Design Thinking vs Design Sprints, what’s the difference?
Well, I guess I’ll explain it with food.
Whenever I write anything about Design Sprints (DS), run a DS workshop or basically post anything process related involving post-its, I get the same type of comment:
“So, this is is basically Design Thinking, right?”
It’s not that people are being ignorant, there is just genuine confusion about what Design Thinking (DT) is and how it compares to other design processes. Rather than going into too much detail about how it DT compares to everything, I’m going to focus on how it compares to Design Sprints. This should clear up enough of the ambiguity so that it can be applied to anything.
As usual, I’ve made a quick video for anybody who doesn’t feel like reading:
What is Design Thinking?
“Design thinking is a human-centered approach to innovation that draws from the designer’s toolkit to integrate the needs of people, the possibilities of technology, and the requirements for business success.”
— Tim Brown, president and CEO, IDEO
Couldn’t have said it better than the big man himself. As Tim says, Design Thinking is an approach to innovation that draws from a toolkit. This toolkit is vast and full of numerous exercises that can be pulled out at different points in the design process. Learning about Design Thinking is learning the philosophy and mindset of innovation along with the tools you could use to make your way there. Here’s everything you really need to know about Design Thinking.
Yeah, but what is Design Thinking in terms of… like… a food analogy?
Alright. Let’s use an analogy here to make things extremely clear. I’m going to use a pasta dish as an example of an “innovative product”. Yes, this is an innovative product:
OK, so, if innovation is our reason for using a system/mindset like Design Thinking, then we need to define what Design Thinking is in the context of my food analogy.
Design Thinking is a cooking class! In the cooking class you learn the general philosophies of cooking, how flavour works, which ingredients complement each other, how to prepare specific items (chopping onions, cooking meat, making a sauce). Stick with me. I’m going somewhere with this, promise.
Ok great, so you have 2 key elements… you have the innovative product you want to produce, and you’ve taken your cooking class… so what’s next?
What is a Design Sprint?
“The sprint is a five-day process for answering critical business questions through design, prototyping, and testing ideas with customers”
-Jake Knapp, Author of SPRINT and one of the inventors of the Design Sprint
The Design Sprint, rather than being a mindset, philosophy or toolkit is a specific step-by-step system for producing and testing ideas (often product/service/business ideas).
In our food analogy, the Design Sprint is a recipe. It shows you exactly what ingredients you’ll need, what to do, when to do it and in the case of a larger kitchen, who should do what.
So, what’s the difference?
Doing a cooking class is great, but without a recipe, you’re going to waste a lot of time trying to figure out exactly how to make our fantastic spaghetti dish. A recipe let’s you focus on getting the important bits right rather than wondering how much garlic you should crush. (God this analogy is getting painful).
Design Thinking is a foundation, a philosophy, a toolkit for innovation — it’s definitely worth doing. But the Design Sprint is one great way of systematically executing all of it.
So yeah, you’ll see a lot of the same exercises and tools in Design Thinking and Design Sprints, (the same way you’ll cut onions in the class as well as for the dish in real life ;)), but they’re not the same thing.
Well, glad I got that out of my system. I don’t even like Italian food.
❤️ Jonathan
Jonathan Courtney is the Founding Partner and UX Director of AJ&Smart Berlin. He gives cheeky, energetic product design workshops and talks around the world. Follow him on twitter or instagram @jicecream
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