The Double Diamond
The Double Diamond
The double diamond is a visualisation of the design process. The diamonds can be seen as 4 triangles that each are a part of the process.
Discover - Research Phase
Generative side of the diamond
The discovery phase is where we gather all the data we need to understand the business, the context and the users. Our goal is to have a clear view of the competitive landscape and some best practices. We need to do some technical research to know what is feasible and make sure we understand the brand requirement.
Finally, we need to meet our users, who are they, what are their needs, goals, paint points. It is also important to found out how they currently solve the problem we want to tackle.
We collect all these information thanks to:
- Business Analysis
- Brand Analysis
- Competitive Analysis
- Technical Research
- User Survey
- User Interview
- Usability Testing
Define - Ideation
Generative side of the diamond
The define phase is where we gather all the insights from the discovery phase and make sense of all these information. We need to classify the user insights to be able to create personas (found out more about persona) that are a representation of a user group.
The insights collected will also help to understand users behaviours and we will create user flows and user journeys, which will illustrate the user's emotional and technical journey.
Finally, from our research we should have an idea of some features that users would like to see in the product.
In order to make sense of our data we use:
- Affinity Mapping
- User Flows
- User Journeys
- Personas
- Feature Prioritisation
Design - Ideation
Generative side of the diamond
The design phase of the double diamond is where we start implementing what we have learned. Ideation is the process of generating as many ideas as possible in a short period of time. This exercise is great to kick start the design phase and can either be done as a workshop with a few stakeholders of by oneself.
It is important to start designing on paper to test the core interaction, then moving up to wireframes and finally to mockups (learn more in the different type of prototype). Each round of fidelity in the design will have to be prototyped and usability test.
The design phase include:
- Collaborative design
- Sketching Paper
- Prototype Usability
- Testing Iterations
- Wireframing
- Tes, Iterate, validate
Deliver - Prototype
Generative side of the diamond
Finally, the delivery phase is all about testing the different prototypes and going through the iterative loop. Each prototype needs to be usability tested; we then gather feedback and make changes accordingly. We continue doing this until we have a functional prototype that we can either launch or deliver to a client. Actually, usability testing should carry on even after that point. The iteration process should always be active. It is important to keep listening to the user feedback.
The delivery phase include:
- Digital Prototyping
- Usability Testing
- Iterations
- Wire framing
- Tes, Iterate, Validate
- Functional Prototype