Developing and conceptualising designs

VCE Product Design and Technologies uses the Double Diamond design approach as the framework for every design project. Picture two diamonds side by side. Each diamond opens out (divergent thinking: generating many possibilities) and then narrows (convergent thinking: selecting and refining). The first diamond is about understanding the problem; the second is about developing the solution. In Unit 1 Area of Study 1 you work mainly in the first diamond and in the graphical part of the second.

Five activity types sit inside the diamonds, and each has a purpose:

• Investigating and defining (first diamond): researching end-user needs and opportunities, then synthesising the data so that a real need or opportunity can be defined in a design brief.
• Generating and designing (second diamond): producing graphical product concepts (visualisations, design options and working drawings) and, later, physical product concepts through prototyping, testing, trialling and iterating.
• Evaluating (both diamonds): in the first diamond you evaluate existing products; in the second you evaluate your own graphical and physical product concepts, the processes used to make them and, finally, the finished product.
• Planning and managing (both diamonds): organising research in the first diamond; organising designing and production (through a scheduled production plan) in the second.
• Producing and implementing (second diamond): making the product, which is the focus of Area of Study 2.

The activities are not a checklist to be ticked in order. The approach is deliberately non-linear: you may loop back from a design option to more research, give one activity more weight than another, or omit an activity where appropriate to the project and unit, while still meeting the required outcomes and teacher’s task.

Design thinking is the thinking you do inside the framework. Critical thinking is evaluating, reasoning and comparing; it processes and refines ideas and matches the convergent part of each diamond. Creative thinking is ideation; it broadens the range of imaginative and unusual ideas and matches the divergent part.

Speculative thinking synthesises research and asks what could happen in the future: you hypothesise, propose and recommend, weighing how appropriate and useful an idea would be and what its environmental, social and economic consequences might be. Design thinking matters when you respond to a design brief because a brief describes a need, not a solution.

Without divergent thinking you jump to the first obvious idea; without convergent thinking you never commit to a justified choice; speculative thinking helps question future possibilities and consequences; it does not prove how a product will perform.