The Process 

Empathize

This is the first step in the process, this is where all the magic really happens.  You have to immerse yourself in the related topics and surround yourself with the people whom your solution hopes to serve. This is done through surveys, questions, and answers, and user research. It's feedback; it's understanding. 

Define

After allowing yourself to be immersed in the world of your users and your understanding of  needs is complete

It’s time to take everything you've learned and turn it into a clear synthesis of the core problems your solution hopes to remedy.  This distillation of information is called the problem statement.

To ensure the human-centric nature of your solution the generation of personas is vital to keeping the kinds of users your product will serve top of mind. 

Ideate

This is where you take the distillation of insight and knowledge you've gained thus far and create and create and create, generating ideas and possible solutions to problems your users shared with you earlier in the process.

Prototype

The prototype phase is about developing a solution it really is a focal point for the process. It's where a concrete product starts to take on life, as form and function are defined and polished.

Testing

This is where the phase ends after you've done your testing and are sure you've met your user's needs you start at the step above and loop the two testing and prototyping.