UX Design Essentials: Article 1

Why the Double Diamond is the Most Precious Diagram in UX Design

… and Unearthing its Potential Can Provide Stakeholders and Team Members with Exponential Benefits

Eva Schicker
5 min readNov 4, 2018

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User Design is not an end-goal. Rather, it is a long-term process, involving stakeholders, researchers, designers, developers and other team members. When we engage in projects, whether it’s building a brand-new project or redesigning an existing one, we need a high-level value structure to refer to throughout the process. We must clearly define the points along the time continuum of a UX project.

A project team must work synchronistically and refer to these points in the project evolution. Without a defined value structure with definitive points in its path, stakeholders and team members will not know where the project stands at any given time.

Step 1: What Are the Principles of the Double Diamond?

The Double Diamond is a process model created in 2005 by the British Design Council. (1) Its structure is simple, two squares at an angle. The first diamond represents the research phase, the second the design phase.

Fig 1: Double Diamond basics

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Eva Schicker

Hello. I write about UX, UI, AI, animation, tech, fiction & art through the eyes of a designer & painter. I live in NYC. Book author, UX Grad GA NYC.