Design Sprint Methodologies Transformed in a Digital Environment

Abstract

How can you deliver innovative teaching to over 150 students to propel their learning, connect them with leading industry experts, solve real world problems, and offer students the chance to learn from their peers across year groups? This paper presents the Design Sprint project; an intense five-day event delivered in 2020/21. This project engaged product design students from Nottingham Trent University (NTU), a team of over ten academics, clients from an industrial design team (Futura Nova), a large healthcare institution (UCL Partners), in addition to partnering with Anglia Ruskin University, to engage with focus groups within healthcare. This paper outlines the preparation and facilitation of the design sprint, identifying why we chose this methodology despite the challenges of remote/online working. The preparation/pre-sprint sessions and the key components of the sprint are discussed, highlighting how we adapted the traditional design sprint model into a hybrid methodology. The activity plan shares the key activities undertaken with examples of the Miro workbooks. Our approach was to build a programme that we could utilise going forward in online or in-person settings, to further develop the product design curriculum at NTU. Our main aim in delivering this methodology was for different year groups to work together in a live collaborative project whilst sharing/learning knowledge from a professional industrial network when utilising a methodology which could be applied in their future professional practice.