Design Thinking: The Double Diamond Design Process

“The design journey, as creative as it can get, may need an organized way to get things done from start to finish. Enter the Double Diamond”

When discussing the early steps in user experience with my fellow colleagues in a design exercise, I brought up the question relaying the process of creative thinking and how the steps of the Double Diamond aided in it. I got a “design can be all over the place and builds upon itself” kind of answer. Understanding how art can be made from using the finest amount of detail to throwing buckets of paint on a wall, The answer was not as ideal as I hoped. Although, it did remind me of something I would always avoid in an effort to get projects done without questioning the process — vagueness. I then began to take a deep dive into the double diamond process, learning what it’s about and breaking down all the steps. Here’s what I found.

The Process

The Double Diamond, in brief, is an illustrated process model that focuses on a problem and the steps on creating how to create a solution. The double diamond model is two diamonds that break up in four main stages — or five if you want to reserve allotted time for Questioning and honing in on the problem to start.

Design The Right Thing

The first diamond focuses on how to go about designing the right thing to solve a problem. It goes into the research and synthesis phases of the process.

1 The Research phase, also known as discovery, is constructed by laying out the overall plan, goals, and research that will be applied to solve the problem. This can begin by compiling:

• Who you will need on the team
• What tools you will be using
• Clarifying how much time it will take
• Deciding how much it will cost

When diverging into research, it’s best to have more than one case study to find the common trends and topics between them. I would love to discuss the different types of research methods you can use. But because there are so many of them and the ones you decide to use depend on the problem you are trying to solve, I won’t drown you in all the ways you can get information. But here are some styles of research to get you thinking:

Behavioral Research is when you observe a person’s actions or behaviors. This relates closer to Qualitative research, which is used when looking for emotional, subjective responses in smaller cases that are usually moderated.

Attitudinal Research is when you ask a person about their opinions. This relates closer to Quantitative research, which is used when looking for numerical, objective responses in larger cases that are usually unmoderated.

2 The Synthesis phase, also known as define, is the process of converging into your newfound research findings to understand who it is that you are solving this problem for and how you might go about solving it. Two straightforward places to start would be to create:

Personas

Custom descriptions of users whose personalities and desires represent the characteristics of a larger group or target market.

User Journeys

Describes the experience a person has as they go through the events where the problem that is being solved occurs.

These graphic representations, at first simple to layout, take a great amount of empathy to build. You will be attempting to get the point of view of the user to understand what they see, hear, and feel in order to find out what they might think, say, and do when confronting their problem. This helps better realize the pain and frustration one gets from a problem, as well as what they will want and need from the solution you are building.

Now that we have more insight into the user and the general themes that may occur as they move towards a goal, there should be some small areas of opportunity where resolutions can be added. This brings us to the middle of the Double Diamond framework where we ask the question How Might We?

Design Things Right

The second diamond works to build a process around expanding on ideas and fulfilling a solution. As we prepare to design our solution, we participate in brainstorming and prototyping methods to complete the double diamond process. This stage goes into the phases of Ideation and Implementation.

3 In the Ideation phase, also known as develop, we present our ideas and turn them into viable solutions. This brings us to find answers to our “How Might We?” questions.

“How Might We” questions are inquiries to explore ideas that help solve a problem. This opens opportunities for countless suggestions and iterations that can be applied to solve the problem.

• The “How” implies that we are still looking for an answer. It encourages the exploration of more solutions instead of assuming what we think we know is right.
• The “Might” considers that our suggestions are not definite but possible.
• The “We” states the process is collaborative and the solution will come from a combined effort of the entire team’s opinion and engagement.

No idea is too wild or strange in this phase, as every consideration is evaluated to see how efficient it can solve the problem.

4 In the Implementation phase, also known as deliver, we hone in on our ideal solution to build testing for final approval. This phase can be the most straightforward, as it primarily consists of a repeated process of tests and continued improvements until it is approved for delivery. Within this phase, prototyping and continued feedback provide clarity on where your final solution can improve or suggestions on previous phases it should revisit.

From Defining the Problem to Delivering the Solution

Congrats! You made it through the Double Diamond. Getting a case study through the whole process can be intense and at times you might be tempted to take shortcuts. But taking it step-by-step is truly rewarding. Your users will thank you for it. And if they don’t, you just solved the problem so well, they never noticed it was there in the first place!

There is one more special stage that isn’t always considered called the Evolution phase. Besides celebrating for a great job you and your team did tackling the user’s challenge:

• Plan ahead for future problems that way arise.
• Reflect on your learnings and think about where you had obstacles in the process.
• Engage with others on the journey that you had with the framework so you can help improve their problem-solving skills.

With all this, you can build on your experience and apply what you learned from it to solve problems you never knew you could.