Origami Way of Work in Product Design
Triple Diamond Framework
In a world driven by digital transformation, professional changes also reshape how decisions are made and the focus given to each task. Designers are not exempt from these shifts, and as design principles dictate, we move and adapt to meet market needs.
However, we often find ourselves working in silos, and despite advancements and innovations in work methods, this issue remains unresolved. Integrating different design disciplines into a seamless, collaborative process — without losing track of progress, results, and desired impact — can seem like a complex challenge.
As part of a professional initiative to contribute to the design community, and in collaboration with Luz Arenas, we present the Origami Way of Work (WoW) for Product Design.
What is it?
• It’s an approach that integrates design specialties to work toward a shared goal in product design.
• It outlines key milestones between each phase of the design process, serving as input for other designers.
• It highlights the essential activities for decision-making and determining the next steps at each phase.
What it is NOT:
• A step-by-step recipe to be followed strictly.
• A prescriptive framework, as each team’s reality varies based on culture and strategy.
• A rigid way of working — the reference to “origami” emphasizes flexibility based on the context.
Understanding the Origami WoW for Product Design
⧨ Why origami?
Origami involves creating shapes by folding paper — without cuts or glue. Similarly, in product design, flexibility and adaptability are key. Depending on the context, we may work with two, three, or even four “diamonds.”
Typically, the context will guide us into one of the two main stages — Product Discovery or Product Design — helping us define the focus and determine which phases or diamonds to include.
👁️ Product Discovery
💡Insight
This is where all ideas converge, forming the foundation for deeper exploration. An idea can stem from a hypothesis, the outcome of testing, data tracking, or an improvement to an existing product as part of continuous development.
At this stage — especially for full design cycles — the involvement of business stakeholders, product managers, and designers is essential to establish the ‘Problem Definition’ and align on both research and business objectives.
Following this, research designers lead product discovery, creating and executing a plan for information gathering in close collaboration with product designers as informed, extended team members.
🔍 Problem Definition
This is one of the most critical phases of the design process, as the problem definition will guide our next steps. It involves gathering all relevant information — often the most ambiguous part of product design, yet also the most enriching. Research designers play a pivotal role at this stage, using techniques and tools to deeply explore the problem. Product designers, meanwhile, contribute in an ‘extended’ capacity, providing objective input and working in sync with the process.
Uncertainty is inevitable here. We don’t yet know what we’re up against. Business teams bring ideas and expectations, but the findings may lead us in a similar or completely different direction. That’s why employing ‘speed research’ alongside business data is essential to uncover the true problem.
🔮 Lean Validation
This phase serves to confirm that the information gathered in the previous stage aligns with both user realities and expectations. As ‘lean designers,’ we take an experimental approach, enabling us to learn quickly before diving into more complex user flows. This also empowers business teams to make more informed decisions, guiding the company’s next big moves.
Starting with ‘Lean Validation’ allows us to test hypotheses right away and then apply that knowledge to the problem definition phases, where we can explore in greater qualitative and quantitative depth, uncovering broader opportunities.
Structure:
Insight: A starting point that could stem from ideas, metric results, hypotheses, continuous improvement, and more.
- Phase: A stage involving multiple design specialists, stakeholders, and workflows, depending on the team’s progress.
- Milestone: A critical deliverable that the team must reach to advance to the next phase.
🧠 Product Design
At this stage, ambiguity decreases, and understanding increases. The challenge now lies in finding the best path for the user through design best practices. Product designers take the lead, while research designers, in an extended role, follow up and contribute their gathered insights.
Estructura:
🏆 Input, Output, and Outcome
The impact of our work will be reflected in real-world environments, so it’s essential to define the goal early on, with stakeholder input during kickoff sessions. This includes delivering qualitative and quantitative reports, as well as interfaces that will drive the desired business outcome — whether revenue or other benefits — and the user outcome, which ultimately addresses the identified problem (JTBD).
👥 Owners
A key element is assigning ownership to each phase. Why? Often, follow-up on tasks or discussions falls to a single person, leading to missed opportunities for the multidisciplinary team to actively participate in key moments. This can result in misinformation, rework, and delays in advancing processes.
By assigning ownership to all design team members involved in a project, we ensure the same level of focus and commitment to reaching milestones and moving forward. This also fosters shared knowledge, allowing anyone to update stakeholders on the project’s status with confidence.
📦 Possible Use Cases
Follow-up + Solution Delivery
When a development cycle is completed, improvements may arise by reviewing monitoring platforms (Hotjar, Clarity, Looker), which can trigger an “insight” that may lead us directly to “solution delivery,” where we execute minor iterations on existing elements.
Lean Validation + Solution Delivery
A stakeholder may have a hypothesis they want to validate quickly, so we can enter a “lean validation” process. This allows us to use a rapid prototype or no-code solution to understand user perception, which may result in a new product feature or an improvement to an existing one. From there, we can proceed to “solution delivery” to create the flow’s use cases and then finish with “follow-up” to monitor performance once it has been deployed.
On the other hand, the “lean validation” process might also lead us to initiate a “problem definition” process to delve deeper through research and identify the real problem we want to solve based on the insights gained without compromising the product with inconclusive results.
Development & Launch
This is a “particular” case for when we have a full squad of designers and developers, allowing us to follow the entire sequence of the design and build cycle for the solution.
This diamond is incorporated between “Solution Delivery” and “Follow-up,” and its milestone focuses on the deployment of the solution, which has been tested and validated by QA experts. After this, monitoring becomes crucial not only for gathering insights but also for verifying the correct performance of the solution. In this case, the ownership expands beyond designers, as everyone is responsible for keeping track of what is happening.
Understanding these examples, we have situations where there are incremental features that fall outside the ambiguity threshold, and then we have opportunities (insights) triggered by market demands, which provide us with a comprehensive and continuous work scenario.
It is worth mentioning that everything usually starts with an insight; otherwise, there would be no trigger for the need. Additionally, everything involves a “follow-up”; we cannot afford not to be involved in the solutions we research and/or design. It is an active and constant role as a product designer.
Conclusion
An integrated, continuous, and synchronized approach not only delivers more impactful results for product design but also ensures shared responsibility across all team members.
The Origami WoW for Product Design is a canvas for testing and iterating on how to achieve the best outcomes. It’s as adaptable as the design process itself, empowering everyone involved to contribute effectively.
Given its flexibility, we strive for it to visibly and practically integrate service design efforts soon, serving as a necessary complement to the end-to-end (E2E) user experience design process.
Special thanks to Luz Arenas for her months of work, involvement, and willingness to rethink, question, and contribute beyond our environment.
🌟 The Spanish version is available at this link:
