The Service Design Process – The Traditional Double Diamond Model
This blog post is part of Service Design: A Comprehensive Guide for Beginners and Advanced Practitioners and delves deeper into the traditional Double Diamond model used to describe the service design process. Originally created by the British Design Council, this model’s core idea is to first focus on understanding the problem by asking whether the right questions are truly being addressed. The second diamond emphasizes idea development and conceptualization.
The model integrates both divergent and convergent thinking into creative problem-solving. Divergent thinking involves gathering and generating knowledge and ideas broadly, aiming to identify multiple perspectives or solutions. Convergent thinking, on the other hand, focuses on evaluating and refining options, narrowing them down to the most viable ones.
The Service Design Double Diamond Model
Picture 1: Service design double-diamond model
First Diamond – Discover & Define
The Double Diamond model starts with understanding the problem—what exactly needs to be solved. It is likely that business objectives have already been defined to some extent, and a decision has been made to address the issue. The key aspect of the discovery and definition phase is to first understand the current state. This could involve improving an existing service or developing something entirely new. If it’s an existing service, it’s essential to identify pain points from both the customer and business perspectives. For new services, this information is naturally unavailable.
The Discover & Define phase is research-driven, gathering insights from various angles: customers, the market, competitors, and internal stakeholders. The goal is to form a holistic view of the subject before moving on to detailed conceptualization and ideation. Additionally, understanding internal dynamics among stakeholders and mapping out roles and responsibilities is crucial.
Methods for the Discover & Define phase include:
Trend analysis
Market and competitor research
Interviews and workshops with employees and leadership
Stakeholder mapping
Customer surveys, interviews, and workshops
Observation
Personas
Empathy maps
Value Proposition Canvas
Second Diamond – Develop & Deliver
The second part of the model, Develop & Deliver, focuses on ideation, conceptualization, and prototyping—developing different solution options based on the insights gathered earlier. From the collected data, hypotheses are formed, conceptualized, and validated both internally and with customers. The aim is to experiment and iterate on the concept based on feedback. This phase seeks to validate customer needs and deliver a verified solution, which is then refined into detailed implementation.
For digital services, this phase often involves preliminary technical investigations and software architecture planning. In this context, service designers typically collaborate closely with software architects, whether focusing on a single application or larger systems alongside enterprise architects.
Methods for the Develop & Deliver phase include:
Customer journey mapping (can also occur in the earlier phase when modeling an existing service)
Service blueprinting (also applicable in the earlier phase for existing services)
User stories
Ideation workshops
Concept visualizations
Prototyping
Concept validation with customers and internal stakeholders, followed by iteration based on feedback
Final Thoughts
In summary, the Double Diamond model provides a comprehensive framework for the service design process, emphasizing the importance of thoroughly understanding problems and developing innovative solutions. The model combines problem definition with the creation of solution options, offering a structured approach to creative problem-solving that helps designers and teams view issues holistically from multiple perspectives. Ideally, it also prevents rushing into technical implementation without ensuring that the right problems are being addressed.
While the Double Diamond model focuses on customer insight and conceptualization, it does not specifically account for the end-to-end (E2E) approach critical in the context of digital business. The model overlooks detailed design and continuous improvement. To address these gaps, a more comprehensive Triple Diamond Model has been developed, which is better suited for digital business contexts and incorporates an E2E perspective.
