How to Run a Design Sprint in 5 Days: A Day-by-Day Guide

To run a design sprint in 5 days, gather a team of seven people or fewer with one decision-maker, clear the whole week, and follow the method Jake Knapp built at Google: map the problem on Monday, sketch on Tuesday, decide on Wednesday, build a realistic prototype on Thursday and test it with five target customers on Friday.

Knapp created the Design Sprint at Google in 2010, and he and John Zeratsky set it out in the book Sprint in 2016 (Character Capital). This guide follows the method as GV and the authors describe it, checked on 5 November 2026, with notes for teams working in Kenya.

When is a design sprint the right tool?

GV describes the sprint as a five-day process for answering critical business questions through design, prototyping and testing ideas with customers (GV). Use it when you face a big question that would take months to answer by building, such as whether customers will understand a new product, which of two directions to take, or why people drop out of a sign-up flow.

A sprint tells you how people react to an idea. Questions about pricing over time, retention or unit economics need data gathered over weeks, so pair the sprint with the steps in our guide on how to validate your startup idea before writing code.

Who should be in the sprint team?

Knapp and Zeratsky recommend seven people or fewer (Character Capital). The roles are:

• Decider. One or two people who make the final calls. In a startup this is usually the founder or CEO.
• Facilitator. The person who manages time and runs the process.
• Sprint team. People from product, design, engineering, sales and customer support. On Thursday they take prototyping roles: Maker, Stitcher, Writer, Asset Collector and Interviewer.

In a small startup the same person may hold two roles. If your Decider cannot attend the whole week, agree before Monday that they will join the target choice on Monday and the vote on Wednesday.

What do I need to prepare before Monday?

• A challenge that is worth a week of the team's time.
• A cleared calendar. The authors' schedule runs from 10am to 5pm Monday to Thursday and 9am to 5pm on Friday, and they ask the team to shut down messaging and media during the sprint (Character Capital).
• A room with wall space, sticky notes, markers, dot stickers and a timer. GV links a supplies list from its sprint page.
• A clear picture of your target customer, because recruiting starts on Tuesday (GV).

If your team needs a room away from the office for the week, we have 4 meeting rooms at 124 Manyani East Road. See the options on our coworking page, or come for a free tour, Monday to Friday from 10am to 4pm.

What happens on Monday?

Monday is for agreeing what you are solving. The team sets a long-term goal and lists the questions or risks that could stop you reaching it. Then you draw a map of the customer's path, five to fifteen steps from first contact to the outcome. You interview experts inside the company, capture their points as "How Might We" notes, and vote on the most useful ones. By the end of the day the Decider picks one target customer and one moment on the map to focus on (Character Capital).

What happens on Tuesday?

Tuesday opens with Lightning Demos, where each person spends three minutes showing an existing product or idea worth borrowing from. Then everyone works alone through the Four-Step Sketch: notes, ideas, Crazy 8s (eight quick variations of one idea) and a detailed three-panel solution sketch. Someone on the team starts recruiting customers for Friday (Character Capital).

In Kenya, your existing customers, the WhatsApp groups where your users gather and the people who have already signed up for a waitlist are good places to recruit. Plan a thank-you for each person's time. The authors usually give a US$100 gift card (Character Capital), so choose an amount that suits your customers and budget.

What happens on Wednesday?

On Wednesday the sketches go on the wall without names, and each person marks the parts they like with small dots to make a heat map. After a speed critique of each sketch, everyone casts one vote in a straw poll, and the Decider makes the final choice with a supervote of three large dots. The team then turns the winning ideas into a storyboard of about fifteen panels, which becomes the plan for the prototype (Character Capital). Customers are scheduled and the interview guide is drafted the same day (GV).

What happens on Thursday?

On Thursday you build. GV calls the approach "fake it": you build only the surface the customer will see, so the prototype can be finished in one day (GV). The team splits into the prototyping roles, builds the pieces, stitches them together and runs a trial before the end of the day. The Interviewer writes the script for Friday.

Build on the channel your customers already use. A clickable Figma prototype works on a phone, and Figma lists prototyping on all plans, including the free one (Figma). For other customers, the right prototype might be a WhatsApp conversation run by a team member, or a printed USSD menu that a person reads out step by step. Test on the kind of phone your customers carry.

What happens on Friday?

On Friday the Interviewer runs five one-to-one interviews with target customers, using a five-act structure, while the rest of the team watches on a live video feed. Everyone marks what worked and what did not on a scorecard tied to the sprint questions, and the Decider makes the call on next steps at the end of the day (Character Capital).

Five interviews are enough to see clear patterns. In Jakob Nielsen's widely cited model, a test with five users finds 85% of usability problems (Nielsen Norman Group). Ask each customer for permission before you record them.

What do I do after the sprint?

Write up the results on one page while they are fresh: the sprint questions, what each customer did, and the decision. If the prototype worked, plan the build. If results were mixed, run a shorter follow-up on the weak parts. If it failed, you have saved the months you would have spent building it. Share the page with the whole company.

If the result points to a product worth building and you want support with the next stage, the Hackhouse Residency runs for 12 weeks with no equity taken, and applications for HH Gen 27.1 are open at residency.hackhouse.africa.

Key facts

• A design sprint takes five days and a team of seven people or fewer.
• Monday map, Tuesday sketch, Wednesday decide, Thursday prototype, Friday test.
• The Decider makes the final calls. The Facilitator runs the time and the process.
• Friday tests the prototype with five target customers.
• The method was created at Google in 2010 and published in the book Sprint in 2016.
• We have 4 meeting rooms at 124 Manyani East Road and free tours Monday to Friday, 10am to 4pm.

Frequently asked questions

What is the difference between a design sprint and an innovation sprint?

The terms are often used for the same thing. "Design Sprint" is the name Jake Knapp and GV use for the five-day method in this guide.

Can a two-person startup run a design sprint?

Yes. Bring in an advisor, a mentor or someone who talks to customers every day so you have more ideas on Tuesday, and decide in advance which co-founder is the Decider.

Do I need a designer to run a sprint?

No. The prototype only needs to look convincing on the screens a customer will see, and Figma's prototyping tools are available on its free plan.

Can we shorten the sprint to fewer days?

The authors' guide is built around five days. If you compress it, keep the Friday test with five target customers, because that is where the team learns the most.

Sources

• The Design Sprint, GV, checked 5 Nov 2026
• Design Sprint: How to solve big problems and test new ideas in just five days, Character Capital (Jake Knapp and John Zeratsky), checked 5 Nov 2026
• Sprint, Character Capital, checked 5 Nov 2026
• Why You Only Need to Test with 5 Users, Nielsen Norman Group, checked 5 Nov 2026
• Guide to prototyping in Figma, Figma, checked 5 Nov 2026

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