Does the Double Diamond make sense for AI-enabled teams?


Does the Double Diamond make sense for AI-enabled teams?

by Jeff Humble


Dear Reader,

For twenty years, the Double Diamond has been our north star. Discover, Define, Develop, Deliver.

It's elegant. It's teachable. It's in every junior's UX case study.

And it made sense…when it was created.

All that upfront research made economic sense when coding was the most expensive part of the process. Better to get it right before handoff because it's expensive for engineering to make changes later.

But that was before AI.

Before AI, making things was expensive. Every prototype required designers, developers, and hours of work.

So we front-loaded everything but the making.

We did interviews, we formed insights, we made problem statements, we got stakeholder input, and we checked feasibility with dev.

Now, AI tools enable the making to be 10x cheaper and faster.

If you can make three coded prototypes in 3 hours, rather than 3 days, do we still use the same process to design?

I did a little cost comparison that challenges everything we thought we knew about the Double Diamond.


COURSE: Defining UX Strategy
Learn to design a winning strategy that aligns design with business.
Buy a Seat


COURSE: Facilitating Workshops
Learn to turn meetings into momentum and clear decisions.
Add me to the Waitlist

New dates announced in December!


Until next week! ✌️

Jeff Humble
UX Strategist & Co-Founder
The Fountain Institute

The Fountain Institute

The Fountain Institute is an independent online school that teaches advanced UX & product skills.

Read more from The Fountain Institute
People surrounded by bright question and exclamation marks, representing uncertainty and judgment.

When Frameworks Fail and Gut Feelings Take Over By Hannah Baker Dear Reader, You know that moment when the data looks clear, the framework is airtight, and yet something in your stomach says, don’t do it? That’s judgment, the quiet, inconvenient voice that shows up when the evidence has already spoken. It’s also the thing most of us struggle to explain, even though our careers depend on it. Businesses love reasoning. We build frameworks to make decisions look rational, dashboards to make them...

Last-Minute Halloween Costumes for Designers 🎃 by Jeff Humble Dear Reader, It's time to expose your designer trauma to the whole world. It’s that time of year again, when we’re forced to stop nudging rectangles long enough to remember Halloween exists, and suddenly we need a costume tonight. But fear not! While normal humans panic-buy cat ears from a drugstore, we designers do what we do best: turn our professional pain into content. Here are 9 last-minute costumes for brave designers. 1. UX...

Before The Fountain Institute, there was Art School Dropout By Hannah Baker Dear Reader, In spring 2020, when the world had just gone remote, we ran a tiny experiment called Art School Dropout. It wasn’t about UX or product design. We didn’t even know that’s where we’d end up focusing yet. It was about exploring the overlap between art and design, and figuring out how to make learning online feel human, creative, and social. We weren’t thinking about building a business yet. We were just...