Design Sprint: how to design an innovative prototype

An interactive rapid prototyping workshop

Looking to start an innovative project and want to make sure you're heading in the right direction? To validate your concept quickly and easily, organize a Design Sprint with our ready-to-use template. This method involves getting the whole team on board to invent, design and test a project. And all that, in under a week! With the Design Sprint template, the steps are clear and they follow on seamlessly to mobilize collective intelligence, all on the same Klaxoon whiteboard.

How can a design sprint solve a problem in record time?

With the sprint method, you put your heads together and work as a team to design a prototype to address a problem, from the initial sketch to user testing. By mobilizing collective intelligence, you will create and test an innovative solution in under a week.

Invented in 2010, design sprints consist of imagining, designing and testing a prototype all while saving time and money. Unlike traditional design and prototyping processes, a Design Sprint workshop takes 5 days using the Klaxoon template, which really saves the team time. Everyone's skills are harnessed to test out a solution. This hybrid and visual brainstorming format is highly focused, requires great concentration and everyone to get involved.

With the Klaxoon whiteboard and its Question tool, voting to make decisions and moving on to the next step couldn't be easier. No need for anything else, everyone is fully focused on innovation. The facilitator helps to clarify and prioritize ideas, and information remains available on the shared board all the better to track project management.

How do you design a prototype in 5 days with the Design Sprint template?

Day 1: After inviting your collaborators to the Klaxoon whiteboard, add the problem to be solved in this design sprint workshop, indicate the decision maker and add photos of the team members. Then, using a 5-minute timer, ask everyone to share their ideas on the board about the context, the players involved, the risks and issues etc. Ask participants to like the most appropriate ideas, and then discuss them if you are in a face to face meeting, or use the Klaxoon live video conferencing tool, to prioritize the favorite ideas. Use the key to color ideas based on their popularity and use connectors to link those that are related. That's it, at the center of the map, you have identified the target of your sprint, or the prototype testers!

Day 2: Copy the solution boxes for all the participants. Everyone then suggests their solution anonymously and at their own pace, adding text, drawings, links, media, videos etc. After a well-deserved break, everyone returns to the whiteboard, including the decision maker, to explore and study the suggestions silently. Then, ask everyone to review the solutions and let each participant give their opinion. The author can then reveal themselves, add their photo in the space provided and defend their suggestion. Now it's time to vote! Everyone votes and if two solutions come out top, the decision maker has the final vote.

Day 3: Write down the title of the chosen solution and harness collective intelligence to start building your story board. Don’t forget that the Klaxoon board is infinitely scalable so you can embellish and narrow down your ideas as much as you need. Bring the sequences to life by adding hand-made or imported visuals, and add the framework for your story board in the left-hand column: music, location, etc.

Day 4: Allocate roles together and get everyone to add their photo in their box. You can then complete your task at your own pace, while sharing your progress on the board so that the whole team can follow the prototyping as it happens. Don't forget to validate it by adding a tick when you've finished!

Day 5: Create a survey to use for testing and insert the link in the box provided. Send it to the testers and, once the findings are in, share them with your team. You can then discuss the findings and sum up this rapid prototyping workshop as a team!