Double Diamond in Project Management

Developed by Jacopo Renzi

Abstract

Every company could have its own method to face the process behind the design of a new product or for solving a problem but it has been observed that all firms go through the same steps when they have to think, design or solve and this is the reason why Design Council developed and launched the Double Diamond in 2005.

The Double Diamond is a model which aims to let design teams visualise the main steps they have to follow in order to achieve the best result in the best possible way. Richard Eisermann, Design Council’s Director of Design and Innovation at the time, together with his team decided to extrapolate a model which described the stages behind design processes. From an analysis of previous Design Council’s works, it came up that all firms followed a similar, if not the same, procedure and the Double Diamond model gathers all moves in four principal phases: discover, define, develop and deliver.

The scope was to “create something that would be applicable in any field”, and despite its recent introduction into the process design market, that is why it is widely utilised because thanks to its adaptability it can be used whether you have to develop a new product or you have to face a problem. The Double Diamond model has to be seen like a guideline for the project manager who has to plan, coordinate and assess the project’s activities understanding and evaluating possible dangers and problems for the purpose of successfully conclude the project respecting time, performance and cost.

This article aims to be a useful tool even for people who don’t know about this model because it gives them a full overview and some practical examples and also for people who already know about it but it could be a brief reading for getting some inspiration on how to implemented it in their projects.

The basis idea

In 2003 Design Council was focused on the importance of the adoption of a strategic approach to design and how much significant was the design management. Richard Eisermann had just started his new position at the company when he asked his team to describe what design process is. They had regular meetings during which they were sharing their respective researches on the design methods used across the organisation’s previous works in order to elaborate and design an adaptable structure that could fit all methods.

Richard came across the basis concept of the Double Diamond years before, in particular he remembered that "Dave Duncanson, an engineer at IDEO, talked to me about the product development process as being like the classic diamond-shaped kite, with a tail composed of progressively smaller diamonds. […]". So, the idea of divergent and convergent diagrams had already been founded although it did not have a name yet.

The model

As the name can suggest, the Double Diamond’s graphic represents two connected diamond shapes which aim to guide designers, engineers and project managers through the process starting from an initial challenge or problem to the best final solution.

There are two main partitions, one between the two diamonds and the other is a sub-division of each diamonds. From the external division you can notice how the model emphasise the initial challenge or problem on the far left, then the final solution is on the far right and the middle breaking point is where the design brief occurs. Anna White, one of the people behind the Double Diamond, said: “For me the first part of the diamond is about questioning the brief and defining the problem statement. I explain it as ‘designing the right thing’. The second part of the diamond is about exploring possibility, iteration, testing and developing, so ‘designing the thing right’”.

Moreover, each diamond’s sub-division brings to the four main stages of the model: discover, define, develop and deliver. The idea behind the diamond-kite shape is that you start from a specific point, then you have to space and consider numerous different alternatives and at the end only one will be chosen. This explains the divergent and convergent trend of the diagram that reflects what happens in real design processes.

Double Diamond Model. Own creation inspired by

Discover

This is the first step starting with the single problem and ending with a portfolio of different possibilities that have to be properly evaluated later in the process. In the graphical way, this is the divergent part in which almost every idea is welcome and deserves to be taken into account. In fact, one of the main aspects of this stage is to keep minds open.

Initial influences and inspirations can come out from different sides, it could be a product manager, a designer or even a customer. Afterwards, information has to be search and the three key sources are:

- Market research

- User research

- Design research group

The market research includes tracking of perceptions and attitudes related to the company, its products and services, but it can also regard competitor analysis. It has been noticed that being user-oriented is one of the most important keys for companies, so in this phase is fundamental to understand what the customers need and in which way they would like to being satisfied. In addition, design research groups aim to applied design thinking from the beginning of a design process.

Define

Once all the ideas and information are gathered, it is time to define. So, it is important that the whole team work on the project in order to assess possible issues from the beginning. It is fundamental to establish and keep a communication with other experts and department internally. Thus, not only designers have to take part but also all the other employees who can contribute in the evaluation of the project. This phase usually finishes with the corporate sign-off that can allow project managers continue their project or not.

In the Define stage you traverse the convergent part because it starts with numerous possible solutions and it narrows until the definition of the best result. This result represents the proposal that will be presented in order to obtain the corporate sign-off.

Develop

At this point the project has been accepted and it has obtained the corporate and financial backing, thus it is the phase where design teams give life to prototypes and try and try. It is crucial under both the economical and temporal aspect to gather experts from different departments in order to speed up the process avoiding useless attempts that can be easily cut out just asking questions to the right people. This is the most iterative part because there are continuous tests and feedback until the optimal solution.

