Design and Develop – Part 1: The Double Diamond Process and Other Creative Thinking Processes

During this course, creative thinking was a recurring theme in many weeks. In the first module we had also talked about the popular Double Diamond Design process and how useful it in in tackling a project (you can read about it here). This week, we looked again at the Double Diamond approach in relation to Service Design and how two designers – George Lee and Johnathan Collie – went about using it in their projects.

Quoting Jonathan Collie, one of the designers being interviewed, he says that whilst design has many different definitions, the core of every design project follows the same process. In its very essence, design is “translating ideas into reality, making abstract thoughts tangible and concrete.” Different designers have different approaches, but they all follow the same basic principle in going about the creative process.

That being said, I decided to have a quick look at other creative thinking methods that can be used in various design projects, and I found some interesting methods. The popular ones were listed – brainstorming, mind mapping, and design thinking – along with others that may not be the first ‘go to’ but I think that they can be quite useful too.

Thinking creatively is to think in a non-linear, flexible and original way. It is considered an important element of strategy, problem-solving and decision making that allows exploration of more possible solutions to a problem. With such processes, one is also able to look at a problem from different perspectives, meaning that there is also room for thorough risk assessments. Some of the thinking methods I came across include:

• Abundance Mentality: this thinking method combines multiple ideas from different people in an effort to come up with the ultimate solution, rather than comparing and contrasting ideas to choose one.

• Conjectures:  filling in gaps of information by making guesses. It is a form of hypothesising. The ‘preserving ambiguity’ thinking method is utilised here too to trigger the creative mind.

• Thought Experiments: another form of hypothesizes were one supports, refutes and/or validates ideas based on factual material and theories.

• Counterfactual Thinking: this is a speculative approach to thinking. Observing and imagining alternate realities in relation to a problem and come up with various solutions that fit within that created reality. The reminded me a lot of the steampunk alternate reality.

• Creativity of Constraints: Contrary to the Abundance Mentality thinking method, this thinking method imposes limitations in a scenario in an effort to be able to generate alternate solutions to any given situation.

• Storytelling: Everyone likes stories. Just like a story has an introduction, a plot with characters and conclusion, the same principles can be applied to a thinking process. One can introduce a topic to himself or to others, then evaluate different perspectives and also come up with a conclusion, which would be the design solution.

Reverting back to the interview of this week’s lecture, both designers iterated that when it comes to service design, interacting with the community involved and doing primary research is very important. Engaging with the people will provide a much better insight to a potential problem than any desk or book research. However, rather than asking the people what they want, one should ask the people how are the currently doing and what is bothering them, should that be the case.