Discovery Concept Guide

Next Steps

Design Phase

You’ve presented the opportunities to your key audience and gained consensus about which set of opportunities to address. Now you are ready to move to Design: the HCD phase wherein you partner with designers to prototype products, services or systems that address the opportunities.

If, on the other hand, you have come this far and have not gained consensus, don’t despair. If you have come this far and feel your research has not been fruitful, don’t despair. Your effort is not wasted. You can always reframe and begin research again. It is far better to learn something is not working early on than to invest time and resources into the wrong design. A reframe, in this case, is a win.

Whether your next step is to move into Design, or whether it is reframe and d0 a second round of research, the most important thing is to keep your agency customers’ interests in mind and to use that north star to guide your continued efforts.

HCD Bubble Diagram with the Design phase highlighted

Thanks and Acknowledgements

Numerous people, across agencies, contributed to this guide. We are grateful to all of them.

  • Veterans Experience Office at VA
  • GSA Office of Customer Experience
  • The Lab at OPM

We would also like acknowledge other leaders in the field of Human-Centered Design which inspired and informed this guide: The VA Innovators Network, 18F, USDS (United States Digital Service), Deloitte & Doblin, Helsinki Design Lab, Luma Institute, Ideo and Ideo.org, Frog Design, IBM Design, and The d.School at Stanford University.