Double Diamond (design process model)

Double Diamond is the name of a design process model popularized by the British Design Council in 2005.^[1] The process was adapted from the divergence-convergence model proposed in 1996 by Hungarian-American linguist Béla H. Bánáthy.^[2][3] The two diamonds represent a process of exploring an issue more widely or deeply (divergent thinking) and then taking focused action (convergent thinking).^[4] It suggests that, as a design method, that the design process should have four phases:

• Discover: Understand the issue rather than merely assuming what it is. This phase involves speaking to and spending time with people who are affected by the issues.
• Define: With insight gathered from the discovery phase, define the challenge in a different way.
• Develop: Give different answers to the clearly defined problem, seeking inspiration from elsewhere and co-designing with a range of different people.
• Deliver: Test different solutions at a small scale. Reject those that will not work and improve the ones that will.^[4]

The Design Council's visual representation of their Double Diamond design and innovation process.

To celebrate 20 years of the Double Diamond in 2023, the Design Council released a visual representation under an open license and created a Mural template.^[5][6]

An adaptation of the Double Diamond Design Model to highlight the iterative nature of the design process.

The Double Diamond model is useful in design education, and has been adapted to provide additional details for following the model, along with suggesting the iterative nature to design between each diamond.^[7][8]