What are the five phases of Human-Centred Design and how do they apply to Salesforce projects?

The five phases are:

1. Empathize — understand users through interviews, observation, and contextual inquiry. On a Salesforce project this means sitting with Sales Reps or Service Agents to understand daily pain points before touching configuration.
2. Define — synthesise research into a clear problem statement or "How Might We" question, e.g. "How might we reduce the time a Service Agent spends navigating between five tabs?"
3. Ideate — generate many potential solutions through brainstorming, crazy-eights, or affinity mapping.
4. Prototype — build low-to-high fidelity representations (sketches, Figma wireframes, or a sandbox org build) to test solutions cheaply.
5. Test — validate prototypes with real users, capture qualitative and quantitative feedback, and iterate. The process is inherently iterative — test findings loop back into Empathize or Define as needed.