The double Diamond ( Design Council)
What is the Double Diamond?
The Double Diamond is a visual representation of the design and innovation process. It is a simple way to describe the steps taken in any design and innovation project , irrespective of methods and tools used.
Part of Design Councils reason for creating the double diamond was because models of design process were not widely shared so they created it to address the lack of visibility.
The double diamond is today used and referenced world wide.
Richard Eisermann inherited a multi-disciplinary design and innovation team from his predecessor Clive Grinyer. The team included Anna White, Chris Vanstone, Gill Wildman, Jennie Winhall and Jonathan Ball.
Jonathon Ball who is an independent strategist on the Design and innovation team recalls how everything got started. He stated â As Richard got his feet under the table, he was excited to see the new work at Design Council and the breadth of challenges that were being addressed. He realised that Design Council talked about process â Â the design process â but wasn't explicit about how this process was defined.â
Richard Believed that design council needed a way that was consistent in telling a process story. At a team meeting Richard expressed his curiosity as to how the design council might define design process and the methods that it could use at different stages of the process. Richard then challenged the rest of the team to answer that question.
The ambitious of the team was to create something that could be applied in any field , to create a model that design council could use with any one of their clients.
Richard recalled âDave Duncanson, an engineer at IDEO, talked to me about the product development process as being like the classic diamond-shaped kite, with a tail composed of progressively smaller diamonds. Â So the double diamond shape was definitely already present at IDEO in the late 90s, although it may not have been called such.â
Richardâs next encounter with this diamond shape was at Whirlpool. âWe did an extensive innovation programme with business guru Gary Hamel. Gary used the diamond as a way of framing innovation. He even called it the Double Diamond. But the names of the four steps were different.â
âThe team put in the work trying to define design, process, methods, etc. What we did with the Double Diamond was codify it, rename the steps and popularise it. It was important work, but we were certainly standing on the shoulders of giantsâ
The team came up with a simplified way to describe any design and innovation process. It is based on four distinct phases that the team names discover , define , develop and deliver.
Discover - The process starts by questioning the challenge and quickly leads to research to identify user needs.
Define - The second phase is to make sense of the findings, understanding how user needs and the problem align. The result is to create a design brief which clearly defines the challenge based on these insights.
Develop - The third phase concentrates on developing, testing and refining multiple potential solutions.
Deliver - The final phase involves selecting a single solution that works and preparing it for launch.
âAs a model for the design process, I thought it was a neat representation, but I have to say that at the time, apart from presenting it in an almost academic way, I couldn't get my head around using it in practice. I found I had to rehearse the way I told the Double Diamond story. Once I was comfortable with it, it became the starting point for any design-orientated conversation, for positioning design in a broader context, discussing a specific design project, or as the process itself.â
The Double Diamond Today.
The double diamond still remains at he heart of design councils work.