Startups have been using design sprints to save time and money on various projects for years. Design sprints are a method of prototyping and testing new ideas quickly, all while building an actionable version of your product. These methods also allow you to test your business models with real customers in fast-paced environments. This will give you valuable information about what works and what doesn’t to find the most effective way to bring your product into the market.

How do Design Sprints work?

The general idea behind design sprints is that you’ll be able to design, build and demonstrate your product in just 5 days. In that time, you will have a working prototype that can be tested to see how it holds up in real-world situations with paying customers. The sprint allows the team to quickly make critical changes when needed to adapt your product as you go along based on customer feedback. Focusing on specific tasks and goals makes there’s less room for confusion and miscommunication within the team.

Benefits of Design Sprints

Design sprints are a great way to test your product ideas quickly and get valuable feedback from people who can help you think on your feet as you implement the changes. This allows you to realize if you’re headed in the right direction or if there’s a better way that will get you to where you want to be. These methods allow for improvement without having to change out large groups of people. If done correctly, design sprints can save teams time, money and make it easier for them to improve their products because they can focus on what really matters: their customers.

Tools for Design Sprints

1. Sketch — Easily the best tool for web and mobile app design. Sketch allows you to mock up ideas with basic shapes quickly. It’s heavily design-oriented, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be used for code. With just a bit of research, you can find keyboard shortcuts to do just about anything. You’ll be surprised to see how fast you can prototype with this app, especially if you use it in conjunction with a graphics tablet.
2. InVision — A tool perfect for making interactive prototypes that you can share publicly or privately with others on your team. InVision is great for creating animations and giving people an idea of how something will look. This tool works well on the web or mobile and can help you design platforms with the ability to test them out with real users in a matter of days.
3. Marvel — A free tool for prototyping that’s ideal for web and mobile app development. Marvel is great for starting to build your idea before you have a real product. It’s a basic wireframe tool that allows you to quickly test out interactions and see any bugs in your design before moving it ahead to the next stage. It’s easy to use and comes with templates that you can start working with right away.
4. Framer — This is the perfect tool for more seasoned designers looking for a better way of creating interactive prototypes. Framer allows you to move away from traditional methods of drawing or sketching your ideas out on paper. Design quickly and see them come to life right before your eyes. You can work at a fast pace without having to worry about getting things perfect. Overall, this is the best tool for learning how to prototype with code because it allows you to use real code and other design features that give you more control over your prototype while still testing out interactions easily.
5. Flinto — A web-based app that does a great job of turning static images into interactive prototypes. Flinto allows you to create animations, add hotspots, and turn your static designs into something that users can test. This is a great tool for those who like to design on the web and want to take it further with a program designed for creating prototypes. Flinto has been widely used in the design industry and has proven a valuable tool for many companies throughout their development process.

Advantages of Using Prototyping Tools

Design sprints allow you to test out your ideas quickly without worrying about how much time and money they’ll actually cost you. These methods give your team a way to get things done quickly and move straight to the next step in the process without delay. You can use prototyping tools to quickly build out your ideas and get feedback as you go. This method allows for more customization with less confusion, so you can build your product in less time and save money in the process.

These tools are great when used slowly and consistently, which is why they must be built into an agile process from the start. But if you’re looking for a faster way to prototype with code, then the prototyping tools above are ideal for creating at least basic prototypes.

Which prototyping tools should you use?

My answer to that is it doesn’t matter at all. We use different prototyping tools almost every week. It always depends on what sort of prototype we need to do. So if it’s just a standard click prototype, we’ll probably use something like Invision. If we need to have video or audio in there, we use something like Flinto. But we need some programmable actions there; we’ll use something like Axure or Framer.

So for us, if we are not, like, really passionate about any prototyping tool, I would say the most common thing that we’re using now in a lot of our prototypes is a combination of Sketch and Craft and then Invision in the background. So those are the ones that we most commonly used. But often, we’ll be learning a new prototyping tool in the design sprint itself to pull off what we need to do.

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