Empathize/Research: Empathy is the centerpiece of the human-centered design process. The empathize model is the work you do to understand people, within the context of your design challenge. It is your effort to understand the way they do things and why, their physical and emotional needs, how they think about the world and what is meaningful to them.
Define: The define mode of the design process is all about bringing clarity and focus to the design space. It is your chance and responsibility as a design thinker to define the challenge you are taking on based on what you have learned about your user’s and about the context. After becoming an instant expert on the subject and gaining invaluable empathy for the person you are designing for, the stage is about making sense of the widespread information you have gathered.
Ideate: Concentrate on the idea generation. Mentally it represents a process of going wide in terms of concepts and outcomes.
Prototype: A Prototype can be anything that a user can interact with- be it a wall of post-it notes, a gadget you put together, a role- play activity or even a storyboard.
Test: The test mode is when you solicit feedback about the prototypes you have created, from your users and have another opportunity to gain empathy for the people you are designing for.
Iterate: Iterate both by cycling through the steps 1–5 multiple times and also by iterating within a step. For example, by creating multiple prototypes or trying variations of a brainstorming topics with multiple groups.
