Design Sprint Facilitation
Design Sprint +Embedded Studio
5 days of expert facilitation with a senior researcher, product strategist, designer, and prototyper embedded in your team. Not just process — hands-on expertise.
The Offer
Design Sprint +
Embedded Studio
A battle-tested 5-day process to answer critical business questions through design, prototyping, and real user testing. You get expert facilitation plus a senior researcher, product strategist, designer, and prototyper embedded in your team — walk away with a validated direction and even an optional working prototype.
What is a Design Sprint?
The Design Sprint is a five-day process for answering critical business questions through design, prototyping, and testing ideas with customers. It's the greatest hits of business strategy, innovation, behavioral science, and design — packaged into a battle-tested process any team can use.
While originally designed for digital products, the framework adapts to any challenge that benefits from rapid prototyping and user validation — service design, process improvement, physical products, or strategic decisions.
Rapid Validation
Go from idea to tested prototype in just 5 days instead of months of development cycles.
Team Alignment
Get stakeholders on the same page with a structured, collaborative process.
User Focused
Real user feedback on Day 5 ensures you're solving the right problem.
Clear Direction
Walk away knowing exactly what to build — or what not to build.
Five Days. Five Phases.
Validated Direction
Define
Start at the end. Define the long-term goal, map the challenge, and pick a specific target for the week.
Sketch
Review existing solutions through lightning demos. Then work alone to sketch detailed solutions — not rough ideas, but complete concepts.
Decide
Critique solutions together. Vote on the strongest ideas. The Decider makes the final call. Create a detailed storyboard.
Prototype
Build a realistic facade — just enough fidelity to get honest reactions. It's not about building the real thing; it's about building just enough to learn.
Validate
Test with 5 target users while the team watches together. See patterns emerge. By the end of the day, you'll know if you're on the right track.
Define
Map the Challenge
Define the problem and bring it into greater clarity. Set long-term goals, identify stakeholders, interview team members and experts, then transform needs into How Might We statements.
- 10:00Introductions & Sprint overview
- 10:30Set long-term goals
- 11:15Map stakeholders & relationships
- 1:00Interview experts & team members
- 2:30How Might We statements
- 3:30Affinity mapping & voting
Sketch
Explore Solutions
Brainstorm solutions by reviewing how other companies address similar challenges. Then complete the four-step sketch: Notes, Ideas, Crazy Eights, and Solution Sketching.
- 10:00Lightning demos
- 11:00Capture ideas on whiteboard
- 11:45Notes & Ideas
- 1:00Crazy Eights exercise
- 2:00Solution sketching
- 4:00Collect sketches & wrap
Decide
Choose the Path
Evaluate the strongest solutions. Place ideas on the wall, vote with dots, conduct speed critiques, and let the Decider pick the solutions to prototype. Create detailed storyboards.
- 10:00Art museum
- 10:30Heat map voting
- 11:00Speed critique
- 1:00Straw poll & Decider vote
- 1:30Combine or separate solutions
- 2:00Storyboarding
Prototype
Build to Learn
Bring the prototype to life in one day. Assign roles—writer, maker, collector, stitcher—and build efficiently. By end of day, conduct a trial run and prep for tomorrow's testing.
- 10:00Assign roles & divide tasks
- 10:30Begin prototyping
- 12:00Stitcher assembles pieces
- 1:00Continue prototyping
- 3:00Trial run & quality check
- 4:00Final fixes & prep testing script
Validate
Learn from Users
Conduct evaluative research with five user interviews. Team members observe together, track findings on a board, and build consensus on strengths and weaknesses.
- 10:00Setup & final prep
- 10:30User interview #1
- 11:45User interview #2
- 1:00User interviews #3 & #4
- 3:30User interview #5
- 4:30Pattern finding & insights
Who Is This For?
Design Sprints work for teams at any stage — from early startups to enterprise innovation labs.
Startups
Validate your idea before burning through runway. Get investor-ready prototypes without hiring a full design team.
What you get:
- Validate product-market fit fast
- Create investor-ready assets
- Avoid building the wrong thing
- Senior design expertise on demand
Ryan
AI-Native UX Leader & Design Sprint Facilitator
Most Design Sprint facilitators guide you through the process. I do that and I roll up my sleeves. You get a senior researcher, product strategist, designer, and prototyper embedded in your team for 5 days. Years of hands-on experience applied directly to your challenge.
- 20+Years Experience
- 4Continents
- 15+Industries
- B2B & B2CBoth Worlds
- Cloud Infrastructure
- Enterprise Software
- Healthcare
- E-commerce
Trusted By Teams At
A career spent partnering with teams at every scale — from DocuSign to Louis Vuitton to Oracle — shipping products used by billions.
Transform Uncertainty into Validated Direction
The Real Risk
The risk isn't the sprint. It's spending 6 months and $200K building something users don't want.
A Design Sprint is the cheapest way to be wrong.
Ready to sprint?
Pricing is determined after our initial discovery call based on your specific needs and scope.
Book a 30-minute call to discuss your challenge and see if a sprint is right for you.
What's Included
Early-stage startups: Flexible options available. Let's discuss during our call.
What Clients Say
"Ryan took our un-styled v2 product and in just a few days he developed a beautiful new design for it. Over the course of 8 weeks we went back and forth iterating on the design until all stakeholders were satisfied. The product of his work reflects his expert domain knowledge, eye for detail, and mastery of UX design. It was always a pleasure working with him and I hope to have the opportunity again!"