We knew about the Double Diamond design process, potentially the Triple Diamond. But a Quadruple Diamond? As a designer and a team leader, I found that we need to address four stages: Strategy, Discovery, Delivery and Operations. All follow similar principles of converging and diverging.
Mature organisations that innovate have design practitioners evolving in all those stages. The Strategy and Operations are stages that actually drive maximum impact. The Double Diamond process is the one that builds the features and products. But how do we know we’re building the right ones, and we are driving value?
The problem low design maturity organisations are facing is designers working on the wrong problems, unleashing their creativity in the double diamond space but without delivering tangible value. This leads to over-investment in design or designers spending too much time educating their stakeholders.
Another issue is overlooking feedback loop and optimisation, which is framed under the Operations stage. Mature products evolving in a very competitive space have implemented it successfully. It is harder to implement for new products and services, especially if the Strategy Diamond have not been rigorously documented.
This Quadruple Diamond focuses on articulating how to drive value with design. It is also meant to evaluate an organisation’s maturity towards design, by clearly framing where designers are operating.
Next: The Strategy Diamond