The importance of diverging

Francesco Agnoletto
Francesco Agnoletto Logbook
3 min readSep 15, 2020

--

The true story of an underrated phase of design workflow.

So we received new specifications about a new task or a new project. Awesome!

What do you start with? Wireframes? Straight to UI? Moodboard? I’m sure deadline is right behind the corner, so: Figma/Sketch and … let’s do the magic!

Or not?

A workflow phase that I’m constantly find more and more useful is the Diverging one. Right between Research and Wireframes”.

No one knows what he wants.

Even stakeholders; and sometimes you don’t even talk with them, but with your account manager, intermediating for you with client.

The message is already filtered and the risk is to produce stuff that is simply something different from what was requested.

Plus no-one knew that more options were available, cause we do not shown them.

What

That is the diverging phase: take time to think outside the box, imagine even something that is not possible, cancel everything, read only the main goal and go with unicorns.

You have to be able to reset all previous informations, data collected: it’s a blank paper in front of you with only one line on it: the main goal.

--

--

UX/UI/Service Design Lead @DuskRise.com. I’m a curious problem solver, always trying to find the smart way to make things simpler, to rethink life around me.