22.07.2025

Successfully shaping change with Human Centered Design and Behavioral Design

Change is not a luxury, but a survival strategy. Because Technological change, high customer expectations and strong competitive pressure make change essential for companies. They break up rigid structures and entrenched patterns and unleash innovative strength and employee commitment. If you do it right…our ChangeXperience changers are now pooling their years of practical experience. The result is a human-centered and well-founded method that combines Human Centered Design (HCD) and Behavioral Design (BD). Find out how change can be transformed in five steps from a “project on the side” to an organizationally anchored process in your organization.

Our approach to mastering digital transformation

HCD legt den Menschen ins Zentrum, BD übersetzt Erkenntnisse aus Psychologie und Verhaltensökonomie in konkrete Maßnahmen. Gemeinsam ermöglichen sie, nicht nur Prozesse zu ändern, sondern nachhaltig neues Verhalten zu etablieren.

Human-Centered Design (HCD) focuses on people, while Behavioural Design (BD) translates findings from psychology and behavioral economics into concrete measures. Together, they make it possible not only to change processes, but also to establish sustainable new behavior. This is our ChangeXperience.

Why change is essential for companies

  • Ensuring competitiveness: New technologies and business models require continuous adaptation.
  • Strengthen employee loyalty: Those who are actively involved in changes develop loyalty and identification.
  • Increase customer benefit: Customer needs change quickly – companies must react with agility.
Kleines Kind vor großer Treppe
Circular process diagram on an orange background showing various phases of the design or innovation process, with a stylized person in the middle. Text phases: “Sketching the goal”, “Understanding and defining”, “Finding ideas and designing solutions”, “Making it tangible”, “Testing and scaling”. The “Changitors” logo is at the bottom right.

ChangeXperience: Five phases for effective UX integration

  1. ChangeXperience focus: moving away from “What do we want?” to “How do we achieve it?”
  2. Define target behavior:
    • Example: “Sales employees document all call results in the CRM within 24 hours of each customer appointment.”
    • Example: “Managers give their teams weekly positive feedback in 1:1 meetings.”

Why this helps: By specifying the desired behavior of individual players, it becomes clear which concrete steps are necessary to initiate the overall change.

  1. Create a stakeholder map:
    • Recording all roles (e.g. sales, product, IT, HR)
    • Documentation: current behavior, needs, expectations, daily tasks
  2. Derive UX personas:
    • Characteristics: e.g. “Barbara, Senior Sales Manager, 45 years old, digital-savvy, time pressure, high reporting effort.”
    • Persona content: Goals, frustrations, technological affinity
  3. Behavioral Design Analysis:
    • Triggers: What triggers desired behavior? (e.g. reminder pop-up in the system)
    • Motivators: What rewards work? (e.g. visibility in the team, gamification elements)
    • Barriers: What hurdles stand in the way? (e.g. long login process, lack of training)
  4. Collect insights:
    • Qualitative methods: Interviews, shadowing, focus groups
    • Quantitative methods: surveys, usage data from system logs
    • Result: Friction map that visualizes all weak points and links them to the stakeholder map
  5. Adjust target behavior:
    • Clarify the wording based on the insights gained (“Within 2 hours of the appointment” instead of “2 hours”)

  1. derive challenges:
    • Formulation as “How could we…?” questions
    • Example: “How could we make it as easy as possible for sales employees to record call notes directly in the CRM?”
  2. Prioritization:
    • Evaluation according to impact vs. implementation effort
    • Focus on the top 3 challenges
  3. Creativity methods:
    • Design sprints, brainwriting, co-creation workshops with users
    • Visualization: storyboards, wireframes, first low-fi prototypes
  4. Integrate behavioral strategies:
    • Defaults: Default settings that make the desired behavior the standard (e.g. CRM mask opens automatically at the end of an appointment)
    • Micro-commitments: Small commitments (“Would you like to save the notes now?”)
    • Feedback loops: Immediate feedback (“Your note has been successfully entered!”)

  1. Develop prototypes:
    • Hi-fi mock-ups (screens), role-play scenarios, pilot training sessions
  2. Organize a test run:
    • Selection of a small, representative group
    • Time frame: 1-2 weeks
  3. Define measurable criteria:
    • Conversion rate (e.g. proportion of documented appointments)
    • User satisfaction (short survey after the test)
  4. Target:
    • Creating realistic experiences with minimal effort
    • Identifying successes and problems at an early stage

  1. Perform tests:
    • Accompaniment by moderators
    • Monitoring of the defined KPIs
  2. Evaluate results:
    • Behavior observed vs. target behavior
    • Documenting unexpected barriers
  3. Scaling successful measures:
    • Rollout plan for all teams
    • Adaptation of processes, guidelines and training documents
  4. Long-term anchoring:
    • Introduction of new rituals (e.g. weekly team check-ins)
    • Regular pulse checks and behavioral KPIs
    • Continuous optimization loops

Effective change

A change process that combines HCD and BD is not only people-centered, but also based on behavioral science – and therefore significantly more effective than traditional top-down approaches. The precise definition of target behavior, combined with iterative prototyping and behavior-oriented interventions, creates sustainable change:

  • Insight: Genuine involvement promotes acceptance
  • Success: measurable changes in behavior become possible
  • Culture: New routines and rituals become part of everyday life

With advancing digitalization and new findings from behavioural research, human-centric development can be continuously expanded. Companies that follow this path today are laying the foundations for continuous innovation and the ability to change tomorrow.

UX Strategie entwickeln visualisiert durch Hand, die digitale Pflanze hält
Ein kleiner Roboter steht in der Mitte eines X

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The authors

Lisa Reimer has been a Senior User Experience Consultant for over 15 years, supporting clients from various industries on their journey from the idea to the finished product or service. She primarily designs and evaluates suitable user interfaces. She also enables project teams to work innovatively and agilely. She uses the co-creative process LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY®, for example, to promote new processes and ideas and to make collaboration inspiring. As a speaker at various events, Lisa passes on her knowledge of environment design and digital transformation.

UX Consutlant

Philip Zettner is a User Experience Consultant at UID. His current focus is on the enterprise, industry and medical sectors. Philip is an expert in behavioral psychology and behavioral design. The information designer (Stuttgart Media University) has experience in all phases of user-centered interface design, with a focus on research and concept.

Philip Zettner von UID

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