Insight
How Design Sprints can transform your digital strategy in just 5 Days: A practical guide
Steve Peters
As you will know, the business landscape is evolving at a very fast pace right now, and businesses like yours need to understand how to innovate rapidly to stay ahead of the competition.
Traditional product development cycles can be slow, costly, and full with uncertainty, which ultimately leads to wasted resources and lots of missed opportunities. And so… the design sprint! Originating out of Google Ventures, a Design Sprint is a structured, five-day process that allows businesses to tackle complex challenges head-on, test solutions, and gather user feedback before making any significant investments.
Unbelievably the Design Sprint has been around since 2014 - but still today we see businesses place big bets on new software and user experiences without considering whether it’s the right choice for the business and the customer.
At Code, Design Sprints are the cornerstone of problem definition and finding solutions. We’ve worked with clients as diverse as Audi to Manchester Airport using these techniques to drive growth.
In this article, we will explore how design sprints revolutionise digital strategy, making sure that brands can make informed decisions quickly while reducing any form of risk. Whether you're launching a new product, refining an existing service, or optimising your customer experience, this method can provide a framework for rapid, user-driven innovation… that works!
The design sprint was initially developed by Jake Knapp over at Google Ventures as a method to help startups and businesses validate ideas in a short timeframe. Since then, many of the top leading global brands have adopted this approach, using it to solve digital challenges, accelerate innovation, and improve customer experience.
At its core, a design sprint compresses months of product development into just five short days, providing a structured process for ideation, prototyping, and user testing. It allows businesses to test assumptions and refine concepts based on real user feedback before committing to any full-scale development.
Traditional product development is often a lengthy and expensive process, involving extensive levels of planning, resource allocation, and iterative testing. Many companies have found that this approach can delay time-to-market and increase the risk of failure if the final product doesn’t actually meet user expectations, meaning you’re then back to the start!
A design sprint, on the other hand, is an intensive, structured process that follows a really clear roadmap so everyone is on the same page:
This approach means that businesses invest only in solutions that have been validated through real-world testing, significantly reducing risk and improving the efficiency of an idea.
Facilitating a (successful) design sprint requires quite a bit of expertise in content strategy, UX design, and customer experience.
A content design agency, like Code for example, brings a strategic perspective to the process, making sure that the content, messaging, and design elements all align with the brand’s objectives and user expectations, which in turn means everyone is more successful.
The first day of a design sprint is all about alignment.
Stakeholders, designers, and strategists come together to gain a shared understanding of the challenge at hand. This involves mapping out the business goals, user needs, and pain points that need solving.
A content design agency plays a crucial role here, making sure that any and all customer insights, data analytics, and brand objectives are at the forefront of discussions. Teams conduct expert interviews, competitor benchmarking, and customer journey mapping to identify any key friction points in the existing digital experience.
In the words of Jake Knapp - Founder of this methodology, said “We've found that magic happens when we use big whiteboards to solve problems. As humans, our short-term memory is not all that good, but our spatial memory is excellent. Big, visible diagrams and notes help us form better plans”.
By aligning on the problem visually in the early stages, teams can create a shared understanding that prevents any form of misalignment and costly errors in later stages of the sprint.
By the end of Day one, the team will have defined a clear sprint goal and a user journey map that highlights key decision-making moments in the customer experience.
With a clear problem statement in place, Day two shifts focus to brainstorming solutions.
Using structured ideation techniques, participants in the team generate a wide range of ideas without the constraints of suitability concerns.
One popular method is Crazy 8s, which involves each team member sketching eight variations of a solution in just eight minutes. This fast-paced iteration encourages creative thinking and supports diverse perspectives, making sure each opportunity is properly explored. Following this, teams refine their ideas into a storyboard format, laying the foundation for the final concept (and incorporating the element of visual thinking like we mentioned above).
A content design agency makes sure that usability and accessibility are baked into the ideation process, making sure customer experience (CX) principles are forefront of mind. Every idea is assessed not just on its suitability, but also on how well it aligns with the brand’s voice, clarity, and general user expectations.
A compelling real-world example of structured ideation leading to the rapid development of an innovative digital product is ICL Group's PITCH BIG platform. ICL, a global leader in specialty minerals, used Qmarkets’ Q-ideate software to streamline its ideation process.
The company invited its global workforce to submit ideas for operational improvements and sustainability projects. These ideas were then evaluated by a structured network of over three hundred internal experts, known as ‘BIG Champions,’ ‘BIG Captains,’ and ‘BIG Experts.’ This structured approach enabled ICL to harness employee creativity effectively, leading to actionable innovations that drove both sustainability and actual ROI.
With multiple ideas generated, the team now needs to decide which concept to prototype. This is done using structured decision-making frameworks, such as the Dot Voting method, where team members vote on the most promising solutions.
To avoid subjective decision-making, experts in content design and CX help facilitate discussions by bringing in real customer insights and behavioural data. This means that the most impactful idea can be chosen based on evidence rather than assumption.
Once a final concept is selected, the team builds a detailed storyboard outlining how users will interact with the solution. This storyboard serves as a blueprint for the prototype that will be built the following day.
