Design Sprint Essentials

Getting started with answering big questions quickly

The Design Sprint is a staple structure in the world of facilitation for solving big challenges. It’s a five-day process, initially developed at Google Ventures, used for validating ideas and tackling a business problem. The powerful process guides teams through a design-based thinking process to uncover insights, prototype an idea, and test it with users. Design Sprints can help to align a team around a shared vision, answer critical business questions, or discover the essence of a creative challenge or problem.

In this workshop, Voltage Control founder Douglas Ferguson will teach you the basics of what you need to know to run your own effective Design Sprint.

Date

May 4, 2022

Time

10am - 11am CT​

Location

Live Online

Interested in hearing when this workshop will occur next?

Interested in a private cohort for your team?

What to expect

What to Expect

In this introductory workshop, Douglas Ferguson will rapidly lead you through all five stages of the Design Sprint process, teaching how the various steps fit together and why and how they work. You’ll learn tips and tricks for facilitating a Design Sprint (whether it's your first or 101st) and for incorporating these techniques into normal meetings.

What You'll Learn

In this fun, fast-paced, hands-on workshop, you'll learn by doing as Douglas Ferguson leads you through the Sprint essentials. By the end of the workshop, you will have had the opportunity to learn the basic Design Sprint methods as well as begin to chart a plan for your growing Design Sprints and scaling across your team.

How You'll Learn

This workshop is hands-on. Douglas will introduce you to each of the five stages of the Design Sprint process, and then you'll have an opportunity to immediately apply them to your work. He'll introduce exercises that will not only help you try on these different stages but also allow you to bring Design Sprints back to your team.

Agenda

Map

Outline a challenge and choose the most important place to start so you can lead a team through the Design Sprint process with confidence.

Sketch

Draw a solution with confidence, even if you're not a designer or artist, to identify crucial business & product questions to be answered in your Sprint

Decide

Make smart decisions without lengthy discussion. Choose the right prototyping method for your product or service.

Prototype

Conduct 1:1 customer interviews to test hypotheses before you invest months of work and millions of dollars, then integrate Design Sprint methods into your product development calendar & normal workday.

Who Should Attend

Startup founders

who want to learn the power of Design Sprints

Executives at large companies

who want to level up their facilitation skills

Team leaders and managers

who want to build products based on customer insights

Product managers

who want to get to get to market faster

Key Takeaways

Lead a team through the Design Sprint process with confidence

Map out a challenge and choose the most important place to start

Identify crucial business and product questions to be answered in your sprint

Sketch a solution with confidence, even if you're not a designer or artist

This event has ended

Interested in hearing when this workshop will occur next?

Douglas Ferguson

Douglas Ferguson is an entrepreneur and human-centered technologist with over 20 years of experience. He is Founder and President of Voltage Control, an Austin-based facilitation agency that specializes in helping teams work better together through participatory decision making and design inspired facilitation techniques. He has helped transform teams from U.S. SOCOM, the Air Force, Adobe, Dropbox, Fidelity, Vrbo, Liberty Mutual, Humana, and SAIC.

Douglas is a thought leader and master facilitator of Design Sprints, Innovation Workshops, Team Alignment Workshops, Transformations, Meeting Systems, and Culture Workshops. He is also the author of three books: Beyond the Prototype, How to Remix Anything (co-authored), and Start Within (co-authored).

Motivated by a mission to rid the world of horrible meetings and offer meaningful meetings in their place, Voltage Control is calling upon fellow facilitators to transform meeting and innovation culture. From free weekly community meetups to Control the Room–the annual facilitator summit, Voltage Control is building a community of facilitators to change the world.
What People Are Saying

"As a venture-backed direct-to-consumer company, what we learn through customer experience directly evolves who we are growing into for current and new customers. As we mature to more retail presence in an unprecedented time of disruption and opportunity, every team member must be empowered with the vulnerability to iterate and actively listen for how to be present. Design thinking and facilitation taught by Voltage Control punctuates that kind of learning perfectly."

Siya M.

CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE AT QUIP

Apply for a Diversity Scholarship

A key part of our mission is to support diverse facilitators from different methodologies, backgrounds, races, genders, sexual orientations, cultures, and ages. If you are a part of, or serve, a traditionally underrepresented group and feel that this scholarship would allow you to amplify this mission, please apply now.

Photo Disclaimer

Please note that photographs, video & audio recordings will be taken throughout this event. These will be used by Voltage Control for marketing and publicity in our publications, on our website and in social media, or in any third-party publication. Please contact us via email if you have any concerns or if you wish to be exempted from this activity.​

The Books

Bring Your Ideas to Life

Innovation can seem complex or reserved for the exceptional. But we believe innovation is for everyone. We’ve set out to illuminate a path for you to generate bold ideas, visualize and share them, overcome obstacles, and turn them into reality. Our books are equal parts guidebook and stories from years of experience helping companies adopt an innovation mindset and culture. They’re practical & actionable, so you can get started now. We hope they’ll help you on your journey to realizing your biggest, boldest ideas.