Deliver

Finally, the deliver stage consists in taking the concept though the final testing signed-off, produced and launched.

The key parts are:

- Final testing, approval and launch

- Targets, evaluations and feedback loops.

Basically, companies have to identify any late constraints or problems before manufacture and have to be aware of standards and regulations of the specific sector.

Furthermore, organisations are required to report back on the success of the launched product or service with the particular scope to prove how a good design impacted on the success of the product or service.

Applications

This section reports two cases taken from the Design Council’s “A study of the design process” in which the organisation worked with eleven global brands in order to understand how they move into design processes. In both cases the Double Diamond can be observed even if each company has its own structure for designing.

BSKYB

British Sky Broadcasting (BSKYB), also known as Sky, is a British broadcaster and telecommunications company that provides television and broadband Internet services. The company was formed in 1990 by the merger of two early incumbents in the UK multi-channel TV market, Sky Television and British Satellite Broadcasting.

Design Council had noticed the particular characteristic of the company to have an internal design management capability together with a strong relationship with an external design consultancy for the execution of product designs.

Key elements of BSkyB’s product design strategy include:

- Ensuring the commissioned agency had a crucial understanding of the brand and positioning, and briefing them to incorporate brand identity into product design

- Developing a formal design language to give all products a consistent brand identity.

- Working with its external agency partner during early market position, user behaviour and concept development phases.

- Creating separate identities for individual product lines based on the requirements of their specific markets.

- Developing a policy for visually identical products with multiple simultaneous manufacturing partners, using different internal electronics.

- Getting buy-in from senior management (and a direct link to CEO) which makes it easier to justify investment in design and gives it a higher status within the organisation.

At that time, BSkyB was facing the re-designing of its set top boxes which were produced by external manufacturers and originally the design of the boxes was left entirely to the manufacturers’ discretion. But, around three years before the time of the study, the company’s senior management recognised that it would have be better to deliver a recognisable product as a highly visible element of the company’s presence in the customer’s home and a reinforcing feature for the company’s brand identity.

After a competitive pitch and the evaluation of different ideas and agencies, BSkyB selected Frog Design for this project and Ed Snodgrass was chosen as the project manager. He guided the company and the design consultancy through the design process called Discover – Design – Deliver. It is simple to address this internal process to the Double Diamond model and, as shown in the figure, the main difference is that the Design phase of BSkyB is what the Double Diamond identifies as Define and Develop.

Design at BSKYB. Own creation.

Discover

During the Discover stage, Frog came up with four concepts in line with a positioning model which also focused on the differentiation from competitors. It is also important to be user-oriented and BSkyB demonstrated to place high priority on understanding what the customers’ needs were. Moreover, for the best products development the company also highlighted the importance to give to both consultancy and the client a deeper understanding of this gathered information.

Design

This phase includes the two middle stages of the Double Diamond. Firstly, BSkyB chose the best presented solution from Frog, then, even if the company had always been in conversation with the design studio and the manufacturers, the communication between the three increased in order to develop the best prototype. They used 3D CAD together with mock-ups to give a better understanding of dimensions.

Deliver

It consisted in evaluating the final product with manufacturers in order to make it suitable with their manufacturing processes. It is the stage when late adjustments were done and then there was the production of the first items sent out for user testing. Afterwards, there were further evaluations and fixing until the last product ready to be launched in the market.

In conclusion, this was a case where a good managing of design process allowed the company, the studio design and the manufacturers to work better and almost without any waste of time.

The LEGO Foundation

The Danish LEGO Foundation is one of the largest toy makers in the world and it is primarily known for the plastic little bricks with which many generations of children have played and developed their creativity.

The LEGO Foundation was founded in 1932 by the Danish carpenter Ole Kirk Christiansen and the name of the company came from the abbreviation of the Danish words "leg godt" that mean "play well".

It is a relevant case study to analyse because at the time of the Design Council study the company had just developed a new design system called Design for Business (D4B) which accurately follow the Double Diamond structure. The main idea for this new introduction to the LEGO design team was to ensure that all design activities were supported by a real business case. The key elements of the Design for Business are[5]:

- The alignment between corporate objectives and design strategy

- Strengthening the collaboration in core project teams containing a design, a marketing and product manager

- Challenge sessions for the team during this process, run by colleagues and D4B members

- The development of a standard sequence of activities for product development, with frequent evaluations and decision gates

- The development of standard processes for presenting the outputs of design phases to allow straightforward comparison of different projects and options.

