Design processes and frameworks, like the UK Design Council's double diamond, are helpful tools to provide reassurance and visually communicate a sense of predictability. For clients commissioning design, describing a robust, repeatable process can help make an often uncertain, complex and ambiguous endeavour more understandable and approachable.
Although the double diamond gives a sense of structure and predictability, the actual project experience can be more fluid.
The truth is that a design project doesn't always feel like a process. As you progress through project stages and deal with new information and circumstances, your understanding evolves, and things often change as a result.
Sometimes it feels like you go two steps back and a few to the side, before you make a leap forward. Sometimes it feels like you're coming back to the basics again and again.
Sometimes you discover something in research that fundamentally shifts your thinking about what the problem actually is and where the solution might lie.
Sometimes developers share one little decision they've made about how they've built the solution which will fundamentally impact the user experience.
My point is that despite everyone's best efforts and intentions, relative chaos, in one form or another, often ensues. It’s not that the process is broken, it’s just that the map is not the territory. This unpredictability means that orderly visualisations of the design process lose their value when the perception and experience of doing a design project are all too different.
In 2015 I came across the Design Squiggle and instantly connected with the idea. Not only does it acknowledge the realities of a design project, it's a great metaphor for life too.
The reality is that progress through the process often feels like the design squiggle. When you're dealing with complexity and you don't know what you don't know, somehow a squiggly line makes more sense.
To anyone feeling confused, anxious or ambivalent about the design process – the design squiggle offers some solace. Here at Folk, the design squiggle has become a useful visual metaphor for how explaining the design process feels. Design – when done properly – tackles complexity, uncertainty and seemingly chaotic areas of inquiry to get to clarity. In parts that feels less like a double diamond and more like a squiggly line.
"It may just be a squiggly line to you, but to me it’s more."
TL: DR
The design process can feel chaotic and uncertain at times, and that's ok.
Remember the design squiggle.
Trust the process.
Choose to see challenges as an opportunity.
It may not feel this simple, but it's not supposed to be either.
The value design delivers is being able to understand difficult problems and work with different people to create better solutions.
The more design is equipped to work with the 'chaos', the more value it will be able to deliver.
If you’re interested in reading more about the design squiggle, and the story of the squiggle, you can find more information here.
