Design Sprint 4.0 — From an idea to a validated prototype in just 5 days 🚀

The latest iteration of the Design Sprint methodology, created by Outdraw Design. I’d love to share with you our process!

We’ve perfected the traditional Design Sprint flow so that it can be performed fully remotely 👩‍💻, engages your team for only 🗓 2 out of 5 days, delivers a mid-fidelity prototype 🚀 tested with users, and ends with a ✅ prioritized list of features so you can continue working on it immediately.

Timeline 🗓

Design Sprint 4.0 takes 5 days.

Constraining the time is crucial since it motivates the participants to keep the scope reasonable and focus on essential steps that will lead to successful outcomes.

👉 The first two days of the Sprint focus on workshops with your team. We go through a series of exercises where we explore the problems and potential solutions on Monday and then synthesize and create a finalized concept on Tuesday.

👉 Wednesday is a day of prototyping. We take the concept your team completed on Tuesday and create a clickable mid-fidelity prototype that we will test with the users.

👉 On Thursday, we perform usability testing. We invite users to go through the prototype to observe their behavior and gain insights regarding what needs to be improved.

👉 Friday is the last day of the Sprint. We summarise all the insights, make improvements to the prototype based on learnings from tests, and prepare a final report for your Team.

In addition to the 5-day sprint, we meet your team two more times for Pre- and Post-Sprint sessions.

👉 The Pre-sprint session is dedicated to getting to know your product, your Team, and the current challenges.

👉 During the Post-sprint session, we present the finalized prototype, insights from the tests, and the prioritized list of features.

Outcomes 👩‍💻

Here are the outcomes the Team gets after a 5-day Sprint:

• Mid-fidelity prototype that was 🧪 tested with users and improved based on their feedback.

This is the most important asset since it envisions your idea and is a base for all the future design and engineering work needed to finalize the project.

💡 Mid-fidelity mockups are in between the low and high-fidelity prototypes and take the best out of both worlds.

They are detailed enough, so usability testing gives accurate results because they look like a real interface…

…but they don’t include final styles, so it’s perfect for rapid prototyping we do during the Design Sprint 4.0 🚀

• Usability test video recordings — We record and transcribe all the sessions so the Team can refer to them in the future.
• Sprint summary — A final report with all the insights, outcomes, and recommendations.
• Editable design assets — The prototype we’ve prepared is fully editable, so the Team can continue transforming it as they see fit.

We also give clients we work with access to our custom mid-fidelity design system…

…so if the Design Team needs to make any changes in the future, they can do it quickly using ready components.

• Prioritised list of features — We work on it together during Tuesday’s workshop.

With this list, the is a clear path forward, so right after the Sprint, you the Team can dive into detailed planning.

Who we work with 😍

We work with startups, established companies, and product teams.

• Startups benefit immensely from this proven framework to work on a disruptive idea or refine their product.
• For established companies, Design Sprints offer a fresh perspective, help unlock new opportunities, innovate, and stay competitive in a rapidly evolving market.
• For product teams within bigger organizations, our Design Sprints foster collaboration and cross-functional alignment, empowering those teams to deliver truly exceptional solutions.

Final thoughts

Design Sprint 4.0 is a new iteration of a proven process that we’ve created based on our experience working with multiple clients.

Over the course of the following weeks, I’ll be diving deeper into each day in separate articles. I would love to share this process.

If you have any questions or comments about the content, please leave a comment or reach out to me at 💌 alicja@outdraw.design

If you would like to find out more about Design Sprint 4.0, visit our website outdraw.design 🚀