Design Thinking, Agile and Double Diamond working together with Illustrations
Design Thinking is a fantastic approach anyone can use to solve simple or ambiguous problems. In this article I aim to cover the topics below in a condensed 5 minute read.
Topics in this article:
- What Design Thinking is and what to do during the different phases.
- Where the Double Diamond fits in with Design Thinking.
- How Design Thinking and Agile work together.
What is Design Thinking and what to do during the different phases
“Design thinking is a human-centered approach to innovation that draws from the designer’s toolkit to integrate the needs of people, the possibilities of technology, and the requirements for business success.”
—Tim Brown, IDEO
Design Thinking is a strategic approach that IDEO have become known for developing. Tim Brown at IDEO sums up Design Thinking nicely in the quote above.
Some refer to Design Thinking as a process, however that is not strictly accurate. The Oxford Languages describes a process as being “a series of actions or steps taken in order to achieve a particular end.” The great thing about Design Thinking is that it is not strictly a step by step process, rather, it uses a flexible approach to best suit the problem being solved. One reason Design Thinking has been adopted by so many design teams, is that it translates into the business environment in a way people can easily understand.
Just because it has the word ‘Design’ in the title, people may assume it is only for designers or designer type people, however that is not the case… this is for everyone. Design Thinking starts with the problem and emphasises the importance of really understanding it before building anything. Teams should immerse themselves in the problem they are trying to solve during the very first phase, ‘Empathise’. A classic quote from Einstein that is fitting here…
“If I had an hour to solve a problem I’d spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and five minutes thinking about solutions.”
Imagine you have been asked to build a bridge - it is unlikely you would move directly to execution and build the bridge without ever spending the time asking why it should be built. Seeing as it is such a large investment, you would want to know if a bridge really is the best solution to the problem. The first question should be, ‘what is the problem we are actually trying to solve?’ You may follow this with asking if a bridge is even the right solution for the problem? If it is only for a small number of people a year, maybe a boat is a cost effective option? Maybe a tunnel is a better practical solution due to high winds? Product Development is no different and we should always spend the time asking these types of questions. Design Thinking allows the space to pose the question of 'Why' and empathise with the users problems up front so we build meaningful solutions.
"It doesn’t matter how good your engineering team is if they are not given something worthwhile to build."
— Marty Cagan, Inspired: How To Create Products Customers Love
If you would like to understand how you can get your Product teams more bought into Design Thinking, then check out SVPG. They have developed an approach called Product Discovery which gives Product teams a way of empathising with their users needs and building something meaningful. This approach compliments Design Thinking.
The UX team at LexisNexis rally behind the Design Thinking approach to solve problems for our users. They decided to assign some of the UX methodologies that sit within the different phases of Design Thinking for our new joiners. Through a team workshop and some great collaboration, the team created a useful table to try and add clarity for when to use which methodologies.
To find out more about Design thinking you can visit Design Thinking, IDEO or Design Thinking 101, Nielsen Norman Group
Where the Double Diamond fits in with Design Thinking
Looking at the first four phases of Design Thinking, we have Empathise, Define, Ideate and Prototype.
These four phases are also in parity with the Double Diamond approach to solving problems.
Empathise
The first diamond begins with empathise. We discover more about the problem through research. During this divergent phase we want to learn as much as we can and that might mean we discover multiple problems to solve or multiple user needs to meet.
Define
As we empathise and learn more, it becomes clearer where we want to start to set our focus. Now we need to converge on the problem we want to solve. This completes the first diamond.
Ideate
This stage is all about idea generating and can be lots of fun through workshops with your teams. Now we are entering the second diamond where we diverge again by generating many ideas to solve our problem.
Prototype
This stage is where we converge and select the idea that we believe best solves our problem. Although the title is ‘prototype’, we may not actually need a fully interactive prototype. A simple design may be sufficient to complete the double diamond and move into the testing phase.
How Design Thinking and Agile work together
Agile is a set of principles and values that many companies have adopted or are trying to adopt as they move away from a waterfall way of working. Agile aims to deliver incremental value to the users so we can learn and pivot as needed. The great thing about Agile is that it allows us to iteratively release something of value to the users fast and often. This allows for mistakes to be made while not losing a huge investment if it fails. It can be said that we have only ever truly failed if we have not learnt anything from our mistakes.
“Intelligence is the ability to adapt to change.”
Stephen Hawking
How do Agile and Design Thinking work together though? In product development there is a way of working called ‘Dual Track’ which is being taught by the Silicon Valley Product Group (SVPG). The idea is, in the top track shown below, the team are working on projects ahead of the Sprints by working between the first five stages of Design Thinking. Once the team have converged on a solution, it can then move into Sprint and this is where the Delivery Track begins for that project. The Delivery Track is where the Agile way of working comes into effect and execution begins.
Sometimes we may learn after releasing to users that we need to go back into the Discovery Track to empathise, define, ideate, prototype and test. Once we are confident, we can then prioritise into a future or upcoming Sprint.
Key Take Aways
- Dual Track brings Design Thinking and Agile together.
- This is an approach to solving problems anyone can leverage.
- The first four phases of Design Thinking are the double diamond.
- Design Thinking compliments Product Discovery identified by SVPG.
