Google Design Sprint Kit

Google Design Sprint kit 1

About

How Impekable built Google’s new Design Sprint Kit website using Angular front-end development to reflect a more modern, engaging design.

Project length
6 months
Technology Partners
Angular, Grow.io

Services

Front-End Development
SaaS Development

Redesigning the Google Design Sprint Kit Website

In advance of its Design Sprint Kit conference, the Design Sprint Kit team at Google wanted to update their website to create a more modern feel and bring it in line with Material Design’s new guidelines and standards — as well as other teams at Google whose sites had already been successfully overhauled.

The Solution

Google’s Design Sprint Kit team was fully capable of handling the new site’s design. But they turned to Impekable to lead the front-end development process and build the updated page layouts using the latest version of Angular.

Collaborations Across Teams & Technologies

At the outset of the project, Google’s Design Sprint Kit team provided Impekable with Sketch files of the new site design layouts to be created.

Because the previous engineering team used Grow.io to manage the pages, we decided to adopt a blended approach that allowed us to build Angular pages in parallel to Grow.io.

Built-In Community Engagement

To drive greater engagement with the design community, Google’s Design Sprint Kit team wanted a section included in their new site that would allow members to submit their own Sprint methods and recipes.

Impekable enabled this process by creating a custom form that could accept user submissions and save them securely using private Google Sheets and Google Drive folders.

Tight Timelines Support a Mid-Conference Launch

Because the redesign of the site was expected to go live during Google’s Design Sprint Kit conference, we employed a phased approach.

As a result, we were able to support the Design Sprint Kit team in releasing the conference page itself with the new site layout before the full site was retrofitted.

Explore Design Sprint Kits

The Results

The Design Sprint Kit site went live on the first day of the conference to positive feedback from event attendees. This successful launch enabled Impekable to continue our partnership with Google after the site’s redesign to continue facilitating site improvements and preparing for the next year’s sprint.

How It Works

The new Google Design Sprint Kit website offers stakeholders all the resources needed to execute the Design Sprint methodology — whether or not they’ve ever run a Google Design Sprint before.

Step 1

Design Sprint planners set a goal for their upcoming Design Sprint, based on their current priorities or design blockers.

Step 2

Sprint planners can use the new updated Design Sprint Kit website to access Design Sprint methodology resources.

Step 3

They can also access free public Tools, Templates, and Recipes to streamline Sprint planning & execution.

Step 4

Finally, Sprint planners can connect with local chapters or view upcoming events to deepen their knowledge.

Frequently asked questions

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) About Google Design Sprints

What is Google Design Sprint?

Google Design Sprint is an open-source resource developed by Google that enables teams to solve design problems quickly using a series of design, prototype, and testing exercises. The methodology draws on everything from business strategy and UX best practices to psychology and established design thinking frameworks.

The Google Design Sprint methodology is appropriate for use by designers, design leaders, developers, product owners, product managers, and any other stakeholders who are interested in identifying design solutions quickly, under conditions that mimic real-world environments as closely as possible.

How to run a Google Design Sprint if you haven’t before?

If you haven’t run a Google Design Sprint before, start by preparing a brief describing your goals for the Sprint and the deliverables you’d like to create. Ideally, you should have a strong understanding of your users, clear product direction, and leadership buy-in before running a Design Sprint.

Once you have established the goals for your Sprint, determine who needs to be involved and set the length of time needed. Design Sprints generally follow six stages: understand, define, sketch, decide, prototype, and validate. Depending on the scope of your goals, you may need between 1-5 days for your Design Sprint.

Before your Design Sprint begins, consider creating both an agenda for the Sprint and a centralized deck where your team can work. Gather any necessary data, and communicate it to participants before your Sprint begins. Afterwards, take the time to check-in with your team to ensure any next steps have been captured and to note how you could improve your next Design Sprint.

What are the five days in a Google Design Sprint?

Although Google Design Sprints can take between 1-5 days, Google recommends booking the full five days for your Sprint. One way to organize this schedule is as follows:

 

  • Day 1: Understand. Get your team aligned on the problem to be solved, leveraging research, strategy exercises, and competitor review.
  • Day 2: Diverge. Break up your team and encourage them to come up with as many possible solutions to the problem you’ve identified as possible.
  • Day 3: Decide. Select the winning ideas from the bunch and build user stories for them.
  • Day 4: Prototype. Mock up a representation of your winning ideas to a sufficient level of detail to present them to users.
  • Day 5: Validate. Bring actual users into your Sprint and get their feedback on what works -- and what isn’t working -- with your prototypes.

 

You may have noticed that this model is built around design thinking frameworks from IDEO and Stanford’s dSchool, but that doesn’t mean you have to follow each step as-is. Based on the scope of the problem you’re trying to solve -- and how much time you can allocate to your Sprint -- you can easily adapt this timeline to your needs.

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The team at Impekable is standing by to support your next front-end web development project. Reach out for more on how we can help.

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