Our unique processes

Start your Unicorn Invasion.

A customized design sprint that will take your project to the next level. In just 5 days!

Sharpen’s Unicorn Invasion isn't staff augmentation or a run-of-the-mill contract assignment. It’s a design-thinking A-team dedicated to you and your specific challenge. Our team of veteran creatives join your squad for a one-week design sprint, leveling-up both your project and your team with a mixture of business analysis and user research all the way to information architecture and high-fidelity visual design.

Since 2017, we’ve successfully applied our design-sprint methodology to startups, enterprise BI systems, marketing sites, product proofs of concept … even digital transformation challenges. For each engagement, the timeline and budget were the same—two veteran designers, one crazy-productive week—but the scope of work and the deliverables we produced were unique to every challenge. Yours.

Sharpen’s Unicorn Invasion is a flexible, affordable, and rapid five-day design-sprint methodology created to serve a wide variety of clients and projects.

WE'VE DESIGNED OUR UNICORN INVASION DESIGN SPRINTS TO TARGET THE NEEDS OF:

  • Start-ups and entrepreneurs with few or no design resources looking to upgrade their product.

  • Internal teams and intrepreneurs at product companies needing to rapidly-prototype an MVP for a pitch, investment, or user testing.

  • Digital and marketing agencies wanting to leverage user-centered design to create a pitch.

  • Anyone with a project in trouble that needs creative leadership to turn it around.

OVER THE COURSE OF ONE WEEK, OUR veteran design UNICORNS WILL:

  • Work embedded with your team—colocated or remote.

  • Carry out user-centered design processes to quickly discover, create, and validate ideas.

  • Deliver tested design recommendations based on user needs and opportunities.

  • Create a roadmap and help you identify resources to execute these recommendations (even if that’s not us).

AND WHEN WE'RE DONE, YOUR TEAM WILL BENEFIT FROM:

  • Your project getting the focused attention it needs to be well-designed and successful.

  • All the deliverables you need to keep the ball moving forward when our engagement  is complete.

  • A strengthened base in user-centered design.

  • A foundation in design thinking that creates efficiency, empowerment, and empathy.

An example unicorn invasion schedule.

In a typical one-week Unicorn Invasion engagement, our designers, consultants, and seasoned instructors work with your stakeholders and team on a single key project, either at your office, in your user's environment, or in a creative and convenient off-site location. And whether your team is made up of designers or members from other disciplines, we'll tailor our approach to demonstrate effective user-centered design principles and processes and we’ll deliver artifacts you can start using right away and keep using once we're gone.

This schedule is an example describing the process used in the Post-Office Cowork case study, below. The exact services and deliverables will vary by client and project.

DAy One
Analysis & planning

To make sure we're tackling the right problems, we’ll kick things off with a detailed look at your project, your business, the competition, and comparable solutions.

SAMPLE DELIVERABLES

  • Business requirements audit

  • Comparative analysis

  • Competitive analysis

  • Current-state analysis

  • Project plan

  • Scope definition

  • Stakeholder interviews

  • Success metrics (KPIs)

Day TWO
research & synthesis

We'll find and start talking to your users. And with the data they provide, we'll identify their most important needs, pain-points, and opportunities.

SAMPLE DELIVERABLES

  • Current-state usability testing

  • Data-informed pseudo personae

  • User interviews

  • User scenarios

  • User surveys

  • User requirements

DAY THREE
architecture

Based on our user and business research, we'll make sense of the complex tasks, interfaces, layouts, and content users will navigate when using your solution.

SAMPLE DELIVERABLES

  • Content strategy

  • Feature prioritization

  • Taxonomies

  • Site maps

  • Use cases

  • User flows

  • Wireframes

DAY FOUR
Visual design

Our iterative-design process will advance to visual design, interaction design, and content development, creating something testable and codeable.

SAMPLE DELIVERABLES

  • Branding

  • Content

  • Dev-ready assets

  • Interaction design

  • Visual design

DAY FIVE
Testing & delivery

We'll close by building prototypes and testing them with real users for real feedback. We'll also package up all our deliverables so you can keep going.

SAMPLE DELIVERABLES

  • Final design spec

  • Prototypes

  • Source files

  • Usability testing

  • Usability test materials

  • Usability test results

“You think you’re working on an app prototype, but you’re working on so much more …

We worked on every facet of our business … Logistics, Operations, Business model, and it all happened organically … I’ll never take on another piece of business without going through this process. We’re going into a whole new level of business with a level of confidence I’ve never had before.”