Jenna Leonardo’s Post

I’ve heard that design sprints are dead in the age of AI. I disagree. Design sprints are still one of the most valuable tools in my toolkit for driving and validating product vision, especially when the problem is ambiguous, high-stakes, and deeply human. At Headway, their role has only grown in the last two years. They have changed dramatically, though. When I spoke with Jayneil Dalal at Sneak Peak, I shared how tools like Magic Patterns helped us move from debating which one or two concepts deserved days of prototyping to building many interactive directions quickly, putting them in front of patients, and letting evidence shape the vision. Instead of asking people to imagine a future experience from a deck or click-through prototype, we could give patients, executives, and teammates something they could actually use. The feedback became more concrete because the vision itself was more tangible. That doesn’t eliminate the design process. It lets us explore more broadly, test more realistically, and move from vision to execution much faster. A lot has changed even since that conversation, and certainly since the sprint I described in January. We’re increasingly moving beyond prototypes toward working demos. Designers, engineers, clinicians, and PMs are building together in the same codebase, and the boundaries between imagining the future, validating it with users, and beginning to deliver it are getting much thinner. That makes the core skills of design more important, not less. Framing the right problem, directing exploration, exercising judgment, and learning from users still matter enormously. Come shape the future of mental healthcare – and design sprints – with us: https://lnkd.in/eHNUA-56 https://lnkd.in/eVDWEBSk