UX Design Sprint

A design sprint is a collaborative process where a group of people ideate and aim to solve the current challenges that users face with the aim of improving the user experience. 



It could also be used to build a totally new product from scratch before development begins. It’s also a great way to explore and test out ideas before committing significant time and resources into building out. 


Within the Bitcoin Design Community we have used design sprints in these two formats, once used to design the website for bolt.fun and in the second use case the design sprint was used to solve user problems based on research done on Blixt wallet.

A design sprint is a collaborative process where a group of people ideate and aim to solve the current challenges that users face with the aim of improving the user experience. 


It could also be used to build a totally new product from scratch before development begins. It’s also a great way to explore and test out ideas before committing significant time and resources into building out. 


Within the Bitcoin Design Community we have used design sprints in these two formats, once used to design the website for bolt.fun and in the second use case the design sprint was used to solve user problems based on research done on Blixt wallet.

Prepare before the sprint


What to have ready: 

  • Current product insights and user pain points

  • Design sprint template

  • 5 days in a row where the team feels good to jump on a call for anywhere between 1-2 hours per day. 


With design sprints, usually we are taking research insights that have been collected prior and we are coming up with design solutions to these research insights.


So lets say that you have some research insights on the onboarding flow of lightning wallet. The team has decided to do a sprint to solve that particular part of the user flow.

Day 1

Step 1: Choose the user flow

As a team, decide on the part of the user flow that you would like to work on. For example if you’ve decided to work on the onboarding flow at this stage.


Step 2: Move over data

Take insights and user comments from the research conducted and add them as sticky notes in the design sprint template. Then cluster by similarity in order to highlight key themes.


Step 3: How might we? (20 mins)

Next we ask the question, how might we solve this problem? We then can use Figjam and set a timer, and for those 10 minutes everyone will translate the problems and frame them into opportunities. 


How might we explained. 

Step 4:  Narrow the focus (10 mins)

In this part we vote as a team on what we feel are the primary and secondary challenges, as well as long term challenges. This voting process can be done by everyone getting 3 votes, and they simply use a sticker to vote on the solution which the other members came up with in step 3. 


Step 5: User goals (10 mins)

Next we ideate on what the goals are of the users of the interface. These goals can be ideated on by the whole team and their knowledge of the user persona using the application. Or the user goals can also be obtained by doing jobs to be done

Step 6: User Journey (20 mins)

Next we ideate on the exact steps that a user would take when using the interface. For example they would arrive on the home page and then onboard themselves and after that fund their lighting wallet. Each person comes up with 6 steps that they feel would loosely outline the steps that a user would  take.


Day 2

Step 7: Expand (30 mins)

Next we are expanding on the user journey that was created in step 6. Now we are thinking about the entire process that the user would take from discovery to completing the end goal.

Step 8: Design research (30 mins)

This step could be done live during the call or asynchronously. Now that we have an idea of the user journey and a rough idea of the screen states required, we can ask ourselves the question. Who solved this problem as well? Here we are thinking about interfaces that are similar, and so in this step going to various applications and making screenshots of various screens to collect ideas.


Day 3-5

Step 9: Storyboard (30 mins)

Next we can grab a pen and paper and start to create drawings where we ideate on what the different screens would look like. 

Step 10: Prototype

Finally we move onto the design phase where we create UI designs. 

You could create the UI designs are high or low fidelity depending on what you prefer.


Low fidelity: These could be simple wireframes or more detailed sketches

High fidelity: The Bitcoin Design UI kit is a good resource to use to create designs.


The Bitcoin UI Kit is a design system and UI kit provides a design foundation for prototypes, concept explorations and open-source projects to kickstart the design process. So you can focus on what makes your Bitcoin product unique.


Additional Resources