A stance, not a recipe
Human Centred Design (HCD) is a way of working that puts the people you're designing for at the centre of every decision. It is less a fixed recipe and more a stance: be curious, take problems seriously, and stay humble about your assumptions.
Good HCD teams move between divergent thinking (exploring lots of possibilities) and convergent thinking (committing to a direction) — and they do it more than once across a project.
Where it comes from
The roots stretch back to participatory design in 1970s Scandinavia, ergonomics research from the post-war period, and the work of IDEO and the Stanford d.school in the 1990s and 2000s.
What's common across these traditions is a belief that the people who will use a product, service, or policy are the best teachers about what good looks like.