Double diamond

Article — 5 November 2024 — 2,559 words

Our flag in the sand — How to escape the desert of user needs by integrating agile and user experience

Business — User experience — User research

I have long been an advocate of agile ways of working. One of the things that originally drew me to user experience was the opportunity to have evidence-based ways of understanding the changes you need to make. So I was surprised whenever I encountered people who believed that user experience methods ran counter to the principles of agile.

Article — 21 October 2021 — 1,758 words

Design approaches aren’t sufficient to be human-centred

Social science — User experience

Many designers talk about user-centred design. But design approaches alone aren’t sufficient to ensure we are human-centred. Design approaches can be used carelessly — or even maliciously — to centre the designer and sideline the user.

Article — 14 June 2020 — 3,435 words

Service design and the Mario complex

Service design — User experience — User research

At Service Design in Government, I discovered that service designers see themselves as Mario. But that is an unrealistic model for what service design should be.

Linknote — 8 April 2020 — 28 words

Human-centred approaches — User experience — User research

The research funnel — Emma Boulton

A neat way of understanding what sorts of user research to do when, and how that maps to the double diamond.

This is elaborated on by Matthew Godfrey.

Linknote — 8 September 2019 — 178 words

Human-centred approaches

The double diamond, 15 years on… — Cat Drew — Design Council

It’s 15 years since the Design Council came up with the double diamond, a model of the design process.

I find it useful as a general guide, although it does seem to confuse many people who assume it to be a strictly linear process. Recent conversations I’ve had at both the Service Design Academy and work have shown me that it remains a challenge to truly convey the complexity of a design process, and that the double diamond may in fact hinder this.

As always, it’s about having the right approach and mindset, rather than expecting an off-the-shelf tool or model to fix all your problems. Cat Drew’s article points this out:

But following a toolkit does not equal designing a good solution to the right problem. It is as much about the mindsets as the tools (e.g. being humble and open to ideas coming from everywhere and changing as a result of feedback, curious about what’s really going on and how things are working or not and working as teams rather than as a lone genius).

Linknote — 17 April 2019 — 71 words

Human-centred approaches

How do we design for divergence and diversity if convergence is the goal? — Alastair Somerville

Is convergence in design thinking problematic?

The problem I have with it is it models a form of Normality. You can diverge but, in the end, you must converge.

An interesting idea from Alastair Somerville. He explains his alternative design process:

Yes, there is a convergence to design a product that meets identified user needs. Yes, there are constraints around what can be made.

However, divergence is recognised through the process.