Producing solutions that have value should presuppose expertise as much as it presumes open-mindedness or user-centricity. This model identifies Selectivity as the primary responsibility of applying knowledge throughout the lifecycle of solution production.
2. Solving the right Problem
• Service Design is famously involved with the “double diamond” model of problem
solving.
• The model emphasizes that the beginning steps of the “process” must attend to
identifying the correct problem to solve, before other commitments are made to
production.
• Each diamond shape represents the divergence or convergence of experiences and ideas
which occurs as a solution is derived from the initial occasions (far left) of problem
solving, to the eventual provision of a particular solution (far right). In one diamond,
exploration broadens (diverges) before explorers narrow things down (converge) to what
is to be solved. Then, in the other diamond, experimental solutions are numerously
(broadly) created before choosing (converging on) the final one delivered for use.
3. Producing a Solution
• In our case, however, the grouping is somewhat different, because the principal objective
that runs throughout our solution production model is selectivity. And our experience is
that development is itself part of the thought process that leads to deciding what
problem to solve. We know this mainly due to art-making, but also due to teaching.
• Selectivity is characterized in four ways including: what we recognize; what we decide;
what evaluation we give; and what we prefer. Any solution to a problem represents the
things that were identified within each of those varieties, and then retained or excluded.
The combination of those included things orchestrates the declared type of value that
the solution is supposed to contain on delivery.
• The general pattern of selectivity across the factors in our solution lifecycle is to
recognize more (concerns), decide fewer (possibilities), evaluate more (methods) and
prefer fewer (examples). Meanwhile, selectivity uses knowledge in a certain way.
• To illustrate that, the following also adopts a double diamond scheme, representing how
knowledge management (KM) and production cultivate a solution of necessary (diamond
#1) and sufficient (diamond #2) value.