Growth Thinking vs. Google Design Sprint

Growth Thinking vs. Google Design Sprint

Growth thinking, like Google Design Sprint, is a design methodology for problem-solving. Google Design Sprint is for solving big problems with product and service design in a short time-period/. In contrast, growth thinking accelerates the organizations' Growth regardless of the products or services being offered.
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Growth Thinking vs. Google Design Sprint

Growth thinking, like Google Design Sprint, is a design methodology for problem-solving. Google Design Sprint is for solving big problems with product and service design in a short time-period/. In contrast, growth thinking accelerates the organizations’ Growth regardless of the products or services being offered.  

Both serve an equally important role as they complement each other in several ways. They compliment each other, where the Google Design Sprint is about product and service Design, and growth thinking accelerates the organization’s Growth.

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If you look at the spectrum of business methodologies, there are four types.  

Business-methodology-usage

Accelerating Growth​

How to accelerate and manage exponential Growth using growth thinking. Some examples of methods are: 

  1. Pirate Funnel AARRR
  2. G.R.O.W.S.-process
  3. T-shaped Growth Hacker
  4. One Metric That Matters
  5. North Star Metric

Build a company​

How to start a company from the beginning. Some examples of methods are: 

  1. The Business Model Canvas
  2. The Value Proposition Canvas
  3. Lean Startup Canvas
  4. Blitzscaling Canvas Business
  5. Model Innovation Framework

Managing projects​

How to effectively implement and manage a product management model that works. Some examples of methods are: 

  1. Agile
  2. Scrum
  3. Waterfall
  4. Kanban
  5. PRINCE2

Offering Design

How to optimize and manage product design using approaches like design thinking. Some examples of methods are: 

  1. Design Thinking
  2. Google Design Sprints
  3. Lean Startup
  4. Double Diamond Design
  5. Kano Model

Where do Google Design Sprint and Growth thinking connect

There are two perspectives; the first is if a new startup is beginning from scratch, and the second is if you are already operating a business regardless of size.

If you are a startup — Google Design Sprint helps bring all your talent into one process to focus on exacerbating the product and service design process. Growth thinking helps accelerate that talent tool to build an actional organization designed to scale and sustain long-term Growth. 

If your an operating business — growth thinking would supersede Google Design Sprint as the strategy, and the optimization of your Growth would set the scene for how the Google Design Sprint model would help achieve your organization’s Growth in alignment with your strategy.

Will Google Design Sprint improve design thinking.

In short, no, they work in total isolation from each other, but they complement one another when combined in the right sequence—knowing which method to us when is an essential part of a leader’s and founder’s strategy.

Selecting the right methodology is about the following aspects:

  1. Can it achieve what we need
  2. Is it easy to use and learn 
  3. Is there enough supporting materials
  4. Can it improve our ROI

Those four factors help you choose the right method at the right time. Supporting materials and being able to learn the method are critical. The faster and easier you can adapt to a new method, the better it is. This factor would supersede inherent drawbacks, which they would all have.

It’s more important to learn quickly vs. inherited drawbacks because once you know the drawbacks, you can become even more creative with those methodologies. Many of the methodology designers focus on updates and upgrades over time.  

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The Google Design Sprint explained

Developed by GV (formerly Google Ventures), Design Sprints is a five-phase process that uses design thinking to solve problems and answer business questions through Design, prototyping, testing, and customer support. It looks at potential use cases, goes through the basics of the design sprint, and then delves into the ten companies that use them to develop and test multi-million dollar products. Over the years, it has been tested, refined, and has conducted hundreds of Design Sprint workshops. 

- Growth Thinking - think, design, growth hack a design approaching to growth hacking

Properly guided design sprints combine fast, prototypical, powerful shortcuts to answer big questions about what we should be doing. While building a solid foundation for a company’s long-term success, the model focuses on products and service design with the customers at the center of it.

Focused on solving big problems 

Knapp, the author of Sprint, explains that the method is focused on solving big problems through the process by identifying design opportunities where there are drawbacks or known design flaws that can be improved.

Google Sprint - Growth Thinking - think, design, growth hack a design approaching to growth hacking

Knapp invented the Design Sprint process at Google and perfected it with over 150 sprints at startups and Google Ventures. He has developed Sprint Design for Google and many other companies and organizations around the world. 

