R/T 013 - Belief in a single approach won't solve your problems
This week's radical thing is: A different approach to tackling the challenges you face
On the recent 'Creative Welly' podcast, DK (the host) asked us:
What are your favourite frameworks and models you use in your work?
I'd watched a few episodes of Creative Welly, so I knew this question might pop up.
And I was ready for it!
The answer I gave popped into my head again this week.
Designers have been celebrating the 20th birthday of 'The Double Diamond'. If you don't know the double diamond, it's a framework that communicates the design process.
Think of it like London's answer to 'Design Thinking.'
In the early 2000s, more designers started working on services and significant social challenges. The UK Design Council wanted to support this transition. They also needed to communicate the value of design and how it worked to a broader set of stakeholders.
Enter the Double Diamond.
The Design Council’s ‘Double Diamond’ framework.
This framework illustrates the broadening and narrowing of effort across four distinct phases.
Discover
Define
Develop
Deliver
But it's not the first Double Diamond.
Here’s another that influenced the thinking of the Design Council team.
Béla H. Bánáthy’s “dynamics of divergence and convergence” from 1996.
Similar, eh?
When you see people start to post frameworks like this online, they immediately get a response. The response comes from someone with a different framework that they love.
Or the way that they approach a problem.
Then, an argument explodes! Design vs design thinking, engineering vs science, agile vs waterfall.
And that’s what I saw online this week.
“That’s not the original ‘Double Diamond’!”
“It’s still a linear approach.”
Etc, Etc.
The truth is this:
Everyone thinks their “way” is “the best” or “the right way”.
But when you tie your identity to a single approach or method, any critique feels like a personal attack. When you feel attacked, you defend yourself and strike back. You're unable to take the comment onboard. Acknowledging that your precious approach might have some weaknesses is challenging.
You've invested so much time learning, perfecting and promoting it.
You've wrapped your identity up in it (and some ego.)
To address complex problems, you can't tie your colours to a single mast. You need to combine different methods, approaches and frameworks from various places. (This approach differs from being a T-shaped - where you have deep skills in one area and complement these with broader, shallower skills.)
What’s required to be future-fit is a bricolage of diverse capabilities, tools and methods.
I believe this applies no matter what discipline you’re in.
And that’s a more refined version of the answer I gave to DK.
I'm a sucker for codified ways of thinking. Love me the double diamonds, triple taurus, quad spots ... you name it. But no amount of structure will lead to great thinking, it can only facilitate it and is ultimately unnecessary.