In short: A Design Sprint has a lot of hidden costs: the man hours, the test participants recruitment, the location, food and other tiny logistical things

The hidden costs

Man-Hours

Design sprints involve 5-12 people working full-time for five days. This is like one person working full-time for 12 weeks, or about 3 months of work packed into one week.

Obviously if you compare this to a committee that meets every week for two years you see that it's still less. For example, having 12 people meeting for one hour about every week (30 times per year) for two years equals to 720 hours which is 90 days of work or 18 weeks, or 4 and a half months. But here you don't count how painful these committee are and how much work is needed outside of the committee to make the real work happen.

Recruiting test participants

To find testers outside your organization who meet specific criteria, you might need a recruiting service like Testing Time. This can cost around $1-2k just for recruiting.

Workshop room

If the design sprint isn't on-site, you'll need to book a space. This can cost between 200-700 bucks per day. For example this room for 8 people costs 230 bucks for 8 hours.

Hotel rooms

Running the sprint outside your organization may require bringing people from many different places, which means you'll have to pay for their hotel rooms. The rooms will cost between 80-120 bucks per night.

Food

Depending on the location, you might need to buy food for participants. If it's at their usual workplace this isn't necessary. But if it's elsewhere, you'll need to organize and pay for meals. Simple meals cost between 15-30 bucks per meal.

Other Tiny Logistical Things: 500 bucks

You might want tiny giveaways for participants, especially if it's remote. For the experts that you invite to come for free you might also want to prepare small gifts that you send to their homes. Plus then there are the other tiny things like travel expenses, sticky notes, pens, and other materials that you might need to add to the budget.

For the workshop material with 150 bucks you're good to go, plus 200 bucks for gifts.

But you don't have to make it expensive

A design sprint isn't free, but you can cut costs by being smart. Doing it remotely or in your own office space where people already go can make you save money, time and logistical work like preparing food.

Made with AI help
This article was is based on an audio note I recorded while walking which was transcribed and rewritten by the app Audiopen. I then reviewed it manually :)