Good and bad questions for a Design Sprint

Design Sprint is a fantastic tool in the innovation toolbox. But just as real tools, it works well for specific tasks and bad for others. What criteria should a good sprint question meet?

This post is a modification of the original post published on Frankwatching.nl (in Dutch).

Design thinking is simple, but it isn’t easy. A Design Sprint makes design thinking practical, tangible, manageable, and accessible. It gives you a clear step-by-step guide and an overview of how you can solve and test a product question in 5 days. It is clear what you are going to do, what you will get, what roles and what commitment is needed. ‘Instant innovation solution — just add water!’

When the Design Sprint is done right, that is, 5 days, and not ‘a couple’; with thorough preliminary research, and with an appropriate question you can

• gain new insights,
• get a more nuanced picture of the customer and the problem,
• formulate well what exactly it is that you are going to solve, and
• get to ‘colour outside the lines’ in terms of solution directions.
• And you also get first-hand responses from your…