Jasper den Ouden5 min readFrom problem to tested prototype in four days. It sounds like a trick, and the first time we thought so too. We've run more than 25 of them by now, and it works.
The version in the book Sprint takes five days. We do the sketching and the deciding on the same day, which gives us one back. A sprint tells you in four days whether a new idea holds up. And if the answer is 'don't build it', you've spent days instead of half a year.
Who's in the room
A sprint stands or falls on who takes part. We bring someone to run the sprint and lead the user tests, plus a designer to build the prototype. You bring the person who makes the calls, ideally in the room all four days, someone who knows the field cold, and the people who come to test on the last day. Without that decider, every choice slides to next week and the sprint stalls.
Day 1: Understand
The first day is about getting everyone on the same page. We hear out the experts, collect the questions everyone was already sitting on and agree on one goal for the sprint. Then we map how someone moves through the product today, start to finish, and look at how others solved the same problem. Most teams want to tackle everything at once. A sprint makes you pick one and leave the rest.
Day 2: Sketch and decide
In the morning everyone sketches a solution alone and in silence, so the ideas don't blur into each other in a meeting. In the afternoon we lay every sketch out, put stickers on what stands out and the decider picks what we carry forward. By the end there's a storyboard: screen by screen, what we're going to build. Choices that would normally take weeks get made in one afternoon.
Day 3: Build
In one day we build a prototype that looks real. It only has to look enough like the real thing to get honest reactions the next day. Working software would take days, and it isn't needed. In the evening we run through it once and patch the holes.
Day 4: Test
Five people use the prototype, one at a time, while the team watches on a screen in the next room. We write down what they say and what they do. After the last one we read it all back in silence, and the pattern shows: where people get stuck, what they get right away and what to build next. Five is enough; more barely turns up anything new.
What you walk away with
After four days you have a tested prototype and a write-up of what you saw. You know, from evidence instead of assumptions, whether the idea holds up and whether it's worth building.
