the problem and defining the key goals. All multidisciplinary team members who help generate new ideas are involved from the beginning — user experience, creative, content strategy, technology, analytics and so on.

Once we understand the current state and objectives, we learn as much as possible through deep-market and user research. We synthesize our research and align on a unified vision across the multi-disciplinary team. We test the solution with users to ensure the problem is being solved effectively.

Read the full interview here.