Google Design Sprint (GDS) is becoming a valued tool for interaction design practitioners today. Although GDS has some similarities to User-Centred Design (UCD), it does not study user needs before generating solutions. On the other hand, UCD provides little guidance on producing design solutions. We saw the two processes would nicely complement each other.

We report the development of a structured design process that combines UCD and GDS processes into a coherent User-Centred Design Sprint (UCD Sprint). The new design process was developed for and tested in the context of an intensive two-week course on interaction design in higher education. On this course, the basics of interaction design were taught through project-based learning.