Too frequently, innovators try to build the right thing using this procedure:

Take an thought → Build information technology → See if people like it

That'south all cracking for romanticizing lightning bolts of inspiration, but if y'all don't examination whether you're edifice the correct thing until the production exists, it'due south kind of likewise late to get all that time and coin back.

While innumerable designers and firms try to build the adjacent revolutionary solution, you tin get a leg up by asking a simple question: Is this the right thing to build?

Encounter how this helped Tyson innovate food waste

This shouldn't be a question express to visitor leaders either. Everyone involved in the building of a new product should exist request at every step of the process whether information technology makes sense to move forrard.

To build the correct thing, stride away from the solutions

Pattern thinking allows you to step dorsum from the thought and survey if the problem is real, and if you fully understand it. When y'all run correct to a solution, you skip out on this valuable step. A problem argument helps to fill out the landscape of the project: what need you are addressing and how.

Without this, you could be building something on an assumption that doesn't hold up to scrutiny. If y'all assault your ideas with as many counter-arguments every bit possible, yous'll prove its value. The double diamond method helps you lot to facilitate this way of working.

The double-diamond approach to pattern 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. Ascertain

Build the right thing with double diamond

Watch this fun gif to see our process in activeness!

These 4 steps are laid out along two diamonds. The diamond shape represents another element of this process: divergent and convergent thinking. These concepts ask yous to broaden the telescopic and accumulate as many ideas as your team can conceive (divergent), then weed through the ideas to notice the one best suited for the goal (convergent).

By e'er focusing on both divergent and convergent thinking throughout the process, nosotros get the advantage of casting a broad internet of ideas before filtering downward to the best solution. If your team were to end at the first thought, you lot wouldn't be solving a trouble merely instead improving on something that already exists. To build something valuable for your users, you accept to think beyond the obvious.

At present let'southward come across an overview of how these steps work…

build the right thing with user research

For case: to find "the best dessert for a user group" ask open-ended questions to discover their likes, dislikes and ideal outcomes.

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

Once you have an idea, you need to empathise the trouble from the perspective of the intended users. Talking to the users — in an open-ended way like a user research dart — before building will aid you empathize the problems your audiences face. User interviews can give your team rich insights into why people behave the way they exercise. It'south also an effective way to deepen empathy for the users you desire to accomplish.

Enquiry lives on a divergent axis in the double diamond model. Throughout the user enquiry procedure, it'due south paramount to keep any question or activity open-ended. This makes true discovery the focal point of the valuable time you lot have with the users you are trying to build for.

By the end of the research phase your squad should have a big amount of insights and personal opinions about your users feel. These will be the building blocks for the remainder of the project. Hopefully they will exist very dissimilar than the kinds of things y'all idea might be a solution before you lot started this exercise.

build the right thing with empathy maps

By plotting out research on a scale, you can see the preferences toward the best dessert for the intended users.

Map: Draw the path toward a solution

Once you lot 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 y'all to have all the divergent ideas, and converge onto a single problem argument to solve for.

To get there, in that location are three main techniques we utilize for understanding the qualitative research nosotros've nerveless and turning it into a direction: empathy maps and identifying goals and hurting points. You tin see a full caption of these processes here.

Now that you've mapped the journey, create a problem argument that gives your path a destination. To do so, have a look at the user needs your team has identified  and chose one that feels the most universal. Start the problem statement with "How might we…" and make full in the specific user trouble at hand.

This section should leave your team with a clear trouble statement straight from the users. Information technology should be the thought you lot work from going forward — all ideas betoken to solving this specific problem.

build the right thing through ideation

With the information pointing toward cakes, breading and apples your team can put together all the variables with those elements.

Ideate: Collect every possibility, from everyone

Now that you have the problem statement, information technology'southward time to diverge once again. Instead of jumping to the starting time solution you call up of, the next step is to imagine equally many possible solutions every bit you can. Hopefully in the ocean of ideas there volition be a solution that caters to the needs of the users.

This is where it's particularly of import to brand certain you take people from different disciplines and backgrounds participating. A carpenter is going to try to solve a problem with forest, but a mason may be the key to a truly innovative solution. Just like you would talk to all the types of possible users in the offset divergent phase, you desire to collect solutions from all types of people in the second divergent phase.

Yous should walk away from this stage with several ideas you're excited almost (and plenty more than that may be exciting , if not expert). If it feels a petty overwhelming, and like you lot can't possibly choose, that'south a adept matter.

build the right thing

The user research and ideation has led your team to cook an apple pie.

Define: Become an idea of what the solution volition look like

The last step is to develop a strategy and build a prototype of the solution. This is when we converge once more, sorting through our many solutions for the i 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 production will work inside people'south lives. These storyboards will help meet us through to building a paradigm. With the prototype, we're able to turn dorsum to users and test once again, making certain that the thing nosotros congenital is in fact working in the correct way.

Yous should end this stage with a vote on which production and path sketched volition be what you test with your user group. Keep all of your storyboards though. If you users experience your solution is off the mark, you can go back to this step and try a new path toward pattern.

How design thinking helped AccuWeather amend serve its audience.

Building the thing correct means making a turn a profit

User desirability isn't the only affair you have to exam. To make a successful product, information technology also has to be technically viable and viable for the business organisation. Y'all need to bring people into the procedure who can speak to all three of these elements, or yous'll end up making promises to users that you tin can't go on.

Consider who can advocate for each of these sides. At Table 11, we often pair our designers with developers and business organisation leads from our partners' organizations early on in the procedure. That style we know the product will work on all iii fronts, as well as for the end users.

If user desirability were the just thing we needed to answer for, our adjacent visitor would build free water ice cream cone delivery drones. To justify building the right affair for your audition, it besides has to brand sense for the business organization and work with available technology. Without experts on how your business makes things and how your business sells the things yous make, you'll likely end upwardly in production limbo or in the red on an unprofitable product.

Pattern thinking is building the right thing

If you follow the double diamond procedure honestly, you'll find your fashion toward building the right thing. The process forces you lot to question your initial ideas, detect the true problem users confront, develop the all-time solution for users and for your business, and so examination it.

At Tabular array XI, our motto is Tech Done Right — that means building the thing correct and building the right thing. The double diamond procedure ensures nosotros're working off of a solid foundation before we beginning, so we're answerable to our partners and their end users from the beginning.

If you desire to larn more nearly pattern thinking, listen to our CEO on this podcast or attain out to us directly to notice out when our next workshop is.


Go on exploring our Double Diamond series

The Double Diamond series - Research

The Double Diamond series - Map

Double Diamond - Ideate and Define