HCD Discovery Guides

The Human-centered Design (HCD) Discovery Guide helps individuals and organizations understand customers, their goals, and their moments of delight and frustration.

This modular guide was developed through real-world testing in organizations numbering from a dozen people to hundreds of thousands of employees. It shows how to move through customer research with confidence, from first ideas to final, actionable insights and their presentation to stakeholders.

Use the HCD Discovery Guide to:

Understand the best framing for your core research questions.
Scope a project to investigate that problem.
Conduct that project in a rigorous way.
Pull actionable customer insights from your research.
Deliver your project on-time.

From receiving the first project brief or identifying a first customer problem to delivering a final presentation to stakeholders, this guide helps innovative generalists get the direction they need to conduct smart, focused, and efficient customer and stakeholder research. This strong, foundational research for product, service, program, and service development then sets up individuals and organizations up to build great things with the confidence that they truly understand their customers.