Design Process Step by Step 👩💻| Double Diamond Model Explained
😍 From Episode 3 of Design Hangout
Learning the UX Design Process from scratch with what’s available online would be really confusing if I were at the begninng of my UX journey.
There are a lot of scattered articles, books, and videos, but when I was preparing my Become a UX Designer in 2023 video, I failed to find a truly comprehensive guide online 😬 So, I’ve decided to create one for you before it’s time to record ‘Become a UX Designer in 2024’.
The Double Diamond 💎💎 Model
We will mostly base our process on the Double Diamond Model — the most popular approach in UX Design.
It covers all of the phases and steps necessary to execute a successful UX Design project.
The Double Diamond model was popularised in 2005 by the British Design Council. So, as with everything in UX Design, it’s objectively young 🐣, but still…
it has 18 years of proven track record of success, and we didn’t really change much when it comes to its core.
Converge ↗ and Diverge ↘️ Phases
The idea is that we have two cycles, the first and the second diamond, that both consist of diverge and converge phases.
- The first diamond is about 👉 designing the right thing, so it will be focused on research and defining the problem
- The second diamond is about 👉 designing things right, so it’s more about defining the solution, testing it, and iterating.
The diverge phases ↗ are when we explore and open up — we do research, brainstorm, sketch low-fi mockups, etc.
The converge↘ phases are for synthesizing — the problem, the corrections needed, or the final solution.
The four phases of the process are discover, define (the first diamond), and develop, deliver (in the second diamond). We will go through them in detail.
Step 1: Discover (Research) 🕵️♀️
The first phase of the process is Discover or Research. It’s a divergent phase. We’re starting a new project and need to explore the existing information, decide what we’re missing, and perform research to gather more data.
Understand the brief
Define what the problem is, where we are right now when it comes to possible solutions, and what activities we need to perform. Make sure that the project brief lists all the known challenges, problems, data points, existing research, and previous discussions that took place.
At this stage, it’s just an initial plan and a lot can change as we discover more as we go through the design process.
Cluster the topics
Get a high-level overview of what needs to be covered, and possibly limit the scope of the research if needed.
Primary and secondary research
In this phase, you need to work closely with your Product Manager because all the research activities usually are on the line between product and design
- Primary research is the research our team performs ourselves, like user interviews, usability testing of the existing solution, stakeholder interviews, competitor analysis, surveys, etc.
- Secondary research (desk research) refers to gathering prior research findings and other relevant information related to a new project. Secondary research is divided into two main types:
Internal, where we're looking into our company's research repository to gather artifacts from past primary research projects.
External secondary research is focused on sources outside of our organization, like open data repositories, reports created by reputable organizations, or whitepapers.
Outcome
The accumulation of unstructured research findings — You will gather some research recordings and notes, documents, reports, survey results, usability testing spreadsheets, etc.
Phase 2: Define (Synthesis) 🧪
Now, we need to focus on systemizing the research findings and forming the deliverables that will help us in the upcoming ideation phase.
Differentiate themes
The first step is to group our research findings into themes. We can re-use the topics we’ve defined in the first phase, and add some new themes if needed.
Insights
Then, from all the themes, we need to conclude the insights.
Insights are the truths about the user experience or state of the system.
Opportunity areas
We need to describe the potential areas of action to guide our exploration in the next phase.
Personas
Now, it’s also time to revisit the personas that we’ve probably mentioned in the initial brief. We need to answer the question ‘who we’re creating this solution for?’.
If you don’t have the personas yet, you’d need to either create them (which can be a long project on its own) or at least create draft user avatars based on behavioral characteristics important for this initiative.
HMWs & Problem Statements
We need to scope down the focus and describe the essence of the project.
👉 A problem statement is a brief description of the problem (or need) that needs to be solved.
[Who . . . (descriptive)] needs [to achieve what . . . (verb)] because/to [insight. . . (compelling)]
👉 How might we (HMW) are short questions that start the process of generating ideas and solutions.
Problem statements describe what’s needed from the user’s perspective. HMWs are created with our team in mind.
KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) and project goals
It’s important to define your project goals and connect them with high-level company goals.
👉 KPIs are the metrics that you’ll track your project success against, like MAU (Monthly Active Users), sing-ups, etc.
Outcome
At the end of the Define (Synthesis) phase, we have our 🔖 brief revised and enriched with new information. It produced a good base for the next step — Develop.
Phase 3: Develop (Ideation) 🧠
It is a divergent phase, so the objective is to explore the ideas. We will work in the ideation-evaluation cycles.
Ideation
Don’t think about the feasibility, level of difficulty, or resources at this point.
Ideation is when you come up with ideas without much judgment. It’s the fun part of this phase since you should consciously release all the constraints.
Some people talk about the ‘yes, and…’ approach, instead of the judgemental ‘yes, but…’ approach that we usually take as Designers.
For this whole phase, we use low-fidelity mockups, sketches, and text. The objective is to quickly create low-cost artifacts that we will feel comfortable changing or throwing away.
Evaluation 👩💻
You need to notice the pros and cons of all your ideas and select the best ones.
Of course, you need to work together with your team. After the first selection by yourself, present your low-fidelity designs to your Team and ask them for feedback.
In addition, to gather feedback from your team, you can also use other methods of evaluation like:
- Impact/feasibility matrix, which will help you compare ideas against each other using those two dimensions.
- Dot-voting, where everyone has a finite number of dots to vote on their favorite solutions.
If needed, you can also consult your ideas with company advisors, domain experts, and users, to gather their thoughts about the high-level concepts.
Outcome
As a result of the Develop / Ideation phase, you should end up with a leading idea 🚀 (or a small number of ideas) that you would like to prototype and test with users.
Phase 4: Deliver (Implementation)
Your goal is to create a representation of this idea, test it, and iterate on it until you come to the final solution that has the biggest chance of being successful.
Build — Test — Iterate
This phase is based on the three-step cycle: Build — Test — Iterate.
Now, you’re working with high-fidelity mockups and clickable prototypes.
You may need to go through this cycle more than once, with the engagement both from your Team and your users.
Design handoff 👩💻
At the end of those cycles, you need to prepare designs for the final handoff. It means that you need to take all the variants, edge cases, and interactions into consideration.
Implementation
The final step of this phase is assisting developers in the implementation of your work. As a Designer you need to ensure the quality and help adjust the design if unexpected issues come up.
Measure and iterate*
After going through the whole design process based on the Double Diamond model, we have one more important step to take — measure the results and iterate on our work 🧪
After releasing the product, it’s extremely important that we track the KPIs over time and determine whether or not our project was successful.
It will help you learn what actually worked and what you still need to change in future iterations.
Do all design projects use the same process?
I would love to make it clear that not all design projects use exactly the same process. What we’re talking about today is a perfect blueprint that should guide you in your work.
In real life, we of course need some flexibility to adjust the process to a specific project.
You may skip some steps, repeat them, or add more activities. It all depends on the needs, resources, and risks.
If you have any questions or comments about the content, please leave a comment or reach out to me at alicja@outdraw.design
Want to learn more about how to take your portfolio to the next level?
I would like to invite you to join my 5-day Free Portfolio Masterclass!
- Day 1: Take the inventory of your projects
- Day 2: Include project goals & company goals
- Day 3: Show your design process
- Day 4: Text & engaging structure
- Day 5: Mockups & visual assets
👉 Join the Portfolio Masterclass
Use this week to significantly improve your chance of landing your dream job!
