Design thinking vs. design sprint
They are NOT the same thing
Design thinking: WHO WE ARE
Design thinking is a methodology mindset and overall rules that we have to follow in order to create a product or service. It helps solve problems using a human-centred approach. The idea of design thinking was developed at IDEO and the d.school at Stanford
Design thinking is a series of stages in a process that are simple enough for everyone to use and apply to their own work which is why it works incredible well for the majority of projects.
As Tim Brown (IDEO’s CEO) said:
Design thinking can be described as a discipline that uses the designer’s sensibility and methods to match people’s needs with what is technologically feasible and what a viable business strategy can convert into customer value and market opportunity.
Design sprint: WHAT WE DO
Design sprint is a methodological process, which gives you a recipe to solve the problem in a few days.
Design sprints are a framework for teams of any size to solve and test design problems in 2–5 days. The idea of sprints originates with the Agile framework.
As AJ Smart (#1 Design Sprint Agency) said:
Design Sprint: It is a (maximum) 5 days process to quickly solve big challenges, create new products or improve existing ones. Compress months of work into a few days.
It breaks down into 6 stages:
Understand: What are the user needs, business need and technology capacities?
Define: What is the key strategy and focus?
Diverge: How might we explore as many ideas as possible?
Decide: Select the best ideas so far.
Prototype: Create an artifact that allows to test the ideas with users.
Validate: Test the ideas with users, business stakeholders and technical experts
Summary:
In the definitions you can already see the main difference. Design Thinking is a discipline, (we could consider it a philosophy) while Design Sprint is a structured process with elements of Design Thinking and agile methodologies.
Design Thinking is a different way of thinking and approaching problems. For this, Design Thinking offers a series of tools that you can use at any time, without any other restriction of time, process or methodology.
Design Sprint is a methodology, with a well-defined step-by-step, where it is explained which tool you should use at all times and with well-defined time frames.
Jonathan Courtney explains the differences with a great example:
