Digital Equity and the Double Diamond Model: How are they related?
By Kim Ilinon
A few weeks ago, I had the privilege of interviewing Candelaria Mendoza, the Executive Director of Yakima Valley Libraries. Her work focuses on providing internet connections to people's homes. In our conversation, she mentioned that many individuals today still don't have access to the internet from their homes, which has become incredibly vital, especially since the pandemic lockdown. On this topic, she elaborated on the importance of conducting a needs assessment to understand the specific support certain communities require. One pitfall she's witnessing in the digital equity work is organizations providing support or resources without assessing actual needs. The lack of needs-based assessment when doing digital work is an area she believes needs a lot of attention and innovation to be more effective in pushing digital equity forward.
Working on the Dear Digital Equity project introduced me to the double diamond model of the design process. I've been aware of it for quite some time, but only now was I able to understand and apply it in my design process. The first diamond allows us to identify and have a holistic understanding of a specific problem we need to solve. The "discovery" phase and the "define" phase in the first diamond are vital since this is the part of the design process where precision is of priority. For designers to come up with good design solutions in the "develop" and "deliver" phases (second diamond), they need to have a specific idea of what design problem they’re trying to solve. The design principles are the cherry on top of all these different phases in a design process. These principles guide each design phase, and they help designers come up with solutions that are user-centered throughout the design process.
As I reflect on this project, the double diamond design process model correlates with my interviewee's approach toward her team's digital equity work. As we've learned, the double diamond model ushers designers away from having a linear method in their design process. Instead, designers are encouraged to begin their design process by exploring the issues with an open mind, also called divergent thinking. Candelaria Mendoza used this same approach when conducting a need-based assessment to know what her community needs support with instead of assuming what they need. With that, some innovation in Washington State is setting aside money for organizations to conduct focus groups with people experiencing digital inequity to inform the design of digital equity interventions. This same approach is necessary for our design process, especially when working with stakeholders. We should rely on something other than our own design opinions. More importantly, we must consider the users and how we can provide a better interaction between them and our design. We can only really solve our users' problems if we take the time to understand them.
