The Double Diamond Design process is not reality — real design work is messy

Doing design work and talking about design are two different things. One is messy, while the other one should be clean. Don’t confuse the two and enjoy both.

The Double Diamond Design process describes the messy design process in a neat and structured way. It’s a visualization of the different steps of a design process emphasizing divergence and convergence of problem solving. It’s clean. It makes it easy to explain and talk about the general concepts of a design process, but it doesn’t mean that an actual design process is as clean and neat as it depicts. The Double Diamond is like a curated Instagram feed with filters applied.

Sometimes these picture perfect models backfires. I see it causing stress and distrust, even among design practitioners, in the messy design process when reality doesn’t reflect theory. Designing is messy, but digging into messiness is at least something that excites me. I don’t want a job where I simply follow an already tried and proven recipe, knowing exactly what will come out at the end. Sure it would be easy to just repeat the same procedure over and over again and have a guaranteed successful outcome at the end. To me, however, easy is equal to boring. Design is not easy and it shouldn’t be easy. (Let’s not make design boring, please.) Design is about imagining and exploring possible futures, diving into the unknowns, by experimenting and learning along the way. This is exciting work! Of course this kind of process will be messy. Let’s embrace this messiness and try to enjoy the journey.

Sharing design work or describing the process after the fact is about packaging and conveying a message so it can be received by a specific audience. So the story we tell afterwards should of course be cleaned up and to the point.

Doing design work and communicating about design are two different things. One process is by nature messy explained by its purpose, the other one needs to be clean to serve its purpose. Don’t confuse the two. Great designers can do both and hopefully enjoy it all.