Why Sprint is A Great Book for New UX Designers

The other day, one of my friends reached out to me and said, “Lauren, teach me how to be a UX designer.” And I told her a great first step to understanding UX design is to read Sprint by Jake Knapp, John Zeratsky, and Braden Kowitz.

Sprint is a 5-day process meant to solve problems and narrow down the solutions. It was written by partners at Google Ventures. It is a fantastic way to approach the design of apps and websites. It’s like the foundation of UX design; the tools, questions, and process behind making things easier, more efficient, and practical.

I was asked to read this book before I started my immersive course in Toronto. It’s broken down into a 5-day process of mapping, sketching, deciding, prototyping, and testing. It even breaks down when a good time for a lunch break is. This process is meant to be proactive as to how consumers of your product or business will react.

In addition, it covers the accounts of some fascinating startups like Slack and some behind the scenes looks into hotel robotic services, a coffee company called Blue Bottle, and even the organization of the world’s cancer data.

Our first design project at Brainstation was based on the principles behind the book. We worked in groups to create an app that would help deter people from wasting their groceries. We broke down the problem, came up with many solutions, and used a system of voting to decide on a solution to start mocking up. The week felt impactful, easy to understand, and very productive.

Sprint is one of the best ways to understand how a UX team can work together to solve a problem. It’s like a fool-proof formula for success.

One of the best resources I have on my phone for UX design is an app called Duco. It lays out this 5-day process by the hour with all the questions, tasks, and summaries you need to actually follow along each day. It’s great if you don’t want to constantly refer to the book the first couple times you use this process.

If I were starting a business, coming up with a new marketing campaign, or trying to tackle a challenging problem, I would use this process. It’s versatile to almost any job where you have to improve something. I highly recommend Sprint and Duco for kickstarting any UX career or solving any problems.