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Double Diamond (design process model)

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Diagram showing two adjoining red diamonds with named stages: “Discover”, “Define”, “Develop”, and “Deliver”
The Design Council's visual representation of their Double Diamond design and innovation process.

Double Diamond is the name of a design process model popularized by the British Design Council in 2005.[1] The process was adapted from the divergence-convergence model proposed in 1996 by Hungarian-American linguist Béla H. Bánáthy.[2][3] The two diamonds represent a process of exploring an issue more widely or deeply (divergent thinking) and then taking focused action (convergent thinking).[4] It suggests that, as a design method, that the design process should have four phases:

  • Discover: Understand the issue rather than merely assuming what it is. This phase involves speaking to and spending time with people who are affected by the issues.
  • Define: With insight gathered from the discovery phase, define the challenge in a different way.
  • Develop: Give different answers to the clearly defined problem, seeking inspiration from elsewhere and co-designing with a range of different people.
  • Deliver: Test different solutions at a small scale. Reject those that will not work and improve the ones that will.[4]

To celebrate 20 years of the Double Diamond in 2023, the Design Council released a visual representation under an open license and created a Mural template.[5][6]

An adaptation of the Double Diamond Design Model to highlight the iterative nature of the design process.

The Double Diamond model is useful in design education, and has been adapted to provide additional details for following the model, along with suggesting the iterative nature to design between each diamond.[7][8]

References

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  1. ^ "Eleven lessons. A study of the design process" (PDF). Design Council. Retrieved 2 December 2022.
  2. ^ Banathy, Bela H. (1996). Designing Social Systems in a Changing World. Springer US. p. XV, 372. ISBN 978-0-306-45251-2.
  3. ^ Möller, Ola (9 January 2015). "The Double Diamond". MethodKit Stories. Archived from the original on 21 December 2022. Retrieved 3 September 2019.
  4. ^ a b "What is the framework for innovation? Design Council's evolved Double Diamond". Design Council. Archived from the original on 26 September 2019. Retrieved 6 April 2021.
  5. ^ "From humble beginnings to a cornerstone of design language". Design Council. Archived from the original on 11 May 2023. Retrieved 11 May 2023.
  6. ^ "Double Diamond template". Mural.co. Retrieved 11 May 2023.
  7. ^ Nychka, John A. (8 January 2019). "The Materials Paradigm and the Double Diamond Design Model". ERA. doi:10.7939/r3-yfk8-e528. Retrieved 23 January 2025.
  8. ^ Nychka, John A.; Hibbard, Glenn D. (2021). "3.3 Teaching materials engineering through embodied cognition". In Roberts-Smith, Jennifer; Ruecker, Stan; Radzikowska, Milena (eds.). Prototyping across the Disciplines: Designing Better Futures. Bristol: Intellect Books. pp. 208–242. ISBN 9781789381801.
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