Design Sprints
We learned the Design Sprint process directly from the creator himself: Jake Knapp. Jake perfected the process with companies like AirBnB, Slack, 23andMe, and Nest while at Google Ventures—a venture capital company that runs Design Sprints for their portfolio of tech start-ups. But you don't have to be a tech start-up in Silicon Valley to reap the benefits of Design Sprints. All you need is a big challenge with high stakes or not enough time.
Sprint with Wily
We've run Design Sprints for social enterprises, Fortune 100 and 500 firms, and city and federal government teams. Design Sprints work in such a wide range of organizations because they all have one thing in common: they face big challenges.
At Wily, we use this proven, repeatable, and hands-on design approach to develop and test new or improved products and services for a wide range of organizations. No matter what type of organization you're in, we know how to run Design Sprints to get you and your team unstuck, fast.
Why Design Sprints
Design Sprints are a proven way to validate your product idea with customers in weeks, not months. Avoid big investments in untested ideas. Use Design Sprints to learn what customers think about your new or improved product before investing months and millions into something your customers may not want, understand, or purchase.
How We Sprint
At Wily, we use an accelerated four-day Design Sprint process illustrated below.
Map + Sketch. We help you dig deep into your challenges, then invite experts to poke holes in your team's thinking to ensure we are focusing on the right challenges. We use a proven four-part sketch process to ensure ideas have the time and focus they need to mature into solutions while avoiding groupthink.
Decide + Storyboard. We walk you through a structured process for selecting the top idea(s) for prototyping and testing. We help you illustrate key steps of your solution in the form of a storyboard, which guides us through prototyping in the next step.
Prototype. We create a storyboard that shows scene-by-scene how your target audience will experience your solution, then make one or more of those scenes tangible by building prototypes that give form and function to your solution.
Test. We place our prototypes in the hands of your target audience to gauge their reactions and gather insights into how the idea can be improved in the next iteration.
What Design Sprints Look Like
In one week, your project team will dig deep into a challenge, create non-obvious ideas, make the best idea(s) tangible with a realistic prototype, and test that prototype with real customers. Below illustrates what your four day Design Sprint will look like.
Can’t commit your full team to four days? No problem. After Days 1-2, we’ll take the lead on building and testing the prototype on Days 3-4 with just 1-2 members of your team. We’ll then debrief the full team afterward to review learnings and map next steps.
Whether you're testing a brand new product or process, or an existing one, running sprints is an efficient and effective way to build, test and improve your ideas, fast. This iterative approach produces tangible progress in little time, keeping momentum and morale high.
What's The Outcome?
The outcome of your Design Sprint includes answers to key business questions you had at the onset of the Sprint, as well as validation of the early solutions your team developed during the Sprint—all within weeks, while avoiding the months and millions most project launches take to achieve the same (or lesser) results.
You’ll also have a realistic prototype in hand. Not a sketch. Not a Lego or play-doh model. You get a prototype that looks and feels like the real thing. By building a realistic prototype and testing it with real customers, you get genuine reactions rather than canned or polite feedback. On the final day of each Design Sprint, we make sense of your customers' feedback and help you develop clear, actionable next steps for refining your product or process.
The powerful customer insights you’ll gain through the sprint will bring the path that your team should take into sharp focus. You’ll also have the clarity and momentum your team needs to propel your project forward.
Why Wily?
We run and teach sprints full time. We’re not spread across multiple lines of business and running sprints like a side hustle. Design Sprints are our full time gig. That means you get the most effective process.
We’re not an agency pushing solutions that your customers don’t want and you shouldn’t build. If the best answer is stop or pivot, that’s the answer you’ll get. You don’t have to worry about a hidden agenda with your product, service or experience. That means you get the best chance of success.
We run Sprints domestically and overseas for Fortune 100 and 500 teams, city and federal governments and prominent institutions, and can stand toe-to-toe with the biggest (and most expensive) design agencies in the world. That means you get world class talent without the world class egos or prices.
We love what we do and have chosen to spend our most valuable resource (our time) to create a vehicle (this company) to do our life's work. That means you are treated as a partner, and get our commitment to bring you our very best work.
We are passionate. We are purpose-driven. We Are Wily.
"Eric did a spot on and incredible job at herding a group of strong willed individuals that sometimes aren't the best at working together, into a cohesive unit that was laser focused on identifying and solving a solution in a timeframe that would normally seem ludicrous and involve everyone's favorite thing - multiple meetings.”
—Ali Yazdi, Director, Business Insights, AvidXchange
Get Help On Your Project
Try A Low Risk Decision Sprint
Whether you're defining a challenge, evaluating an opportunity, or getting your team aligned on a problem, our Decision Sprints can help. We run these 2 hour sessions with distributed teams all over the world. They're a low risk way to work with our expert facilitators and get a glimpse into how Sprints work. Plus the ideas you create and activities you learn are yours to use forever.
