My product design process – a walkthrough of the Double Diamond UX Design Process

does the perfect design process exist i feel like when we are learning design we're taught this very linear design process but in reality when you're working as a designer the design process is pretty messy and it's not always so perfectly linear and perfectly applied to every single project now having a design process is good because it gives you structure focus and direction without a process it can be really difficult and ambiguous to know how to move forward and where to go next how to get from ambiguous problem statement to a final design concept however this

doesn't mean that you should follow the exact same rigorous or linear design process for each project your design process should be something that is flexible and that is adaptable for each project so that you can kind of change your process and adapt to the situation or the scenario i think sarah duty said it best in a recent tweet of hers where she said ux is messy and that's why your portfolio doesn't need to showcase a perfect ux process and i totally agree with this i see a lot of folks over indexing and worrying about applying

this perfect ux process to their case studies on their portfolio or to their projects at their company don't get me wrong process is important so in this video i want to walk you through the double diamond design process this is a very common process in the product ux design world and one that i use as well i want to talk about some of the methodologies some of the frameworks and exercises that you can use at each step in the double diamond process and also give you some ideas on how you can flex and adapt to

this process to fit your needs and the project you're working on i like to think of the double diamond process as sort of my baseline toolkit before we keep going into this let's pause and look at the double diamond process in detail i'm going to walk through it end to end let's do it so you may or may not be familiar already with the double diamond process a quick google on this process and you will find a ton of articles blog posts videos all about this process it's a very common approach to product and ux

design so let's walk through it together okay so i have it on my ipad here but i'm also going to pull it up here on the youtube video so you can see it in detail also so here's the double diamond process you can see that we have two really clear diamonds and the purpose of these diamonds and the intention that they are diamond shape is because these represent sort of two really key phases of the product design process and the reason they're diamonds is because each sort of half of the diamond is either converging or

diverging so let's start with this first diamond where you can see at this stage in the discover process we are diverging so we are going really really wide before then starting to converge during the define phase and then there's sort of this point in the middle where we then start going wide again diverging before converging into the delivery phase and finally handing off our project or shipping it live so it's important to note that the diverging phases of the diamonds are your chance to really go wide to not sort of limit or hold yourself back

this is really sort of a moment for ideation and exploration in the converging phases of the diamond we are taking those ideas that we did during the diverging phase and refining and narrowing them down into sort of chosen concepts or a more sort of refined direction of where we want to go and what we want to do let's look together at the first stage of the diamond now this stage of the diamond is all about defining and discovering you should be kicking off this process with some sort of problem statement or goal but no refined

brief or set of product requirements this is your opportunity to work together with your product manager with your maybe engineering or developer lead to come together explore the problem space go wide diverge and towards the end of the first diamond when you start converging that's when together you'll start sort of writing the brief and coming up with that list of product requirements let's go deeper into the discover phase of the first diamond so here we're diverging and some sort of exercises or methodologies that you could do during this phase of the diamond is first of

all problem exploration let's go deeper into the problem and sort of try to learn and understand more about what the problem is that we're trying to solve and this could include things like foundational research you might engage in doing some surveys or looking at existing data or metrics that you might have on hand to better understand what the problem space is this is also a good time to perhaps do a competitor analysis to see what else is going on in the market and sort of use that the research insights and sort of the problem exploration

to then work on some sort of user journey map the next half of the diamond is where we start converging and this is the define phase so at this phase we're now taking all of that foundational research problem exploration and discovery and we're starting to really synthesize that this could mean taking learnings and findings from your competitor analysis from your foundational research clustering them into themes identifying key insights you might also want to highlight sort of key recommendations or opportunities for product and design to consider at this point you should also be refining your scope

and thinking about what is the list of product requirements that we're going to focus on for this project this could include a little bit of feature prioritization maybe in the first half of the diamond you came up with a wish list of all the different features now we're really narrowing those down and prioritizing at this stage you could also start to bring in how might we statements and or user stories which i also find really really helpful and now that you're coming sort of to this like end of the first diamond you should really be

starting to sort of formulate that brief or product requirement document now this should be owned by the product manager if you are working with one but as a designer you should be working on this together and you as the designer have a lot of influence on what should be in this document or brief now let's move on to the second diamond and this is now your opportunity to ideate and explore different concepts and like visual concepts based on the requirements and the refined scope that you came up with in the first diamond throughout the second

diamond you're gonna get the feedback you're gonna iterate you're gonna hand off your designs eventually to the engineering team qa the work and then eventually hopefully your product will launch this second diamond is more the creative part of the design process whereas the first diamond was a lot more strategic and foundational now as a designer you may thrive in one or the other i personally thrive more in the first diamond but i know a lot of designers who are super super skilled at the second diamond and there's no right or wrong different designers have different

