Before, during and after the five days

Design sprint tool for choosing, deciding and following up

A design sprint tool should help at three points: choosing which problem deserves five days, deciding between sketches on day three, and recording what the Friday test proved. Brainstormer does this with company challenges, AI scores against your goals, votes and a decision pipeline with an audit trail.

Run the demo Start your workspace

01
Pick the sprint target from a ranked list of scored ideas
02
Frame the sprint question as a challenge with a clear deadline
03
Decide on day three with votes plus scores and written rationale
04
Record the test result as a stage change with a note

The most expensive mistake is the wrong sprint target

A design sprint puts five to seven people in a room for five days. That is a large investment, and the biggest risk is spending it on the wrong problem. In many companies the sprint target is picked by whoever asked loudest, not by comparing candidates.

If your company already runs challenges in Brainstormer, you have a ranked list of candidates. Every idea carries a score for impact, cost, risk and strategic fit, a weighted total based on your strategic goals and a written rationale. Look at the top of the list, filter for ideas where the risk is high and the impact is high, because those are the ones that benefit most from a week of prototyping and testing. Ideas with low risk can often just be approved and built.

The five days of a design sprint and where Brainstormer helps
Day	Classic activity	Brainstormer
Before	Choose a problem worth a week	Ranked ideas with weighted scores from your challenges
Monday, map	Long term goal, sprint questions, target	Challenge question, description and deadline
Tuesday, sketch	Lightning demos, individual sketches	Each sketch written up as an idea and expanded by AI
Wednesday, decide	Heat map, straw poll, decider vote	Member votes, scores on impact, cost, risk and fit
Thursday, prototype	Build a realistic facade	Idea set to in progress with owner in the note
Friday, test	Five user interviews	Result recorded, idea moved to approved, implemented or rejected

Map and sketch days in one challenge

On Monday, the team agrees a long term goal and the sprint questions. Put the sprint question into a challenge with the context from the expert interviews in the description, for example How could a new customer complete setup without contacting support in the first week? This keeps the whole sprint anchored on one sentence that everyone can see.

On Tuesday, each person sketches a solution alone. After the sketching, each participant writes their concept into the challenge as an idea in two sentences. The AI expansion adds a problem statement, the solution, a first step and a success measure, which makes the sketches easier to compare on Wednesday. If you want a wider starting point before sketching, run an AI workshop with six perspectives on the sprint question and send its output into the challenge.

Duplicate detection helps here too. Two participants often sketch nearly the same concept, and merging them keeps both authors and makes the decision on Wednesday cleaner.

Deciding on Wednesday with more than a straw poll

The classic sprint decision uses a heat map, a straw poll and a final vote by the decider. That still works, and member votes in Brainstormer replace the dots. What you add is a score with reasoning for each concept against the company goals. When the decider chooses, they can see where the room voted and where the scores point, and the choice is recorded as a stage change with a note explaining why.

That note matters later. When the sprint concept is tested and fails, the team can see what the reasoning was, and whether the second ranked concept deserves its own sprint. The idea validation page covers how to set up the Friday test so the result is clear.

After Friday, the part most sprints skip

Most sprints end with a debrief and a slide. In Brainstormer the tested concept moves to approved, back to in review, or to rejected, and the note records what the five interviews showed. The idea that won the sprint stays connected to the challenge it came from and to the goals it was scored against. On Business and Enterprise, the board report for the challenge gives leadership the ranking, themes and a recommendation in one document.

If your team runs sprints regularly, the combination of challenges and the pipeline becomes the backlog of sprint candidates. For the wider workshop formats around a sprint, see the design thinking workshop and innovation workshop tool pages. Plans start with Team for up to 25 members, see pricing.

Questions

Does Brainstormer replace the sprint facilitator or the decider?

No. The facilitator runs the process and the decider makes the call. Brainstormer provides the ranked candidates, the comparison on decide day and the record of what the test showed.

Can we prototype in Brainstormer?

No. Prototypes are built with the design and presentation tools your team already uses. Brainstormer tracks the concept while it is in progress and records the test result.

Is Brainstormer useful for a single sprint?

It helps on a single sprint, especially on decide day. It is most useful when sprints are part of a program, because the ranked list of challenge ideas becomes your source of sprint targets.

How many people can join?

Team includes up to 25 members, Business up to 150 and Enterprise up to 1,000, so the sprint team and everyone who contributed ideas beforehand can work in the same workspace.