Click: The practical and effective guide to developing successful new ideas quickly, from the New York Times bestselling authors

In your first Design Sprint, consider focusing on how customers will discover your product, learn about it, and decide whether to try it for the first time. Whether it’s a sales deck or a marketing website, testing your product’s story gives you a chance to assess many of the key questions on your scorecard: Are you talking to the right customers?

A product visionary who imagines the dream solution for customers (customer lens) A pragmatic engineer who wants to build the product ASAP (pragmatic lens) A marketing wiz on a mission to make the business grow, grow, grow (growth lens) A finance expert intent on maximizing profit (money lens)

In practice, the Magic Lenses activity works a lot like the differentiation activity—but instead of one chart, you’ll create several, and instead of competitors, you’ll plot your own competing approaches. Here’s how we do it:

The title of the approach. A one-sentence summary of why it’s a good idea. Try to reference the problem you’re solving for customers and your differentiation—those two together should make a knockout sales pitch.

After you’ve written down your known options, come up with some new ones. If you feel stuck, try answering these questions: What would happen if your project hit a dead end? How would you solve your customers’ problem if you couldn’t do it the way you want? Or imagine a new competitor comes along to solve the same problem for the same customer. How

How many principles should you write? I think a good number is three. I suggest using the “Differentiate, differentiate, safeguard” formula: one principle for each of your two differentiators (from chapter 5), plus one to protect against the unintended consequences of building a product that’s successful in an unfortunate way.

6. Use practical principles to reinforce differentiation.

I want you and your team to have Jobs-like clarity, and a 2x2 chart of your own is a powerful tool to help you get there. So, once you’ve chosen your top two differentiators—whether they’re classic or custom—make a 2x2 chart, place your project in the top right, place the top competitors on there, and adjust your differentiators until it’s realisti

Finally, the Decider chooses her or his top two differentiators. Here’s how this looked for Orbital Materials, the startup using AI to design molecules: