Facilitating Divergent Ideation in Double Diamond Design Thinking
This skill teaches you how to run structured brainstorming, co-design workshops, and rapid prototyping sessions that generate a wide range of potential solutions during the second diamond's divergent phase.
To facilitate divergent ideation in the Develop phase, start with a clearly defined problem statement from the Define phase. Run structured brainstorming sessions using techniques like How Might We questions, Crazy 8s, and brainwriting. Combine individual and group ideation to maximize output. Use co-design workshops and rapid prototyping to generate diverse solutions before converging in the Deliver phase.
Outcome: You can confidently plan and lead ideation sessions that produce a diverse, high-volume set of potential solutions ready for convergence and testing in the Deliver phase.
Prerequisites
- Understanding of the Double Diamond framework and its four phases
- A clearly defined problem statement from the Define phase
- Basic facilitation skills for group workshops
- Familiarity with divergent vs. convergent thinking modes
Overview
The Develop phase is where the second diamond opens wide. After narrowing down to a clear problem definition, your team needs to expand outward again — exploring as many potential solutions as possible before committing to any single direction. Facilitating this divergent ideation effectively is one of the most critical and misunderstood skills in double diamond design thinking.
Many teams struggle here because they either brainstorm too loosely (generating ideas that ignore constraints) or too tightly (self-editing before ideas have a chance to breathe). The Develop phase requires a structured yet psychologically safe environment where wild ideas coexist with practical ones. Your job as a facilitator is to create that space, manage energy, and ensure the output is broad enough to genuinely surprise the team.
This skill covers the full toolkit: from setting up How Might We prompts and running timed brainstorming exercises, to organizing multi-stakeholder co-design workshops and lightweight prototyping sprints. Whether you're working with a small product team or a large cross-functional group, these techniques help you reliably generate the volume and diversity of ideas the Double Diamond model demands.
How It Works
Divergent ideation in the Develop phase works by deliberately suspending judgment and expanding the solution space. In the Double Diamond framework, the first diamond (Discover → Define) narrows a broad problem space into a focused problem statement. The second diamond (Develop → Deliver) then opens up again to explore many possible solutions before narrowing to the best ones.
The underlying principle is that the quality of your final solution is directly correlated with the quantity and diversity of ideas you generate before converging. Research on creative problem-solving consistently shows that the best ideas rarely appear first — they emerge after the obvious solutions have been exhausted and the team pushes into less familiar territory.
Facilitation makes or breaks this phase. Without structure, ideation sessions devolve into unfocused discussions dominated by the loudest voices. Without psychological safety, team members self-censor. Effective facilitation uses time constraints, visual prompts, individual-before-group sequencing, and explicit rules (like deferring judgment) to create conditions where divergent thinking thrives. The goal isn't to find the answer — it's to build a rich landscape of possibilities that the Deliver phase can then evaluate and refine.
Each technique in the facilitator's toolkit serves a specific purpose: brainwriting equalizes participation, Crazy 8s forces rapid volume, analogous inspiration breaks fixation, and co-design workshops bring diverse perspectives. By layering these techniques across a session, you prevent ideation fatigue and keep the group pushing into genuinely novel territory.
Step-by-Step
Step 1: Anchor the Session with a Sharp Problem Statement
Before generating any ideas, ensure every participant has internalized the problem statement that emerged from the Define phase. Write it on the wall, read it aloud, and spend 5-10 minutes discussing what it means and what it doesn't mean.
A strong problem statement acts as a creative constraint — it focuses energy without prescribing solutions. If your problem statement already implies a solution (e.g., 'We need a mobile app for...'), reframe it as a need or opportunity (e.g., 'How might we help users access X when they're away from their desk?').
Share relevant research insights from the Discover phase so participants have empathy for the user. Consider creating a one-page brief that includes the problem statement, key user quotes, and any known constraints.
Tip: Use the 'How Might We' format to reframe your problem statement into 3-5 HMW questions. This gives participants multiple entry points for ideation instead of staring at a single prompt.
Step 2: Set Explicit Divergent Thinking Rules
At the start of every ideation session, establish and visibly post the rules of divergent thinking. The classic set includes: defer judgment, go for quantity over quality, build on others' ideas, encourage wild ideas, stay focused on the topic, and be visual.
These aren't just nice platitudes — they're functional ground rules that prevent the most common ideation failures. When someone critiques an idea mid-brainstorm, you can point to the rules. When energy dips, you can remind the group that wild ideas are explicitly welcomed.
Spend a moment explaining why these rules matter. Most professionals have been trained to evaluate ideas immediately. Divergent ideation requires them to override that instinct temporarily. Acknowledge that it feels uncomfortable and frame it as a deliberate phase — convergence will come later in the Deliver phase.
Tip: Print the rules on large paper and tape them where everyone can see. During the session, physically point to them when redirecting behavior — it depersonalizes the correction.
Step 3: Start with Individual Ideation (Brainwriting)
Before any group discussion, give participants 5-10 minutes of silent, individual ideation. Provide sticky notes and markers, and ask each person to write one idea per note — as many as possible in the time allowed.
Brainwriting solves the two biggest problems with traditional brainstorming: production blocking (only one person can speak at a time) and social loafing (people defer to louder voices). Research shows that groups generate significantly more unique ideas when individuals ideate first and share second.
Encourage participants to sketch as well as write. Visual ideas are easier for the group to build on later. Remind them that half-formed ideas are welcome — they just need to capture enough on the sticky note that someone else can understand the concept.
Tip: Play ambient music during silent ideation to reduce the social pressure of silence. It sounds trivial but consistently improves output.
Step 4: Run Structured Group Ideation Rounds
After individual brainwriting, transition to structured group techniques. Two proven formats are:
Round Robin Sharing: Each person shares their sticky notes one at a time, placing them on a shared wall. After each idea, invite a 30-second window for 'build-on' ideas from the group. This ensures every idea gets airtime.
Crazy 8s: Give each participant a sheet of paper folded into 8 panels. Set a timer for 8 minutes. Each person must sketch 8 distinct solution concepts — one per panel, one minute each. The extreme time pressure forces people past their first instincts and into genuinely novel territory.
Alternate between these formats to maintain energy. A typical 90-minute session might include brainwriting, then Round Robin sharing, then Crazy 8s, then a second sharing round. Each cycle builds on the last, and the ideas become progressively more interesting.
Tip: After the first round of Crazy 8s, ask participants to pick their single best idea and do a 'Super Sketch' — a more detailed version on a full sheet. This gives promising concepts enough definition to be understood by others.
Step 5: Introduce Analogous Inspiration to Break Fixation
Midway through the session, when the most obvious ideas have been captured, introduce analogous inspiration to push the group into less familiar territory. This technique asks: 'How do other industries, cultures, or domains solve a similar underlying problem?'
Prepare 3-5 brief examples in advance. If you're designing a patient check-in experience, you might show how hotels handle check-in, how airlines manage boarding, or how theme parks manage queues. The goal is to stimulate lateral thinking by breaking the team's fixation on their own domain.
Present each analogy in 2-3 minutes, then give the group another 5-minute brainwriting round focused specifically on ideas inspired by the analogy. This consistently produces the most surprising and differentiated concepts in a session.
Tip: Choose analogies from domains as far from your own as possible. The greater the conceptual distance, the more novel the ideas tend to be.
Step 6: Facilitate a Co-Design Workshop with Diverse Stakeholders
For complex problems, supplement your core team's ideation with a co-design workshop that brings in end users, subject matter experts, business stakeholders, or engineers. The diversity of perspectives is what generates the diversity of solutions that double diamond design thinking demands.
Structure the workshop with a clear agenda: brief context-setting (15 min), individual ideation (10 min), small-group ideation in mixed teams (30 min), and group share-back (20 min). Keep groups small (3-5 people) and ensure each group has a mix of roles.
Your facilitation role shifts here from generating ideas yourself to creating conditions for others to generate them. Circulate between groups, ask provocative questions, and redirect groups that are converging too early. Capture ideas on a shared wall so cross-pollination happens during share-back.
Tip: Pair participants who don't normally work together. A developer and a customer service rep will generate very different ideas from two designers — and that's the point.
Step 7: Build Quick Prototypes to Externalize Ideas
End the divergent phase by having participants build rough prototypes of their top 2-3 ideas. These aren't polished designs — they're thinking tools. Paper sketches, role-plays, storyboards, or cardboard models all work.
Prototyping during ideation serves a specific purpose: it forces vague concepts into concrete form, revealing gaps and sparking new ideas. An idea that sounded brilliant as a sentence on a sticky note often transforms dramatically when someone tries to sketch how it would actually work.
Give groups 20-30 minutes to prototype, then do a gallery walk where everyone views and adds feedback or build-on ideas to each prototype. This final round often generates a last wave of strong concepts right when you thought the well was dry.
Tip: Provide a variety of prototyping materials — paper, markers, tape, cardboard, pipe cleaners, LEGO. Physical materials engage different thinking modes than whiteboards and sticky notes alone.
Step 8: Cluster, Label, and Document the Full Idea Landscape
Before closing the session, organize the output. Have the group cluster similar ideas on the wall, then label each cluster with a theme name. Don't evaluate or rank yet — that's convergence, and it belongs in the Deliver phase.
Photograph everything. Create a digital record that captures every idea, not just the popular ones. Some of the best solutions emerge weeks later when someone revisits a 'throwaway' idea from the ideation wall.
Close the session by reading back the cluster names and celebrating the volume. If the team generated 80+ distinct ideas across clusters, they've done the Develop phase justice. Thank participants explicitly for suspending judgment and remind them that the next step is structured convergence — not a free-for-all selection.
Tip: Assign one team member to be the 'documenter' who photographs every wall, sticky note, and sketch before anything gets moved. Lost ideas are the biggest waste in divergent ideation.
Examples
Example: E-Commerce Checkout Redesign
A product team at an online retailer completed their Define phase and arrived at the problem statement: 'Customers abandon checkout when they encounter unexpected costs, creating distrust and lost revenue.' The team of 6 (2 designers, 2 developers, 1 product manager, 1 customer support lead) has a 2-hour window to generate solution concepts.
The facilitator starts by posting 4 HMW questions derived from the problem statement: 'HMW make costs transparent before checkout?', 'HMW turn cost disclosure into a moment of trust?', 'HMW reduce the total number of cost surprises?', and 'HMW make customers feel in control of their total?' After a 5-minute warm-up (sketch as many uses for a paperclip as possible), participants do 8 minutes of brainwriting on the first two HMW questions, generating 47 sticky notes. Round robin sharing produces 12 build-on ideas. The facilitator then introduces three analogies: how restaurant menus show prices, how Uber shows fare estimates upfront, and how subscription boxes reveal contents before shipping. A second brainwriting round inspired by these analogies produces 31 more ideas. Finally, Crazy 8s generates 48 quick sketches. After clustering, the team has 138 ideas organized into 9 themes: 'running cost tickers,' 'pre-checkout cost summaries,' 'gamified savings,' 'trust badges at cost disclosure,' and more. All are documented and photographed for the upcoming Deliver phase convergence session.
Example: Healthcare Patient Onboarding Co-Design Workshop
A hospital system's innovation team defined the problem: 'New patients feel overwhelmed and confused during their first visit, leading to missed appointments and poor health outcomes.' They plan a co-design workshop with 12 participants: 3 designers, 2 nurses, 2 administrators, 3 recent patients, and 2 community health workers.
The facilitator structures a 3-hour workshop. The first 20 minutes are spent sharing anonymized patient journey maps and quotes from the Discover phase. Three mixed small groups of 4 are formed, each with at least one patient and one clinician. Each group receives a different HMW prompt. Groups do 10 minutes of individual brainwriting, then 25 minutes of collaborative ideation using paper and markers to sketch solutions. A gallery walk lets groups see each other's ideas and add build-ons. After a break, the facilitator introduces analogous inspiration — how hotels handle guest orientation, how universities run freshman orientation, and how co-working spaces onboard new members. A final ideation round yields another 40 ideas. The session produces 112 concepts across 7 theme clusters, with patients having contributed some of the most innovative ideas because they brought lived experience that the clinical team hadn't considered. The diversity of participants was the key driver of solution diversity — exactly what double diamond design thinking is engineered to produce.
Best Practices
Always sequence individual ideation before group ideation — research consistently shows this produces more unique ideas and prevents anchoring to the first suggestion.
Use time constraints aggressively. Short bursts (3-8 minutes) produce more ideas per minute than open-ended sessions because they prevent over-thinking and self-editing.
Prepare 'warm-up' exercises for the first 5 minutes of any session — simple creative challenges unrelated to the project help participants shift into a divergent mindset before tackling the real problem.
Physically separate the divergent and convergent phases. If you ideate and evaluate in the same session, people self-censor during ideation because they know judgment is coming. Schedule convergence for a separate session or at minimum after a break.
Invite at least one participant from outside the core team for every ideation session. External perspectives consistently break groupthink and introduce novel solution directions.
Track your idea count. Aim for 100+ raw ideas in a 2-hour session with 5-8 participants. If you're generating fewer than 50, your facilitation structure needs adjustment.
Common Mistakes
Allowing critique during ideation by letting phrases like 'that won't work because...' or 'we tried that before' go unchecked.
Correction
Intervene immediately and redirect to the posted rules. Use a specific phrase like 'That's convergent thinking — let's save it for the Deliver phase. For now, what does this idea make you think of?' This preserves psychological safety without embarrassing the critic.
Running a single brainstorming technique for the entire session, leading to ideation fatigue after 20-30 minutes.
Correction
Layer 3-4 different techniques (brainwriting → round robin → Crazy 8s → analogous inspiration) across the session. Each technique shift re-energizes the group and pushes thinking in a new direction.
Skipping the problem framing step and jumping straight into 'let's brainstorm solutions,' resulting in scattered ideas that don't connect to the defined problem.
Correction
Spend the first 10-15 minutes anchoring the group in the problem statement and HMW questions. Reference insights from the Define phase. Every idea should be traceable back to the problem you're solving.
Converging too early by dot-voting or ranking ideas before the divergent phase is truly complete, which kills the late-stage novel ideas that are often the most valuable.
Correction
Resist the urge to evaluate during the Develop phase. Cluster and label ideas thematically, but save all ranking, voting, and selection for a separate convergence session in the Deliver phase.
Relying entirely on remote tools like Miro or FigJam without adapting techniques for the digital medium, leading to low energy and surface-level ideas.
Correction
For remote sessions, use built-in timers, enforce cameras-on during share-backs, use breakout rooms for small-group ideation, and have participants sketch on physical paper then photograph and upload. Hybrid approaches outperform purely digital ideation.
Other Skills in This Method
Converging on Solutions in the Deliver Phase
How to evaluate, test, and iterate on concepts to select and refine the final solution for implementation in the Deliver phase.
Synthesizing Insights to Define the Problem
How to apply convergent thinking in the Define phase to analyze discovery findings, create problem statements, and narrow focus to the right challenge.
Mapping Divergent and Convergent Thinking Modes
How to deliberately switch between expansive exploration and focused decision-making at each stage of the Double Diamond process.
Conducting Discovery Research in the Discover Phase
How to use divergent thinking techniques like user interviews, desk research, and observation to broadly explore the problem space in the first diamond.
Creating Double Diamond Process Diagrams
How to visually map your design process onto the Double Diamond diagram to communicate project phases, activities, and progress to stakeholders.
Choosing Between Double Diamond and Design Thinking
How to compare the Double Diamond with other design frameworks like Stanford d.school Design Thinking and Lean UX to select the right approach for your project.
Adapting the Double Diamond for UX Design Projects
How to apply the Double Diamond framework specifically to UX workflows, integrating user research, wireframing, usability testing, and iterative design.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many ideas should a Develop phase ideation session produce?
Aim for 80-150 raw ideas in a 2-hour session with 5-8 participants. Quantity matters because research shows idea quality increases with volume — the best ideas typically appear after the first 40-50 obvious ones are exhausted. If you're consistently below 50, add more structured techniques or increase individual ideation time.
What is the Develop phase in double diamond design thinking?
The Develop phase is the third stage of the Double Diamond framework, where teams diverge again after defining the problem. It focuses on generating a wide range of potential solutions through brainstorming, co-design, and prototyping before converging on the best options in the Deliver phase.
How do I run divergent ideation with a remote team?
Use digital whiteboard tools like Miro or FigJam with built-in timers. Start with individual ideation on physical paper (photograph and upload), use breakout rooms for small-group exercises, and enforce cameras-on during share-backs. Schedule shorter sessions (90 minutes max) with more breaks, as remote ideation is more mentally taxing.
What's the difference between brainstorming and brainwriting?
Brainstorming is verbal group ideation where participants call out ideas. Brainwriting is silent, individual ideation where participants write ideas on paper or sticky notes simultaneously. Brainwriting consistently outperforms brainstorming in research because it eliminates production blocking and reduces social pressure to conform.
When should I use co-design workshops versus team-only ideation?
Use co-design workshops when your problem affects diverse user groups, when your team lacks domain expertise, or when stakeholder buy-in is critical for implementation. Team-only sessions work well for incremental improvements where the team has deep domain knowledge. For complex or novel problems in double diamond design thinking, co-design almost always produces better results.
How do I prevent the loudest person from dominating the ideation session?
Structure solves this problem. Start with individual brainwriting before any group discussion, use round robin sharing so every voice is heard, and employ techniques like Crazy 8s that are inherently individual. As a facilitator, actively invite quieter participants to share and redirect dominant voices by saying 'Let's hear from someone who hasn't shared yet.'