To build the right thing, use design thinking and diamonds

The double-diamond approach to design thinking

The double diamond model introduces a new way to handle the design process.

It’s four steps are:

1. Research
2. Map
3. Ideate
4. Define

These four steps are laid out along two diamonds. The diamond shape represents another element of this process: divergent and convergent thinking. These concepts ask you to broaden the scope and accumulate as many ideas as your team can conceive (divergent). Then, you can weed through the ideas to find the one best suited for your desired outcome (convergent).

By always focusing on both divergent and convergent thinking throughout the process, we get the advantage of assessing a wide range of ideas. The double diamond approach helps refine toward a solution based on research, not assumptions. The right solution will best fit users’ needs.

If your team were to stop at the first idea, you might end up building a product that users don’t need or creating a slightly better version of something that already exists. To build something valuable for your users, you have to think beyond the obvious.

Now let’s see an overview of how these steps work…

Research: Find out all the possibilities in how the user thinks

Once you have an idea, you need to understand the problem from the perspective of the intended users. Talking to the users — in an open-ended way like a user research sprint — before building will help you understand the problems your audiences face. User interviews can give your team rich insights into why people behave the way they do.

It’s also an effective way to deepen empathy for the users you want to reach. Every user faces unique challenges. When you learn what they need first hand, you can take a more human-centered approach to your product design.

Research lives on a divergent axis in the double diamond model. Throughout the user research process, it’s paramount to keep any question or activity open-ended. This makes true discovery the focal point of the valuable time you have with the users you are trying to build for.

By the end of the research phase your team should have a large amount of insights about your users’ experience. These will be the building blocks for the rest of the project. Hopefully they will be very different from the kinds of things you thought might be a solution before you started this exercise.

Map: Draw the path toward a solution

Once you have the insights from your users, you can start to layout the path toward defining the specific problem they need to be solved. This allows you to take all the divergent ideas and converge onto a single problem statement to solve for.

To get there, there are three main techniques we use for understanding the qualitative research we’ve collected and turning it into a direction: empathy maps and identifying goals and pain points. You can see a full explanation of these processes here.

Now that you’ve mapped the journey, create a problem statement that gives your path a destination. To do so, take a look at the user needs your team has identified and choose one that feels the most universal. Start the problem statement with “How might we…” and fill in the specific user problem at hand.

This section should leave your team with a clear problem statement directly from the users. It should be the idea you work from going forward — all ideas point to solving this specific problem.

Ideate: Collect every possibility, from everyone

Now that you have the problem statement, it’s time to diverge again. Instead of jumping to the first solution you think of, the next step is to imagine as many possible solutions as you can. Hopefully in the sea of ideas there will be a solution that caters to the needs of the users.

Here, it’s important to have an integrated team with people from different disciplines and backgrounds. A carpenter is going to try to solve a problem with wood, but a bricklayer may be the key to a truly innovative solution. Just as you would talk to all the types of possible users in the first divergent stage, you want to collect solutions from all types of people in the second divergent stage. With an integrated team, you can maximize the diversity of perspectives to generate the best possible outcome.

You should walk away from this stage with several ideas you’re excited about (and plenty more that may be exciting, if not good). If it feels a little overwhelming, and like you can’t possibly choose, that’s a good thing.

Define: Get an idea of what the solution will look like

The final step is to develop a strategy and build a prototype of the solution. This is when we converge again, sorting through our many solutions for the one that best meets the needs outlined in the problem statement.

Again, we break out into small groups to create multiple visions via storyboards for how the product will work within people’s lives. These storyboards will help see us through to building a prototype. With the prototype, we’re able to turn back to users and test again, making sure that the thing we built is in fact working in the right way.

You should end this phase with a vote on which product and path sketched will be what you test with your user group. Keep all of your storyboards though. If you users feel your solution is off the mark, you can iterate this step to refine your solution.

Building the right thing means making a profit.

User desirability isn’t the only thing you have to test. To make a successful product, it also has to be technically feasible and viable for the business. You need to bring people into the process who can speak to all three of these elements, or you’ll end up making promises to users that you can’t keep.

Consider who can advocate for each of these sides. At TXI, we often pair our designers with developers and business leads from our partners’ organizations early in the process. That way we know the product will work on all three fronts, as well as for the end users.

If user desirability were the only thing we needed to answer for, our next company would build free ice cream cone delivery drones. To justify building the right thing for your audience, it also has to make sense for the business and work with available technology. Without experts on how your business makes things and how your business sells the things you make, you’ll likely end up in production limbo or in the red on an unprofitable product.