If you’re still not sure whether CX and content design is worth investing in, consider the following statistics and then ask yourself again:
Day Four is all about bringing the concept to life. The goal is not to build a fully functional product but rather a realistic, high-fidelity prototype that users can actually interact with.
A content design agency plays a massive role in shaping the digital experience by supporting the content hierarchy, micro copy, and UX writing guide users seamlessly through the prototype.
By the end of the day, the team will have a working prototype that closely mimics the final experience, ready for real user testing.
A strong example of a brand who successfully prototyped a digital experience and refined it based on early user feedback is IKEA's IKEA Place app. IKEA developed this augmented reality (AR) tool to address customer concerns about how furniture would look and fit in their homes. By prototyping the app and gathering user feedback, IKEA identified usability issues and refined the experience to make it more intuitive and reliable. The result was an engaging and practical tool that increased customer confidence, leading to higher online conversions and improved customer satisfaction.
The final day of the sprint is dedicated to user testing.
This is when the prototype is put in front of actual real users to gather feedback on what works, what doesn’t, and what needs refinement.
This phase is critical for conversion rate optimisation (CRO), as it helps businesses understand how users interact with content, where they drop off, and what persuades them to take action. The insights gained from usability testing guide the final iteration of the digital product or service.
“Real-world testing is able to show how shoppers actually behave, rather than how they think they might behave when interviewed in a totally isolated setting” - Wim Wouters, Creative Director at More From Less. There is a critical difference between theoretical user behaviour and actual user behaviour in real-world scenarios.
By the end of day five, brands have a validated solution backed by real user insights, reducing the risk of launching an untested product that fails to resonate with its audience.
In today’s fast-paced digital landscape, businesses can no longer afford to spend months or even years developing digital products that might not end up resonating with users. Design sprints reduce this risk by allowing companies to fail fast, learn faster, and make data-backed decisions before committing any form of significant resources.
Instead of investing in lengthy development cycles, brands can test, validate, and refine concepts in just five days.
According to a study by CB Insights, 35% of start-ups fail due to a lack of market need, highlighting the genuine importance of validating ideas early in the development process. Businesses that are successful in validating their ideas can make sure there is market demand which in turn makes them more likely to succeed.
Customer experience (CX) is at the heart of every successful brand strategy. Design sprints mean that user needs remain the focal point by integrating CX strategy into the product development cycle. By involving real users in testing early prototypes, businesses can uncover those consumer pain points, streamline their interactions, and create intuitive digital experiences that drive actual conversions (which is ultimately what every brand is looking for)!
Research from The Temkin Group suggests that companies earning one billion dollars annually can expect to earn, on average, an additional seven hundred million dollars within three years of investing in customer experience, demonstrating the significant revenue impact of prioritising CX initiatives.
At Code, we’ve seen first-hand how user-focused sprint methodologies translate into higher engagement and conversion rates for our clients. Sometimes, thinking three to five years ahead can feel a bit absurd. However, we’ve found that having that sense of direction is crucial, especially in a volatile world. We can help you define a crystal clear digital vision and strategy and create a roadmap that’s designed to flex and adapt.
One of the most overlooked benefits of design sprints is their ability to bring cross-functional teams together. In many organisations, marketing, product, and design teams operate in silos, leading to huge misalignments and inefficiencies.
A design sprint creates an environment of collaboration, making sure that all stakeholders at different levels within the business contribute to the ideation, prototyping, AND validation processes.
By working in a structured, time-boxed format, teams achieve that clarity, make faster decisions, and develop solutions that truly align with their business goals. This shift toward co-creation is one of the reasons why traditional agency models are evolving to embrace agile methodologies like design sprints.
In a traditional design sprint process, AI can be introduced as both a research accelerator and a creative augmentation tool without disrupting the core structure of the sprint.
For example, during the Understand phase, AI-powered tools can rapidly synthesise large volumes of user feedback, market data, and competitor analysis, giving the team a more comprehensive evidence base in hours rather than days.
In the Ideate phase, generative AI can produce a wide range of concept variations, interface mock-ups, or copy options, enabling the team to explore more possibilities before narrowing down.
During Prototype and Test, AI can assist in quickly generating interactive prototypes, simulating user interactions, and even running predictive usability analyses before live testing. The key is to position AI as a collaborator that enhances speed, breadth, and insight—while ensuring human judgment remains central to decision-making.
Before running a design sprint, you should consider a few key factors:
While some companies run internal sprints, working with a specialist agency like Code ensures maximum impact. With extensive experience facilitating design sprints, our team helps businesses:
Innovation at speed is no longer a luxury—it’s a necessity, as we’ve identified in this article.
Design sprints empower brands to de-risk product development, enhance their customer experiences, and drive higher conversion rates in just five days. By embracing structured sprint methodologies, businesses can accelerate decision-making, align teams, and create user-centred solutions that deliver measurable results.
At Code, we help brands unlock breakthrough ideas through expert-led design sprints. Whether you’re looking to refine an existing product or explore a new digital initiative, our team is ready to guide you through a proven sprint process.
Contact Code to learn how a design sprint can drive innovation and business growth.
