The Double Diamond is widely referenced and unevenly applied. Most teams diverge enthusiastically in discovery, then treat define-and-deliver as a straight line. The second diamond — converging on a solution direction — gets compressed into a workshop and a slide deck.
That compression is where design thinking earns its reputation for producing posters instead of outcomes. Convergence is not a vote. It is a structured reduction of options based on criteria agreed before preferences are voiced.
Criteria before concepts
Before any concept review, we document decision criteria: user impact, operational feasibility, brand fit, technical risk, time to validate. Each criterion gets weight. Each concept gets scored against evidence, not charisma.
This sounds bureaucratic. It is the opposite — it prevents the loudest voice or senior stakeholder from ending debate prematurely while quieter evidence, often from research, never reaches the table.
Convergence without criteria is just politics with better typography.
Keeping the diamond open
Converging without closing means the selected direction ships with explicit learning goals — what must remain true in testing for us to commit further. We plan the next divergence point before build momentum makes change expensive.
Design thinking serves our mission when it produces products people choose to keep — not when it produces alignment theatre. The second diamond is where that standard is enforced or abandoned.