Precision has its place, but not in the early stages of the creative process, when our ideas are still nebulous. There is danger when creative exploration starts with perfection.
That statement, penned by Aarron Walter, comes from Principles of Product Design—a book from the DesignBetter.Co library. In this book, Walter explains how to build a great solution that really meets customer needs, and going from idea to execution in 60 seconds isn’t part of the methodology.
Instead, Walter introduces the concept of lateral design, along with several ways to make the design process more cross-functional. Of course, the chapter wouldn’t be complete without mentioning design sprints.
And that’s where Jake Knapp and DesignBetter.Co come together.
As an ally of design thinking and fellow supporter of taking education beyond the screen, Knapp is joining forces with DesignBetter.Co to infuse his process into a sprint workshop for teams looking to design better and “succeed fast.” Jake will lead this session on September 28 in Chicago, gathering the city’s best for an opportunity to learn how to run effective sprints from the guy who wrote the book on it.
Like Walter, Knapp is an expert on the product design process—with a bestselling trove of insights to prove it. Sprint takes readers behind the scenes of some exciting startups to see how notable innovators tackle big challenges in just 5 days.
Though the book details this 5-day process in realm of product design, it’s really a gameplan for “anyone with a big opportunity, problem, or idea, who needs to get answers.”
Before publishing the book, Knapp also founded the sprint process Google Ventures uses, so he’s got quite a bit of experience helping teams reach their goals.
In the September 28 activity-based workshop, you’ll run through the steps with expert guidance along the way. You’ll also learn how to:
- Confidently lead a team through a sprint
- How to define and prioritize challenges, and choose best starting point
- Identify crucial business and product questions
- How to create product/service concepts to test against these challenges
- How to decide what concepts to test under extreme time pressure
- Make smart decisions without lengthy discussion
- Conduct 1:1 customer interviews to test hypotheses
- Integrate sprint methods into your product development calendar—and your normal workday
- How to produce a huge quantity of solutions to various challenges
At InVision, we value design thinking and aim to champion smart creative processes in the community. That’s why bringing learnings into the real world is a crucial differentiator of DesignBetter.Co.
Though our partnership with Knapp will be the first workshop hosted, future workshops could be on any design-related subject with other experts fueling the conversation.
Join us—along with Jake Knapp—to avoid the danger of starting with perfection.
Learn more here and sign up.
by Kaysie Garza
Kaysie is a content specialist at InVision. She's helped strategize and write launch campaigns across the company, including all DesignBetter.Co programs, The Design Genome Project, and more. You can find her devouring books, French fries, or hiking trails when she isn't working on words.
