AI Design Sprint®: Products & Services
For UX designers and product teams — integrate AI into your product
Your users already expect AI — do your products deliver it?
Daily use of AI tools has raised the bar. Users now expect a level of intelligence from products that most teams haven't yet built. Google and Microsoft have — embedding AI across their entire product suites. The AI Design Sprint®: Products & Services gives your team the method to do the same.
The challenge
Most UX designers and product teams don't know enough about AI to confidently integrate it. The same is often true for clients, or in-house teams, and users, making it hard to co-create meaningfully.
Who is this for?
UX designers and product teams, including product managers, and business stakeholders who want to understand where AI adds value for their users.
Why AI Design Sprint®: Products & Service?
Enables anyone to develop AI concepts — no technical expertise needed
The AI Cards® put every AI capability into plain language, organised by category and written from the user perspective. This allows UX designers, product managers, and business stakeholders to explore AI possibilities and develop concrete concepts together — no AI expert required.
A structured method for co-creating AI with users, clients, and teams
UX designers know how to involve users — but most don't yet have a method for co-creating AI solutions with them. The AI Design Sprint®: Products & Services fills that gap. The AI Cards® give everyone enough AI literacy to contribute meaningfully. The Collaboration Board then guides users, UX designers, business stakeholders, and technical teams through the process step by step — structured like a board game, in focused 5-minute tasks. Any UX designer can pick it up and confidently lead a session.
Considers all AI capabilities, not just a handful of use cases
Most approaches start with a limited selection of AI features or industry examples. That constrains the solution before you've even begun. The AI Design Sprint®: Products & Services puts the full landscape of AI capabilities on the table — so the team can identify the best possible solution for their users, not just the most obvious one.
Speed — from opportunity to decision, fast
No lengthy discussions, no drawn-out project phases. The structured format keeps the team moving forward quickly, taking decisions and seeing progress in days rather than months.
How it works
The outcome
At the end of the sprint, the team walks away with three concrete deliverables:
A service blueprint with AI integrated throughout.
A data overview — the required data and its owners.
All brought together in a 1-Pager Technical Brief — everything the technical team needs to move into development.
The 1-Pager Technical Brief.
Where do you start?
Starting point 1 — The team knows AI matters, but doesn’t know which product to begin with
With a large portfolio of products and services, where do you start? In an Opportunity Mapping session, leadership identifies which product has the most to gain from AI.
Starting point 2 — The team has already have a product in mind
If the team has already identified a specific product they want to enhance with AI, we define the persona and map their user journey together. From there, we move straight into the Concept Development & Assessment session.
The AI Cards
The AI Cards® organize every AI capability into categories, each written from the user perspective. Parent cards describe a category of AI capability; child cards break down specific capabilities within it. On the back of each card, a brief description and three use cases bring the capability to life. Available in physical form for onsite sessions and digitally for remote delivery.
The Collaboration Board
If the AI Cards® are the content, the Collaboration Board is the game board. It is the central worksheet that holds the entire process together — containing the 5-minute tasks, the persona and user journey, and clearly defined fields for where to place AI Cards®, Ethical Risk Mitigation Cards, Data Sources Cards, and Resources & Roles Cards at different stages. It tells participants exactly what to do, with which cards, and where — so the team always knows their next move.
For onsite sessions, the Collaboration Board consists of approximately ten A0 format sheets. For remote sessions, it becomes a fully prepared Miro board. At the end of the process, all outputs are consolidated into a technical brief — the concrete deliverable the team walks away with.
Practicalities
Duration Opportunity Mapping and Concept Development & Assessment each take 1 day plus preparation time. A technical person spends 2 days on the Tech Check and 7 days building the Prototype.
Participants Opportunity Mapping brings together up to 6 people. This typically includes the Head of the product team, Head of Digitalisation, and someone from IT.
Concept Development & Assessment involves up to 6 people — the people who work with that product daily, the user if possible, the product owner, a decision-maker, someone from IT, and other key stakeholders.
Format Sessions are facilitated by 2 trained and certified AI Design Sprint®: Products & Services facilitators by 33A and can be delivered onsite or remotely.
Input & Output
Input: A product map or value stream.
Output: The identified product to focus on. If the input is a value stream, the output may also be an identified internal backend process.Input: A persona and their user journey.
Output: A redesigned user journey with AI integrated, elaborated in a service blueprint, with required data and data owners identified. This is captured in a 1-Pager Technical Brief — the handover document to the 33A technical team for Tech Check and Prototype, or to your own internal or external technical team if you have been trained and certified in the method by 33A.Language Currently available in English and German, with additional languages planned.
Facilitators
Michael Brandt
CEO, Co-founder
Kerstin Bognar
Facilitation
Or two other facilitators from 33A.
Joanna Stoffregen
AI Product Development
Erik Stoffregen
AI Product Development
How to get started
There are two ways to work with us.
Get trained and certified. Become an AI Design Sprint®: Products & Services Facilitator — so you can run sprints independently with your clients or in-house teams. Join as a team in our Company Team Training or individually in one of our upcoming Bootcamps.
We run the sprint with you. 33A facilitates the AI Design Sprint®: Products & Services with your team — working through AI integration into your product together.
FAQ
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We don't work with Figma prototypes in this sprint. Where possible, users are invited to participate in the session itself — giving them a voice in shaping the solution from the start. The process then produces two prototypes that can be tested with users: the new user journey and service blueprint, and the technical prototype.
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Both are built into the process. During the sprint, the team works through the Ethical Risk Mitigation Cards to identify and address potential risks early. The AI expert then examines compliance and data security in detail during the Tech Check — ensuring the proposed solution is both technically feasible and responsible.
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The Tech Check happens early enough that the exposure is limited — at most one day of the team's time and two days of an AI expert. In practice though, a negative Tech Check rarely means starting over. The concept can often be re-scoped to work within technical constraints, or the team can focus on a second anchor point of the overall concept. Either way, the process is designed to keep moving forward.
What others are saying
"The Bootcamp provided a step-by-step approach to help teams brainstorm and leverage Al to improve existing products. So enlightening and rewarding!"
Katrina Dargel, Chief Experience Officer, Syndicate
“33A is the IDEO of AI!”
Hesam Pakbeen, Design Manager, Team Lead, Visma
(IDEO is widely regarded as the birthplace of Design Thinking. Based in Palo Alto, California, the firm is also known for landmark innovations, including the development of Apple’s first mouse.)
"The Al Design Sprint®: Products & Services makes navigating the Al jungle a breeze. It provides a structured way that equips me with the skills for exploring where and how Al could support."
Adrian Föhl, AI Team Lead and Product Manager, BABLE Smart Cities