A structured process that relates customer-defined attributes to the product's technical features needed to support and generate these attributes. This technique achieves this mapping by means of a six-step process: (1) identification of customer attributes; (2) identification of supporting technical features; (3) correlation of the customer attributes with the supporting technical features; (4) assignment of priorities to the customer requirements and technical features; (5) evaluation of competitive stances and competitive products; and (6) identification of those technical features to be used (deployed) in the final design of the product. HOQ is part of the quality function deployment (QFD) process and forces designers to consider customer needs and the degree to which the proposed designs satisfy these needs. See: customer-defined attributes, quality function deployment.

House of Quality is a graphic tool for defining the relationship between customer desires and the firm/product capabilities. It is a part of the Quality Function Deployment (QFD) and it utilizes a planning matrix to relate customer wants to how a firm (that produce the products) is going to meet those wants. It looks like a House with correlation matrix as its roof, customer wants vs product features as the main part, competitor evaluation as the porch etc.