Design Sprint
A time-boxed process — classically five days — that runs a big product question from idea to a tested prototype with real users.
A design sprint compresses months of debate into a structured week: understand the problem, sketch solutions, decide on one, build a realistic prototype, and test it with five users on the final day. It was popularized by Google Ventures as a way to answer high-stakes questions fast.
The output is not a finished product but a validated (or invalidated) direction, backed by real reactions rather than opinions. Sprints work best for genuinely open questions — a new product, a risky redesign — where the cost of guessing wrong is high.
Related terms
Design ThinkingA human-centered problem-solving framework that moves through empathize, define, ideate, prototype, and test to reach validated solutions.PrototypingBuilding an interactive, clickable model of a product so a flow can be experienced and tested before it is engineered.Usability TestingWatching real users attempt real tasks in a product or prototype to find where they struggle, hesitate, or fail.