What Is Design Thinking & How Is It Related To Double-Diamond Design Process and Human-Centered Design?
The primary objective of this article is to develop a fundamental understanding of Design Thinking and how it is applied by practitioners in real world problem solving and solutions development.
Design thinking is a methodical approach of surfacing the right problem statements and developing solutions to those problem statements. (VM)
The practitioner focused, innovation management view of Design Thinking was popularised by Stanford Design School (Mark Parry, Griffin W. Cottle, 2026).
Two of the powerful tools of design thinking are human-centered design and double-diamond divergence-convergence model of design.
Nearly every product or service designed by corporations around the world is primarily geared towards use by humans who will spend their resources to gain access to these products and services for solving their everyday problem statements. Thus, a human-centric approach to product and service designs has become a key theme in practice and the organisations that incorporate human-centricity in their value system are able to create breakthrough products and services that sit right with human desires, needs, and capabilities.
In principle, Human-centered design (HCD) is the process of ensuring that people’s needs are met, that the resulting product is understandable and usable, that it accomplishes the desired tasks, and that the experience of use is positive and enjoyable. An effective design satisfies a large number of constraints and concerns, including shape and form, cost and efficiency, reliability and effectiveness, understandability and usability, the pleasure of appearance, the pride of ownership, and the joy of actual use. (Design Of Everyday Things - Don Norman).
Every effective design process usually covers the four stages namely observation, generation, prototyping, and testing. The design process primarily goes through two phases.
Phase 1: Finding The Right Problem
Phase 2: Finding The Best Way To Solve
This double-phased approach was structured by the British Design Council as “Double-Diamond” as an effort towards adopting a strategic approach to design and popularising it for wider adoption in design management as a practice.
The Double-Diamond Model of Design
The double-diamond approach applies two phases of the design process; finding the right problem and finding the right solution. The approach is called double-diamond because it deploys the sub-steps of divergence and convergence phases. Divergence sub-step is about expanding the scope of the problem to assess all the fundamental issues underlying it. Convergence sub-step is about converging to a single key problem statement to solve that helps achieve the desired goal.
Similarly, once the problem statement is defined clearly to solve for the right underlying issue, the process then diverges to look into as many solutions as possible and then converge to the most optimal solution.
As per British Council, below are the steps taken irrespective of tools used.
Figure Source: British Design Council Website https://www.designcouncil.org.uk/resources/the-double-diamond/
DISCOVER | DEFINE | DEVELOP | DELIVER |
The first diamond helps people understand, rather than simply assume, what the problem is. It involves speaking to and spending time with people who are affected by the issues. | The insight gathered from the discovery phase can help you to define the challenge in a different way. | The second diamond encourages people to give different answers to the clearly defined problem, seeking inspiration from elsewhere and co-designing with a range of different people. | Delivery involves testing out different solutions at small-scale, rejecting those that will not work and improving the ones that will. |
The Double-Diamond process visualisation was slightly modified by Don Norman to be represented as below.
Human-Centered Design
Human centricity is all about keeping the end user, presumably human at the center of every thought during the design process. It starts with empathy towards the end-user and how the user is going to use a designed solution (a product or a service), what hurdles may come in the way of smooth usage and most importantly, will the user be able to achieve the end goal.
This is an iterative process and goes through rapid cycles of iterations that involve following key activities.
Observation
Ideation
Prototyping and
Testing
Observation and Idea generation are primarily related to the first phase of the Double-diamond process where deep observations lead to divergent problem statements and then figuring out the key problem statement to be solved for.
They are also related to the second phase of the double-diamond process. The deep observations into the needs, wants, and capabilities of intended users leads to devising multiple solutions, discarding the ones in a way that may not add value and once a handful of solutions are arrived at, performing rapid prototyping to test each out and keep refining for the most optimal solution.
Idea generation for potential solutions relies heavily on deferred judgement and volume (of ideas) as every team member should feel comfortable exploring and sharing their idea about a solution without worrying about getting judged. Thus, the organisation and team value system must involve deferring any judgements that may come across in people’s minds. Volume of ideas matters as this leads to numerous solutions to choose from and even though a solution may not be optimal as a whole, a part of it may add to the final solution.
The only way to really know whether an idea is reasonable is to test it (Design Of Everyday Things - Don Norman). Thus prototyping is necessary to continuously test whether our thinking towards the solution is right and whether it is on the right path to achieve the final objective.
Prototyping helps in continually assessing that the problem is well understood. Prototyping also allows us to keep discarding what is not value adding and enables continual refinement and enhancement of solution features at a very low cost. The term “fail-fast" actually applies to the prototyping and iterations phase where small failures lead to continual improvements in the solution design (A solution can be a product, a process, or a system).
End Goal Of Applying Design Thinking Process
The end goal of Human-Centered approach to design is to ensure that a product fits the real need of people, and that they are usable and understandable.
Design Thinking, brings together what is desirable from a human point of view with what is technologically feasible and economically viable.
Design Thinking is a multifaceted set of interrelated Thinking Modes, Attitudes & Values, Attributes, and Abilities that can be learned and supported through various Activities & Practices,Techniques, and a conducive Environment to overcome emergent Blocks. (Auernhammer, Jan, and Roth, Bernard. 2021).
Forward
In future texts, we will discuss how organisations can leverage Innovation Management programs to achieve strategic advantage for long term sustained success in market.
Team, 10th Boulevard Labs
Citation (s)
[1] Auernhammer, Jan, andRoth, Bernard. 2021. "The Origin and Evolution of Stanford University’s Design Thinking: From Product Design to Design Thinking in Innovation Management." Journal of Product InnovationManagement 38: 623–644. https://doi.org/10.1111/jpim.12594
[2] Mark Parry, Griffin W. Cottle, Lost in transmission: Knowledge, academia and the origins of design thinking, Journal of Innovation & Knowledge, Volume 14, 2026, 100969, ISSN 2444-569X,
[3] Donald A. Norman. 2002. The Design of Everyday Things. Basic Books, Inc., USA.
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