In this episode of Ascend UX, host Ayan Bihi sits down with UX leader, executive, and creative Ravi Singh to explore a bold idea: what if we applied the designer's most trusted framework, the Double Diamond, not to products, but to our personal lives? Drawing on over 25 years of design experience, Ravi shares candid stories of travel goals, family systems, fear of public speaking, and mindfulness practices to illustrate how design thinking can help us live with more intention, clarity, and purpose. Together, Ayan and Ravi walk through all 4 phases, Discover, Define, Develop, and Deliver, and show how each one maps to real decisions we face in life. Whether you're feeling stuck, navigating change, or simply want to live more intentionally, this episode offers both the mindset shifts and practical tools to design a life that feels genuinely yours.
Our conversation for this episode was brought to you from a deep passion for design, leadership, and what it means to live with intention.
If anything in this episode resonated with you, we'd love to connect.
Ayan Bihi, Host:
Ravi Singh, Guest:
The Spark: Design Equals Intention
Ayan opens by sharing the moment that inspired this episode: stuck on a design problem, she went for a walk and stumbled onto a podcast conversation about designing life. The single idea that lit up her thinking was design equals intention. That became the lens for this entire conversation.
What is the Double Diamond?
Ravi breaks down the Double Diamond as two cycles of divergent and convergent thinking. The first diamond is about exploring broadly in the Discover phase, then narrowing to what matters in the Define phase. The second diamond is about generating many options in the Develop phase, then committing and acting in the Deliver phase. Before the first diamond, you anchor in your core values and vision. After the second diamond, you measure outcomes, in numbers, or in smiles.
Phase 1: Discover, What Gives You Energy?
Before jumping to solutions, explore what matters. Practices to create reflective space include a phone-free first 20 minutes each morning, a 3-line journal at night covering one win, one drain, and one wish for tomorrow, a walk after dinner without headphones, and an inward empathy map asking what you see, hear, think, feel, and do at your best.
Ravi's take: intentional living requires being grounded first. Core values matter, but some values we hold onto are ones we actually need to let go of to be more authentic.
Mindfulness as a Design Tool
Ravi shares two accessible mindfulness techniques anyone can use.
The first is breathing. Simply stop, close your eyes, take a deep breath, and let it out slowly. This stimulates the vagus nerve and brings calm. It moves us from ego-driven noise down into heart and gut. Ravi recommends pairing breath with a set intention before the day begins.
The second is visualization. First visualize everything going wrong to surface and release anxiety, then visualize the ideal outcome in vivid detail. Visualization combined with practice has been shown to improve performance and professional athletes use it for exactly this reason.
Phase 2: Define, Reframe the Problem
Once you've explored broadly, converge. Narrow to what's essential by reframing problems as opportunity statements. Instead of saying "my evenings vanish scrolling my phone," try "how might I enjoy a phone-free dinner three nights a week?"
Treat constraints like family, commute, budget, and time as design material. Ravi's example: instead of a 2-hour gym session away from his kids, he found a 30-minute high-intensity gym nearby that fit his actual goals. The insight didn't appear until he named the problem clearly.
The Stories We Tell Ourselves
One of the episode's richest threads is how internal narratives shape our identity and our choices. This means distinguishing stories you've written from stories you've absorbed from others, noticing when a core value is actually extrinsic such as envy or social comparison rather than truly yours, and reconciling who you think you are with the evidence of how you actually live.
Ravi's key move: look for misalignment. If you claim to value something but your life doesn't reflect it, that's data, not failure. Use it as a springboard to write a new story.
Phase 3: Develop, Life as a Prototype
Open up again. Generate many options and run small, low-stakes experiments. The goal is to keep it light and playful. Put your phone on the charger in another room at 9 PM and read two pages before sleep. Take a 15-minute walk with a colleague or partner to rebuild connection. Keep a bedside notepad for reflections and even dreams as a feedback loop.
Ravi references the book Range by David Epstein, which contrasts Tiger Woods, who specialized early, with Roger Federer, who explored broadly before committing to tennis at 14. Most paths to excellence look more like Federer's. Iteration isn't aimlessness; it's how you find what you love. Find the challenge you love because everything takes effort, and you need to find the effort that doesn't feel like pain.
Systems Thinking for Sustainable Change
Ravi introduces a systems lens: think about your day in time chunks and ask which activities in those slots actually matter to you. His family dinner ritual is a lived example. The goal was to bring the family together with gratitude, not just serve a meal. The insight was that it was fine to sometimes buy the meal because the togetherness was the point. The result is a gratitude roundtable before eating that has held for 8 years. The system works because it's tied to clear values and built to be sustainable through life's changes.
UX Tools for Life Organization
Ravi recommends bringing your design toolkit into your personal life. Mind maps are great for untangling a complex situation or idea. Prioritization matrices help clarify what to focus on versus let go. Card sorting can organize ideas by effort, timing, or theme. Surveys and interviews can gather feedback from your community or family. Personas are especially powerful: build a persona of the person you want to become, then ask what would they do in this situation?
The Debbie Millman Exercise
From designer Debbie Millman via the Mel Robbins Podcast: write a vivid, detailed description of one day in your life 10 years from now. Not a checklist, but a story. Where are you and what does the light look like? What are you building and with whom? Who feels close and how do you show up for them? What delights you? What happened that your future self cannot stop smiling about?
Read it aloud, then set it aside and let intention do the work. From your responses, find one signal, a value or theme that appears in both your future and your present. That is your North Star.
Phase 4: Deliver, Ship Small and Iterate Always
Delivery is not the finish line; it's the start of a new loop. Keep rituals small and sustainable. Start Mondays with an intention and end Fridays with reflection. Set a 10-minute check-in every other week with a mentor or trusted friend. Ship the smallest meaningful version of your idea, then iterate.
Ravi's travel year: he planned 5 trips aligned to his core value of exploration and sequenced them from most familiar to most adventurous, building comfort gradually. He also used a physical wall calendar to plan the year in advance and delegated at work before his biggest trip. He left, was fully present, and returned fulfilled with nothing fallen apart.
Fear, Mindfulness and Rewriting the Story
Fear is story-based. Ravi's approach to his biggest fear, public speaking, was to replace his anxious internal narrative with the feedback others gave him over time. Before speaking now, he reminds himself that other people think he's a good speaker, and he leads with that. Meditation increases neuroplasticity, which makes it genuinely easier to change thought patterns. When fear arises, look backwards at past successes and let that evidence rewrite the story.
Intuition: The Designer's Secret Tool
Ravi introduces a head, heart, gut model. The head or ego is scattered and often driven by fear or envy. The heart is motivated by love and care for others. The gut or intuition is clear, unfiltered inner truth.
How to descend to intuition: take a breath, notice the ego noise, acknowledge the heart, then simply ask what feels right. The answer tends to surface clearly.
Ayan's take: the ego screams and intuition whispers. You have to be present enough to hear it. Treat it like a GPS, always on, but only useful when you know it's there.