Google formalized its brainstorming process when designer Jake Knapp published his Design Sprint book, Design Sprint. Designed for Google Plus and Google Hangouts at Google +, perfected by sprints with John Zeratsky of Google Ventures, and then published the book “Design Sprint” with him. 

Making the Google Design Sprint easy to access

They developed a “Design Sprint Kit” for internal Google teams, and we now aimed to be shared with everyone. Another way to look at design sprints is what Google Ventures says: “Sprints give teams a shortcut to learning about the build-up and launch. With design sprints, you learn faster feedback, improve your product or service, find new opportunities by creating testable prototypes, etc. Experienced Sprint moderators (and new ones) who want to make a Design Sprint to develop a product efficiently and quickly” — John Zeratsky, Senior Vice President of Design and Product Development at Google, and John Ziegler, Google’s VP of Product Management. Google Venture also has its Sprint design program, the Google Sprint program, but another way of looking at it is that Sprint gives teams shortcuts to build – and – start learning, according to John. 

Provided you know the original Design Sprint, here’s a quick review: A Design Sprint is a 5-day or less long process that quickly allows you to design a business idea. By using a design sprint, you essentially compress your time to iterate it in a few days. It’s an opportunity to promptly produce designs in a week and solve big problems in five days! We decided last year to try out the GV Design Sprint for the first time on Google as part of the Google product development team. 

Pending deadlines, coupled with a clear process, allowed the Design to be done in a few days instead of months or years. This helped Google Ventures’ Design Sprint by enabling them to get a working product ready in a matter of days, rather than months of thinking and planning. 

The Design Sprint model quickly allows customers to capture needs, and we quickly change the original idea to meet those needs. This distinguishes the Design Sprint from the traditional design process: you don’t have to tell people how to design and think. You can let people do the Design for you during a design sprint, so you can quickly see that your initial ideas meet your needs and repeat themselves. 

Boosting the effectiveness of the Design Sprint 

To make the Design Sprint model even more effective, a support network has been developed with materials la and startup kits to guide users on managing this process. Our Design Sprint Training Workshop will show users how to get more out of a Design Sprint Mindset and start with critical activities. 

The Design Sprint methodology is build to a UX culture and design leadership in companies. Its origins started from UX design challenges and an absence of models to support this process. The leadership at Google adopted this as a tool across the organization to improve performance. By doing so, they have seen massive productivity enhancements ranging from 25% – 1500% increases across their business units.

Google’s design sprints are not for people who are mostly satisfied with the status quo but for companies who want to work on a particular, small function.

How does Google Design Sprint work 

A Design Sprint summarizes critical business questions through Design, prototyping, and testing ideas with customers. It is typically the first step in developing a new product or service for a large company or small business.

 

It is a full, five-day process to collect and validate insights from users quickly. With a design sprint, you can get quick feedback, improve your product or service, and improve and find new opportunities by creating testable prototypes. If you follow the Sprint design steps, you can start developing the product by following agile methods such as Scrum XP. MVP’s definition requires more than what can fit into a typical five-phase sprint, but design sprints are a good start. 

Most Design Sprint coaches and consultants will work to design something that works in the time you have. The problem is that the design work runs parallel to a backlog in Design and development. Time-bound approaches have some drawbacks:

  1. they don’t allow for creative flow to take full potential
  2. not everyone is instantly aligned and needs time
  3. the thinking doesn’t have time for validation and improvements
  4. encourages people to finish the process done regardless of results 

Design thinking vs. Google Design Sprint

In contrast to design thinking, a Design Sprint is structured and structured so that your team can move quickly through the design process. In a design sprint, a team works for a time on an often-silenced problem in different parts of the company. A Design Sprint is a sequence of steps, while design thinking is the tool that helps you complete each step.

This distinguishes a Design Sprint from the traditional design process: you quickly learn what your customers “needs are and quickly see that the original idea meets these needs. Because the Design Sprint process is so streamlined, it helps you keep costs down by allowing your team to produce results quickly, validate or reject assumptions about your users. 

One of the unique traits of the Google Design Sprints is the deadline. This enables people to see an end and encourages them to work more quickly. Although this can have drawbacks, this process overcomes this by having all the different expertise required in the design spirit itself. This avoids gaps, solos, and other communication issues. It helps overcome blind spots others do not see and instills a culture of collaboration.

