We suggest that your projects follow a “Double Diamond” design process of four consecutive stages (based on work by the UK Design Council). These four stages allow you to:

1. Open up and question what it is your improvement/innovation project should focus on. This is the Discover phase, where you might explore and understand service-users’ needs, for example;
2. Focus on the important issues to tackle in your project, based on what you’ve discovered. This is the Define phase, where you define problems and begin to interpret them;
3. Open up again to explore different ways of tackling the problem by designing things. This is the Develop phase, where you design and test potential solutions; and
4. Focus on producing practical, working solutions and implementing them. This is the Deliver phase, where you concentrate on the final specification and production of the service.