In order to do so, I have come up with an own and a revamped version of the Double Diamond process. In case, you are familiar with the British Design Council’s Double Diamond, IDEO’s human centred design ideology or @d.school’s Design Thinking process you might be familiar with a majority of approaches, steps and tools in the following paragraphs.
Understanding people
The human centred design process starts with a good understanding of people and the needs that the design is intended to meet
- Various companies, organizations, and educational institutions have come up with models to provide structure to the process
- Human Centred Design or design thinking is rooted in understanding people
Deliver / Implementation
Evaluate the final one and the way it needs to be implemented or executed
- Use an agile approach consisting of three steps: Build/Prototype, Test/Analyse, Iterate/Repeat
- Aim for MVPs
- Go back to start and do it all over again
Chilli Con Carne and the Double Diamond
Generally speaking, you tweak the original recipe to your own needs and taste.
- The Double Diamond process was originally released by the British Design Council
- I like this framework for its structure, clarity and dynamic.
Define / Synthesis
You want to synthesize your research by applying the following steps:
- Download all your research
- Cluster learnings and similarities to themes
- Find insights
- Build opportunity areas
- Create HMW questions
- Clarify or details the initial brief challenge
Point of Departure and Basics
The Double Diamond is a structured design approach to tackle challenges in four phases
- Discover/Research- insight into the problem
- Define/Synthesis – the area to focus upon
- Develop/ Ideation- potential solutions
- Deliver/Implementation- solutions that work (converging)
Develop / Ideation
As you have deduced the actual question to solve or challenge, you start ideating.
- Do not judge during ideation. Let anything happen at this point and build upon each other’s ideas.
- Evaluation
- End ideation with a list of ideas and select your favorite ones.
One more… wait… two, three more things
The revamped Double Diamond is just ONE and my personal approach. It’s not the ONE AND ONLY approach and it is here to be challenged, questioned, and iterated upon.
- Depending on your role and a project, the size of the diamonds may also vary.
- Be prepared to be agile and go back and forth at any point.
Stage 2
Doing things right
- Once you have found the right question to answer or the right problem to solve, you want to make sure that you do this the right way
- The following paragraphs provide you with a step-to-step approach for each phase
Discover / Research
Rip the brief
- Try to question the brief or your initial question by challenging every part of it and evaluating fields of interests
- List as many elements as you can, find characteristics, define areas of interest and extremes, list places, people, and experiences that are related and can be explored