You don’t have to tell people how to design or think; you can let them do the Design during a design sprint. A Design Sprint can be an excellent opportunity to solve problems, validate ideas, and share ideas with your team. The benefit of this is no knowledge or preparations are needed in advance. You just take action within the process itself.

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Google Design Sprint Kit and support network 

The Google Design Sprint Kit is a set of open-source resources aimed at anyone who wants to learn about design sprints. Sprint well is someone who has years of experience designing sprints for teams like Sprint well. There are several different design types of Sprint moderators, from experienced Sprint moderators to new ones looking for tips and tricks on making a Design Sprint to develop your product efficiently and quickly. 

A Design Sprint team must include all the people responsible for doing the Sprint work, not just the design team members. This, combined with the kit and other support materials, the Google design spirit is designed for anyone to put into action at any time.

Design Sprint and agency usage

If you work in a busy design agency that can afford to take so many people into an active project for a week, the Design Sprint can be too expensive. If you work in an agency with a small team of four or eight team members and commit to a full five days, you will not gain any value from it. But if you need four to eight team members, it is feasible to make a design sprint.

Google Design Sprint in summary

The Design Sprint process relies on the team’s intuition from day one to identify and map the problem. The team is developing a solution to a problem before what the solution might be and us. After testing the idea, the design team develops a design and works with the developers on the implementation. What is tested during the Design Sprint is usually implementing a new feature or changing to an old feature, such as a bug fix or upgrade? 

One of the biggest questions you ask when implementing design sprints in your company is how you can measure your design sprint’s success. 

SOURCES

http://www.letshackity.com/en/sprint-design-sprint-vs-design-thinking-agile-scrum-lean-startup-methodologies/ 

https://voltagecontrol.com/blog/what-is-a-design-sprint-and-why-is-everyone-talking-about-it/ 

https://www.cio.com/article/3532248/what-is-a-design-sprint-a-5-day-plan-for-improving-products-and-services.html 

https://www.thesprintbook.com/how 

https://onezeronyc.com/step-by-step-guide-to-performing-a-design-sprint/ 

https://marvelapp.com/blog/basics-design-sprints-jargon/ 

https://www.uxbooth.com/articles/what-a-design-sprint-cant-do-for-enterprise-teams/ 

https://www.yukti.io/5-stages-of-design-sprint-process-and-how-does-it-work/ 

https://hike.one/update/go-from-sketch-to-tested-prototype-in-5-days 

https://www.figma.com/blog/how-to-run-a-design-sprint/ 

https://hub.sprintwell.com/design-sprints/ 

https://www.deptagency.com/en-us/story/bringing-digital-products-to-life-with-design-sprints/ 

https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/topics/design-sprint 

https://blog.planetargon.com/entries/how-a-design-sprint-could-help-your-health-care-application 

https://www.userzoom.com/ux-library/how-to-run-an-effective-design-sprint/ 

https://www.thedesigngym.com/3-ways-customize-design-sprint-project/ 

https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/design-sprint/9781491923160/ch01.html 

https://www.thrv.com/blog/how-jobs-to-be-done-completes-your-google-ventures-design-sprint 

https://uxdesign.cc/5-tips-on-how-to-run-a-successful-design-sprint-f09a82507ff4 

https://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2019/08/do-design-sprints-work-and-are-they-worth-it

https://blog.avenuecode.com/does-a-design-sprint-actually-improve-anything 

https://www.freshtilledsoil.com/what-do-you-get-out-of-a-design-sprint/ 

https://blog.prototypr.io/the-2-hour-design-sprint-9e2bbc14ee1 

FAQs

How does Google Design Sprint help growth hacking?

Google Design Sprint

Google Design Sprint is about product and service design, and growth thinking accelerates the organization’s growth.

What is the Google Design Sprint?

Find a Limit

Developed by GV (formerly Google Ventures), Design Sprints is a five-phase process that uses design thinking to solve problems and answer business questions through design, prototyping, testing, and customer support

How does Google Design Sprint work?

Growth Thinking - Media - Book Cover Design

A Design Sprint summarizes critical business questions through Design, prototyping, and testing ideas with customers. It is typically the first step in developing a new product or service for a large company or small business.