strengths but it's good to have sort of a baseline of each of the diamonds and sort of know how to contribute as a designer in both alright let's start with the first half of the second diamond which is develop and this is where we are diverging a lot on our concepts and explorations and coming up with different design ideas to solve the problem here you should be going really really wide the sky is the limit right try not to constrain yourself too much during this diverging phase now not only should this exploration consider the sort

of visual flow and user flow but also the information architecture the hierarchy how different sort of parts of the experience are going to harmonize and relate together so here is where you can start taking pen to paper and maybe in the first diamond you had a few ideas that you all threw around as a team here is where you now start to actually execute on those ideas this could be super low level wireframes this doesn't have to be high fidelity at this stage you could do really light level prototypes or wireframes whatever it is that

kind of allows you to quickly and iteratively get your ideas out there user testing is also really helpful at this stage maybe you have a few different concepts and you're struggling to decide which one to move forward with i sometimes like to build out a couple of interactive flows and prototypes they can be super low fidelity they don't need to be super high fidelity just be at a wireframe level and run some usability tests get some feedback from potential users and see what they think about the different concepts you have getting feedback is a big

part of this half of the diamond so you should be taking your work to design crits to your design team and getting feedback from your design peers stakeholder reviews and taking them to design reviews with your sort of product and counterparts is also really important so gathering that feedback from your peers and iterating and improving on the concepts that you have towards the end part of this first half of the diamond you do want to start refining your direction a little bit and putting together perhaps a proposal or a recommendation having some really strong design

rationale some confidence some conviction and like a chosen concept that you're going to move forward with and refine in the second half of this diamond and speaking of the second half of the diamond let's move into that now which is the deliver phase of this diamond alright here is where we are converging again okay so we did a lot of the sort of design exploration in the develop part now we are refining on that chosen concept and bringing it to the finish line this is usually where i start to move to more high fidelity design

working with the design system fine tuning tweaking all those sort of visual elements and pixels and again design crits and design reviews are really helpful at this stage to get that feedback from your peers and sort of really get down to the final level of detail of your work you should also start to document your design decisions any logic as part of your design experience to get ready for handing over to the engineers once your work is handed over to engineers the design process doesn't end there there is then a moment where you're working together

closely with the engineers to make sure that they're implementing your designs correctly this is often referred to as the qa or quality assurance part of the design process and so this is why putting in the extra work earlier to really document your design is going to make this part a lot smoother now the sort of last part of this diamond could be a very sort of iterative repetitive kind of cycle depending on the culture at your company or maybe the goal of the team or project that you're on this could be a repetitive cycle where

you launch you get feedback you iterate and you sort of repeat and so maybe you're doing a b testing or maybe you're sort of iteratively improving the product over time so it doesn't necessarily mean that the product is like shipped done we're moving on to the next thing this could be a bit of a sort of recyclable iterative part of the diamond so as you build and test and sort of launch things you're going to get a lot of feedback from your users you could then use to refine and make small improvements going forward so

what we've just walked through the double diamond process is obviously in this structure a very linear design process as we've walked through it i've mentioned a lot of frameworks exercises different methodologies and honestly i've probably missed some as well this is not a comprehensive list of all of the things that you should be doing at each half of the diamonds what i want to reiterate in this video is that this is just a guide you don't need to do all of the different frameworks that i mentioned for every single project as you sort of move

up in your career you'll come to realize that your role as a designer is really to critically think about what are the frameworks i need to make decisions confidently and move forward what are the things i need to know and what are the things i can do to help me get that knowledge so i can confidently move forward think about what is going to serve you your cross-functional partners your stakeholders what is the information you need to know and how can you go about getting that information for example i don't do a competitor analysis for

every project i only do it if i think it's really gonna serve me give me some insights fill some knowledge gaps that i might have and help inform my next decision it's more about critically thinking what is it that i need to move forward with confidence and conviction what are the different things i could do to help me get there as you work throughout this process and sort of go through the double diamond a few times you'll come to sort of learn what the different methodologies are that serve you best at different parts and stages

in your design process for me i kind of like to think of the double diamond as like my baseline design process it's like a tool kit that has a lot of different things i can pull out of it whenever i feel like i need it essentially it's up to you as a designer to decide what are the right tools i need for the job and really clearly communicate those expectations out all right that was a meaty topic i would love to hear what you think about this double diamond process is this totally new to you

do you use different process a different methodology i would totally love to hear it let me know in the comments below and i'll see you next time bye [Music]