How much should I charge for a Design Sprint?
(a freelancer’s perspective)
In mid 2015, I took what was perhaps one of the biggest decisions of my life. I decided to quit my position as a UX/UI Designer at one of Switzerland’s major players in digital. I felt it was time for me to work differently and to start to truly collaborate with my clients. Yes, I took the plunge and became a freelancer.
At the time, I used to work on a regular basis with developers mostly in an agile context, and the whole idea of Dev Sprints sounded natural to me.
I wondered, “If I’m a designer, then why not do Sprints of Design with my Clients?” (a big Aha moment). I was already working with prototyping tools and was looking for a good excuse to use Invision, Marvel and all this cool stuff on a daily basis. Naive as I was, I even thought I had come up with something totally new. I had never heard of Design Sprints before…
Later, I discovered that not only was I not the first dude to have had that brilliant idea, but also that the GV team were far more advanced and had been experimenting with Design Sprints for the last 3 years (oops). The Google Ventures blog was already offering a lot of great tips but I had no conception that a book would be released only a few months after, and that the Design Sprint would eventually become “a thing” (though debated as snake-oil) in the UX world.
By chance, it turned out that I became the first designer to facilitate Sprints in my tiny little country. This sounded like a great opportunity but I was in totally uncharted territory and way outside my comfort zone. I had a lot of concerns:
-How could I market my new service?
-Is sprintmaster even a job?
-Will I be able to do it and handle the pressure?
-And finally: How much should I charge for a Design Sprint?
I work as a freelance sprintmaster / design consultant which means that I get to join the client’s team, facilitate the Sprint and design most of the prototype. This is not an easy task, especially when you are an outsider and don’t know the team with whom you’re going to spend the next five days.
I guess this is more or less the same situation that Jake Knapp, Braden Kowitz and John Zeratsky from GV encountered when they started to Sprint with their portfolio startups, except that, as a freelancer, I also needed to deal with all the financial stuff. And for understandable reasons, all these practical aspects of the Sprint preparation aren’t covered in the book. (Also, GV is a venture company which is a slightly different context.)
Well, after more than 1 year and a half of sprinting with startups and big companies, here are
10 things that I have discovered about pricing a Design Sprint:
1. Do your first Sprint for free (as training) because it’s more likely that you’re gonna suck a bit, just like the first time with anything, which is fine. Test, learn and get comfortable with your process.
2. Make a package offer for the five days; clients love clarity and it’s possible since you know the exact duration of your Sprint.
3. Don’t count your hours; do the best for your Client within that timebox — you can sleep later.
4. Sprint is an exciting but tiring process and you will be energy-drained at the end of the week (but proud!). Put your price on that.
5. My ‘record’ so far as a freelancer is two full Sprints within one month. Most of the times I manage to run one, which is hard enough to recover from (not counting that I am also a design teacher).
6. I usually bill 2 times my normal daily rate as a senior UX Designer + logistics, food and rewards for testers.
This is a package that includes prep work
7. You don’t need to be four persons from your agency; the risk is to increase the cost and not necessarily the value. Put the ‘Sprint team’ to work. Don’t forget that everyone there will be experts in their field. Pricewise, I think the sweet spot if you are running Sprints as a freelancer, should be around 12–17k for the full week (with a typical App budget being around $150'000+ in the USA, this makes it 10%, so totally worth it).
8. It is tempting to reduce the cost by removing some days, but try to convince your client not to do so. They might lose something on the way.
9. Don’t be too cheap, Sprint has to be some kind of exceptional event. Sometimes, attendees will have to travel a long distance to join. Also, you want the ‘big guys’ (C-level) to consider coming. They won’t if it looks like the typical work day.
10. If you can, try to get the Sprint funded by an incubator or a business angel. The Design Sprint is great at reducing risk and uncertainty and the startup shouldn’t have to absorb all its cost.
Edit 2019: We now have a super transparent pricing page on my agency’s website https://www.design-sprint.com/en/prices/ prices are in swiss francs (CHF) which is more or less aligned on USD.
PS: About agencies pricing for a Sprint, Daniel Burka and Jay Melone had already given some interesting numbers in the comment feed of this article:
Hope this helps you.
Do not hesitate to contact me for more information about Design Sprint in Europe or to react to this post. I’ll be happy to exchange with you.
Stéphane Cruchon is a UI / UX Design Consultant and teacher living in Lausanne Switzerland.
