The Double Diamond is a visual shorthand that captures key steps to take when designing a service.
Diamonds
The separation of activities into two separate diamonds, stresses the importance of making time to understand the specifics of the problem you wish to solve before you start work on designing solutions.
The diamond shapes show how you should explore a wide range of ideas before narrowing these down again and choosing the one you want to concentrate on, the one that will give the best solution to the challenge you want to resolve.
As you move from left to right through the first diamond, you will take a challenge and work to identify the specifics of the problem you want to tackle. The second diamond is about designing the solution to the problem you have identified, again looking at a range of options before narrowing these down to the one that works best.
Phases
Each of the diamonds can each be split into two phases.
An alternative way to understand the diamonds is:
- Diamond 1 is about research.
- Diamond 2 is about designing your solution based on the research carried out and the conclusions reached in Diamond 1.
Designing
In service design terminology:
- Diamond 1 is about making sure you are going to design the right thing.
- Diamond 2 is about ensuring you design the thing right.
Challenge to outcome
Before you start the discover phase, you will need to have a challenge that will be the subject for your service design journey. After you have travelled through the double diamonds, you will have reached an outcome.
Involving service users
There is an assumption in service design that users will be involved throughout your design journey; you will not merely be extracting information from them.
As far as is practical and proportionate for your service design journey, you should engage with your users. Users are the experts in their experiences of the service you offer and you should include them in your service design journey to help you understand and identify both your problem and the solutions you wish to put in place.
Monitoring and evaluation
In the spirit of continuous improvement, a service design activity shouldn’t be considered as an isolated activity. Once you have achieved your outcome, you should monitor and evaluate it. This loops back to wider self-assessment activity, which will identify any future challenges to be addressed through the service design process
