Design thinking and design sprints emerged in the early 2000s, but they gained more popularity about a decade later.

Design thinking and design sprints are two different ways to create a new product, but they each have their own pros and cons. For Example, Design thinking takes more time, and it’s worth it because, through intuitive conversation with your client, you can get more information about the problem than in other creative processes. Design sprints are best when you need to quickly prototype a product or idea, as they help your team work together on a single problem in the shortest possible time frame.

Design thinking — is a creative process that helps you solve problems using your senses, emotions, and logical thinking. Sometimes it can take a long period to finalize your decision, as you need to do lots of observation, empathy, and intuition. Design thinking is the best way to get great ideas when developing new products or features for existing ones. It’s also called human-centered design or user-centered design.

Design sprints — is a relatively new set of techniques that help you increase your product development speed. You and your team can focus on solving a single problem in just 5 days. Design sprints mainly use the following methods: taxonomy, open reflection, minimum viable product, idea box, and storyboarding. You don’t need to do any research or observations — all the information will be gathered within the first 3 days of the sprint. During these 5 days, you’ll create a prototype that gets validated by potential customers. It’s mostly used for rapidly generating or vetting ideas as part of an existing process where iteration is expected.

What’s the difference?

People tend to think that there are differences between the two processes, but it’s not true. The terms were created due to differences in the time spent and the nature of the agenda. These days a Designer or a Project Manager usually works with both methods to solve different problems.

Difference №1

Design thinking is great for creative ideas and needs less time for decision-making. Design sprints are best used when you need to prototype something quickly or share an idea with your team since they need more time for analysis and decision-making. Those 5 days get you done with your design proposal to move on with new ideas on other projects after the design sprint is finished.

Difference №2

Design thinking is a long process that uses all kinds of creative methods. Design sprints are also creative, but you need more time to get the results you need. Design sprints are good for quickly creating new products or ideas and don’t focus on details. They’re best for business development and making new items/ features for an already existing product.

Design thinking helps you think differently — it’s based on the experience and knowledge of the users. Still, design sprints give you more confidence in your idea when creating a prototype, and it’s best if you want to start building something right away.

Difference №3

Design thinking is a more traditional way of solving problems and involves more effort in decision-making.

Design sprints are good for quickly testing an idea or prototype and don’t require much time for analysis. You need to make decisions quickly — you have less time to collect new information, and it’s best if you want to build something right away. The temporary nature of design sprints makes them good tools to lower resistance for changing processes, as you get a chance to test the new process on a small part of your project or product.

Difference №4

The main difference between design thinking and design sprints is that you need to think about everything — from problem definition to interaction design — on your own and with others in the former. In the latter, you get your teammates involved in the process with fewer individual decision-making tasks.

In a design thinking approach, you spend more time on research and less on creating a prototype. A design sprint approach focuses on rapid prototyping of an idea quickly. The time spent doing research (in a traditional way) is reduced or even eliminated. Design sprints are great for testing ideas before moving forward to another stage of product development (e.g., new functionality).

Design thinking helps you get a better idea of the problem you’re trying to solve and brings more value to your efforts. A design sprint may be quicker, but it might cost you more time if you are not careful. The main difference is that you need to make more decisions in design thinking because you need to understand the problem better and come up with a satisfactory solution. You have more time for practicing your decision-making, but it’s more time-consuming.

Difference №5

Design Thinking is a human-centered approach to problem-solving that emphasizes the need for empathy, creativity, and collaboration. Design thinking leads to more effective solutions because it focuses on the people who will be using them. A design thinking process typically starts with an ideation phase which helps you think creatively by asking questions such as “Who are our users?” or “What needs do they have?”. The idea generation phase can lead you down many different paths and provides a springboard for other phases of your design process. In this way, a design thinking process embraces its manifestation in an iterative and dynamic process.

Design Sprint is a project management technique that focuses on delivering value to the customer in the time defined by the sprint. A sprint planning session should be done with: team members, customers, partners, and stakeholders at your disposal. The focus here is on build or enhance products that compliment your company’s business goals by an effective, localized approach. You can have a one-day Design Sprint or a two-weekend sprint. There’s no right or wrong time to have this kind of workshop, but obviously, it’s preferable, to begin with, a fast-start brainstorming session, unlike Design Thinking, where you let the concept evolve.

Which to Choose?

Design Thinking flows into Design Sprint. It is a continuous process that must be done iteratively with the whole team. In the Design Sprint, prototyping is one of the key elements to present your product or solution. Prototyping is, in turn, embedded in the Design Thinking process that encompasses all phases of the SDLC.

As you can imagine, it’s not an easy decision to choose whether to use one over the other: on the one hand; you have a more flexible and longer process; on the other, you have a fast environment for brainstorming ideas.

However, in the end, it all comes down to what is right for you and your project’s specific context, although the two approaches can be used together.

Thanks for Reading!