the DD framework

Design-Development / Double-Diamond

If you’re a designer yourself, you can skip down to more practical details

`My abstraction of the renowned double diamond model of design (British Design Counsel 2005) popularized by Don Norman in his book The design of everyday things`

Given no two projects are the same, I’ve found that building and refining an overarching design framework has drastically helped in improving not only my work’s efficiency but also quality. These same underlying ethos have been extended towards designing processes for our team.

The DD framework has proven itself indispensable all the way from designing physical things for hobby on weekends, to creating multi-year product visions for work.

in theory ↓

in practice ↓↓

[ab]
[cd]
in theory

All unmarked quotes below are from doet

step one.
do the right thing

[a] explore the w’s

Every good design begins with understanding of the problem, before anything else. A guy named Jeff Bezos famously said, “You have to find and fix the root cause, not the symptom”.

“...start by questioning the problem...expand the scope of the problem, diverging to examine all the fundamental issues that underline it”

This is the fundamental principle of finding a viable solution towards the actual underlying problem. Imagine a doctor sending a patient off with a Paracetamol for headache, practically fixing the symptom, instead of investigating the underlying potentially serious root cause.

[b] find what

“What” essentially narrows down the problematic symptoms to few fundamental reasons, ideally one. It defines the problem in as short a sentence as possible.

“...then they converge upon a single problem statement”

Dieter Rams, arguably one of the most influential figure of the Bauhaus philosophy lays 10 principles of good design, of which the final one ends the list saying “Good design is as little design as possible”.

step two.
do the thing right

[c] weigh the hows?

More often than not, any given problem has multiple possible solutions, amid a few possible ones, and only a couple desirable ones. Ignoring the problem in itself is also a viable solution, although not the most desirable, optimal, or practical one in most cases.

“...they first expand the space of possible solutions”

Finding… or rather, deciding upon the optimal solution is usually a game of experimenting and testing the many way-forwards and weighting them against each other.

[d] design the solution

The final stage consists of laying the solution down in as consise form as possible. Nothing is left to change or should appear arbitrary. The design clarifies the product’s functions, and in ideal case make it self explanatory.

“...finally, they converge upon a possible solution”

It’s can be abstractly summed up by another of Rams’ principle “Design is honest”, i.e. not making the solution appear more innovative, powerful or valuable than it actually is. A solution that does not try to manipulate the users with promises that cannot be kept.