Why Design Sprints?
Because traditional brainstorming doesn't work. In 1958, Yale research found that traditional brainstorming actually reduces a team's creative output. Seriously. You can read about it here.
A Better Way
In 2010, the design sprint was created by Jake Knapp at Google Ventures. It has become very popular because it's practical and effective.

A few companies that use
design sprints
Two reasons design sprints are better than traditional design processes...
1. Better Quality Ideas
Workshop techniques generate more, better quality ideas...for 4 big reasons:

Shallow ideas from the group vs. Detailed ideas from individuals: in a group brainstorm, ideas are discussed out loud. There's not enough time for participants to think deeply and share detailed ideas. The design sprint workshops lead participants through a series of sketching exercises. Each participant contributes pages of detailed ideas for the group to work with.
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Personality outshines content vs. Ideas stand on their own: in a group brainstorm, the person with the biggest personality or biggest title (sometimes both) gets their ideas considered most. The design sprint techniques have participants share anonymous sketches. No sales pitches. The best ideas win no matter who they came from.
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Groupthink vs. Structured decision-making: groupthink kills creativity. In a group brainstorm, participants are often collaborative, diplomatic, and encouraging, and groups tend to talk themselves into watered-down solutions. The design sprint has a structured, anonymous voting system that allows participants to give genuine feedback, and identify the best ideas.
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Little or no tangible results vs. Tangible artifacts: group brainstorms are good at producing a pile of disconnected ideas and lots of ambiguity. The design sprint process produces tangible artifacts during every workshop. It gives the team a structured way to start with nothing and end with a high-fidelity prototype that's been tested by users.
2. Design Sprints Save Time & Money
Design sprints are leaner than "Lean Startup" or "Lean UX". They allow your team to quickly validate product ideas with user testing before investing in engineering.

Lean Startup vs. Design Sprints: design sprints help teams efficiently generate a wide range of product ideas, prototype them, and test them with users before investing in engineering. This way your product team is only shipping features that have already been validated with users.
Consider this example:
Business "A" Uses the Lean Startup Model
They fill their backlog with ideas, engineer them incrementally, release them to users, and analyze their usage. Later on, they find out which ideas are good and which ones need to be re-engineered. In the meantime they collect technical debt.

Business "B" Uses Design Sprints
Business "B" Uses Design Sprints
Using design sprints the team generates ideas and gets user feedback. They only engineer features that have been validated by user testing. Instead of launching and learning that users don't like things, the team can move on to generating and testing new ideas.

Which business has the competitive advantage?
Hint: it's Business "B"
My Design Sprint Process
I do design sprints a little differently, mainly because it's hard to get a cross-functional team to commit to 2 or 3 day off-sites on a regular basis.
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To solve for this challenge, I studied the design sprint process in detail, dissected it, and created a condensed design sprint in 4 one-hour workshops. This gives the team flexibility and allows even the busiest stakeholders to participate, committing to as little as one-hour per week.
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Here's how i do it:
First, Form a Cross-Functional Working Group
Collect people with good ideas and diverse perspectives.

The working group can include 5-8 people with a mix of expertise, skills, and personality. Having a broad range of expertise present will result in the team generating a variety of quality ideas.
Next, 4 One-Hour Workshops
During each workshop the team will participate in a structured design technique that creates tangible artifacts. At the end of the fourth workshop the team will have a big pile of detailed ideas to work with.
Start with a cross-functional working group

End with a pile of detailed ideas & documented decisions
Last, Prototype & Test with Users
Once the working group has done their sketches and voted on solutions, the top ideas are prototyped in high-fidelity and tested with users. Feedback from user testing is shared with the working group and other stakeholders.
Sample Sketches from a Design Sprint
Start with nothing and generate a pile of detailed ideas in 4 one-hour workshops, including group decisions on which ones to move forward with (orange voting dots).

Sample User Testing Results
User testing validates the group's ideas and gives the business insight on which features users will like before investing in engineering.

References
"Sprint: How to Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just Five Days" by Jake Knapp. Website: thesprintbook.com
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AJ & Smart. Website: ajsmart.com YouTube: youtube.com/c/ajsmart