Double Diamond (design process model)

Double Diamond is the name of a design process model popularized by the British Design Council in 2005. The process was adapted from the divergence-convergence model proposed in 1996 by Hungarian-American linguist <a href="/facts/B%25C3%25A9la_H._B%25C3%25A1n%25C3%25A1thy/qmbYtj7T">Béla H. Bánáthy</a>. The two diamonds represent a process of exploring an issue more widely or deeply (divergent thinking) and then taking focused action (convergent thinking). It suggests that, as a <a href="/facts/Design_methods/zSG0uP0f">design method</a>, that the <a href="/facts/Design_process/kR4GNeja">design process</a> should have four phases:

<ul><li>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.</li>
<li>Define: With insight gathered from the discovery phase, define the challenge in a different way.</li>
<li>Develop: Give different answers to the clearly defined problem, seeking inspiration from elsewhere and co-designing with a range of different people.</li>
<li>Deliver: Test different solutions at a small scale. Reject those that will not work and improve the ones that will.</li></ul>
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.

The Double Diamond model is useful in <a href="/facts/Design_education/ju8a3Kmh">design education</a>, and has been adapted to provide additional details for following the model, along with suggesting the iterative nature to design between each diamond.

Double Diamond (design process model) open-in-new

Double Diamond (design process model)