The last two points particularly match the purpose of the Double Diamond in giving a framework as a guide and a help for the design team. LEGO wanted to shape its product-focused approach with a larger perspective of the innovation within the organisation. Thus, three “tools” were introduced in the design process:

- An innovation model, which aims to encourage a shared understanding and language around innovation.

- A foundation overview, that consists in a poster-based tool used for visualise the company development process.

- A roadmap, to plan how each phase relates to the next.

Focusing on the foundation overview, you can clearly and easily visualise the company’s development process that is fairly related to the Double Diamond structure. The process is divided into what LEGO calls four Prototyping phases and five Manufacturing phases. The four prototyping phases can be summarised with the first diamond while the five manufacturing stages can be represented by the second one as the two parts of the process are separated by the evaluation of the project and the go/no-go decision which is the corporate sign-off in the Design Council’s model.

Design at LEGO. Own creation.

- P0 (portfolio kick-off): the business objectives for the project are defined. This phase usually takes two or three months with the goal to address the critical problems that have to be solved for products.

- P1 (opportunity freeze): the team evaluates the alternatives that would solve the issues identified in P0 and start developing them into concept. The marketing team is also involved to build market and customers insights into the business case.

- P2 (concept freeze): assessment of the concepts in the context of overall business, product, communication and process requirements. Some initial prototyping may be done and the first complete business case is prepared.

- P3 (portfolio freeze): it is decided which ideas turn into projects. The full project requirements are established, including staff requirements, tooling and design costs and the full business case is put forward for approval.

As it is shown in the Figure n. ,P0 and P1 can be related to the discovery phase while P2 and P3 fit in the definition stage of the Double Diamond. In fact, in the first two parts there is the research, the coming up of new ideas and the try to put them into concepts while the last two steps start focusing on the doable ones and outlining other aspects in order to get the project ready to present. In addition, LEGO introduce a foundation document through which it gives a template that has to be used for the projects’ presentations allowing teams to focus mainly on the contents and let bosses to make more objective decisions.

Once the project obtained the corporate sign-off, the team moves to the second diamond in which LEGO recognise five main steps.

- M1 (project kick off) designers and product managers work together to refine the product definition and the business plan that will be used to bring it to market, ensuring that all design activities will be focussed on fulfilling the precise business brief

- M2 (business freeze) the business case is finalised and product design can be completed to meet the business requirements

- M3 (product freeze) product design is complete and attention turns to the packaging, marketing and communication aspects of the project

- M4 (communication freeze) all physical aspects of the product, packaging and can begin the process of building the supply chain necessary to deliver the product to market

- M5 (procurement freeze) the supply chain is completed, manufacturing is started and the product is launched.

In this case, the first two stages are fits in the Double Diamond’s Develop while the other three are related to the delivery part since they regard the packaging, the marketing and all the needed activities for launching the new products.

To conclude, the economic benefits of this approach can be seen on the “Revenue of the LEGO Group from 2003 to 2019”.

Benefits

Focusing on the benefits of the Double Diamond it can be said that thanks to its flexibility it can be used in many different kinds of companies situated in many different markets, no matter if they produce physical products or services. In addition, having a clear way to structure the design process take to a good design, and good design makes both products more competitive and users happy. Moreover, the power of the firm’s brand identity increase and the user-oriented philosophy help a lot of companies which didn’t focused on it before.

Limitations

One of the main complains about the Double Diamond is that it is too linear and some companies or designers could not want to consider it due to the ongoing changes of the market and in the companies themselves. Another drawback sets in the develop stage inasmuch there could be changes due to market shifts or competitor activities. So, the ideal process described by the Double Diamond could last too long, especially for that firms which compete in fluctuating markets.

Framework For Innovation

Design Council has already written the future of the Double Diamond since they improved it with the “Framework for Innovation”. The main point they improved regard the non-linearity of the updated model because numerous organizations which applied the Double Diamond notice that they often needed to come back at the beginning in order to learn more from the underlying problems, so some arrows were added to the diagram.

In addition, it added four core principles to the previous model:

- Put people first.

- Communicate visually and inclusively.

- Collaborate and co-create.

- Iterate, iterate, iterate.

Conclusion

To conclude, the Double Diamond has to be seen like a flexible and adaptable way of develop a design process in order to make it as efficient and valuable as possible. So, what a project manager should take from this article is the knowledge of this theory and keep in mind when facing new challenges or problems.

Bibliography

• "Project Management" (Ninth Edition) by Dennis Lock

• "A study of the design process" (2007) Eleven lessons: managing design in eleven global brands