honeycomb model
Honeycomb model of Design Thinking was developed by Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford (commonly known as the d.school). It is a five-stage iterative process, of Empathize-Define-Ideate-Prototype-Test.
The brief details of these five stages are as follows:
1. Empathize: The concept of 'Empathizing' is unique to Design Thinking, as it emphasizes the importance of understanding the problem to its core, by getting into the user's environment as a user.
2. Define: In this stage, the knowledge about the problem is converted into the clear problem statement, which needs to solved through the entire process.
3. Ideate: After defining the problem statement, the potential solutions are ideated among the multiple team members through brainstorming sessions.
4. Prototype: The potential solutions are built as series of prototypes.
5. Test: The prototypes are tested for it's functionality and alignment to the user-need. The feedback from the testing is looped back either to the Prototyping stage (so as to enhance the prototypes) or to the Ideate stage (so as to refine the proposed solution or think about alternate solutions), or to the Define stage (so as to review the problem-statement). It might also raise the requirement of going back to the user environment (Empathize) to understand the problem even better.
Double Diamond model
'Double Diamond Model' of Design Thinking was developed by the British Design Council in 2005. It is divided into four phases — Discover, Define, Develop and Deliver. The main feature of the Double Diamond is its emphasis on the divergent and convergent thinking, where first many ideas are created, before refining and narrowing down to the best idea. This happens twice in this model—once to confirm the problem definition (Problem space) and then to create the solution (Solution space).
The brief details of these four phases are as follows:
1. Discover: The divergent phase of the first diamond starts from discovery of the user's environment to understand the user's actual need or problem, rather than simply assuming it. It involves speaking to and spending time with the users.
2. Define: The insights gathered from the discovery phase are refined (converged) to define the problem in more actionable form.
3. Develop: The second diamond starts with the ideation of multiple possible solutions (divergent), seeking inspiration from elsewhere and co-designing with a range of different people.
4. Deliver: Delivery involves testing out different solutions at small-scale, rejecting the ones that will not work and improving the ones that will, and eventually converging to the best solution.
This model was further modified by the British Design Council in 2019, to include the feedback loop from Develop and Deliver phases to Define and Discover phases. It also added the importance of Leadership support and cross functional Engagement in the entire process.