Executive Summary
Digital change used to be framed as a technology challenge. Recent evidence shows the weak link is human, not technical. Between 70-88% of business and digital transformations still fail to achieve their ambitions, largely due to low adoption, change fatigue and misaligned priorities. (Source: Salesforce)
Human centred design (HCD) offers a practical way out. When organisations involve real people throughout design and delivery, a Forrester study reports, project success rates rise by 28%. (Source: Sirocco Group)
Customer-obsessed companies meanwhile are seeing 41% faster revenue growth, 49% faster profit growth and 51% better customer retention than their peers. (Source: Forrester)
This article reframes HCD as a core CX management tool, not a UX add-on. It explores:
- Why transformation fatigue is rising despite record investment in digital
- What human-centred design really means in an age of AI and automation
- How banks, governments and health services are using HCD to deliver better outcomes at lower cost
- Seven practical moves any CX leader can make in the next 12 months to embed HCD into strategy, not just projects
The central message is simple. Technology gives scale and speed. Human-centred design decides whether that scale creates value or waste.
If you prefer to listen rather than read:
From “digital first” to “human first, delivered digitally”
Executives have been told for a decade that survival depends on digital transformation. Budgets followed. Results did not.
Recent research still shows around 70 per cent of digital transformations falling short of their objectives, often after multi-million-dollar investments. (Source: Salesforce)
A 2024 Bain study across wider business transformations reports 88% failing to achieve their original ambitions. (Source: Bain)
The pattern repeats across sectors:
- Technology functions deliver platforms no one loves using
- Employees experience constant change with little clarity about benefits, creating “transformation fatigue” and burnout (Source: IT Pro)
- Customers juggle fragmented apps, logins and journeys, then quietly retreat to simpler alternatives
The issue rarely sits in the code. It sits in the decision to digitise processes designed from an internal perspective, then hope for adoption.
Human-centred design reverses the starting point. Instead of asking “what can this technology do?”, teams ask “what problem does this person have, and what would a good day look like once it is solved?”. Technology becomes an enabler, not the hero.
What human centred design means today
Human-centred design used to be shorthand for “do a bit of user research before building the app”. That definition no longer fits.
Modern HCD brings several shifts.
1. From users to whole humans
People rarely experience a service in isolation. They arrive with worries, time pressure, accessibility needs, cultural expectations and sometimes limited digital confidence. A single “average user” persona no longer reflects reality.
The most advanced organisations now design for a deliberately diverse set of people, including those at the edges. Public sector guidance and indices on human-centred public services stress that services only work “for everyone” when design includes the full spectrum of needs, not just the most common ones. (Source: globalgovernmentforum.com)
2. From phases to continuous contact
Traditional projects often slot people into a single research phase, then retreat into internal workshops until launch. HCD flips that pattern.
Teams build and test early, often weekly. Lightweight prototypes become the meeting place between customer intent and business ambition. Forrester reports that organisations involving end users throughout the design process see a 28 per cent increase in project success rates, largely thanks to faster feedback and better prioritisation. (Source: Sirocco Group)
3. From channels to journeys and episodes
Nielsen Norman Group notes that UX and CX are converging, with UX bringing the craft of user research and interaction design, and CX bringing strategy, governance and cross-functional scope. (Source: Nielsen Norman Group)
Human-centred design has become the glue between the two. Teams now design “episodes” such as “opening an account” or “getting a refund”, rather than isolated screens or campaigns. That shift makes it far easier to measure and improve moments that matter.
The business case: human-centred design as a CX performance driver
Customer-centric rhetoric has grown louder, yet the financial evidence now backs it more clearly.
Forrester’s 2024 Customer Experience Index shows customer-obsessed organisations delivering 41 per cent faster revenue growth, 49 per cent faster profit growth and 51 per cent better retention than non-obsessed peers. (Source: Forrester)
Other sources highlight similar patterns:
- A 2023–24 BCG study on customer experience found that companies embedding human-centred design and agile methods throughout their CX change journey achieved dramatic operational gains, including an 80 per cent plus reduction in onboarding cycle times and a 30-point average uplift in NPS for one Australian financial institution. (Source: BCG)
- A 2024 review of HCD projects in public services and global health shows that human-centred approaches lead to more acceptable, feasible and effective solutions, especially when working with vulnerable or low-literacy populations. (Source: GHSP Journal)
Human-centred design helps in two ways.
- It reveals the few journeys and pain points that truly move the needle, so scarce change budget focuses where it counts.
- It improves adoption by co-creating with the people who ultimately decide whether a new service becomes part of their routine.
That combination of sharper prioritisation and higher adoption is exactly what most transformation portfolios lack.
Case study 1: GCash and the humanising of mass-market investing
Philippines-based GCash has become the country’s leading finance “super app”, growing from 20 million to more than 90 million users in a few years and reaching about 90 per cent of the eligible market. (Source: ResearchGate)
When the company decided to launch GInvest, a new investment service inside the app, the team could have dropped a standard trading interface into an existing platform and called it innovation. Instead, they worked with UXDA to follow a deep human-centred design approach: (Source: ResearchGate)
- Interviews and research with novice and experienced investors to understand fears, confidence levels and decision styles
- Personas that reflected both low financial literacy and high sophistication
- Prototyping and testing to simplify complex information without dumbing it down
- Gamification features to support learning and reduce anxiety
- An investment journey that starts from as little as 50 pesos, making participation accessible for millions
The result is not just another feature in a crowded app. GInvest offers a guided, emotionally reassuring path into investing for people who often felt excluded from formal financial services. It sits inside a digital product yet feels closer to a trusted human adviser than to a trading terminal.
For CX leaders, this example shows how human-centred design can:
- Extend reach into under-served segments
- Build emotional connection in categories usually dominated by fear and confusion
- Deliver growth without overwhelming customers with complexity
Case study 2: Australian banking transformation with CX and HCD at the core
One large Australian financial institution faced years of underperformance. Total shareholder return lagged behind other big banks, cost levels were high, and customer experience metrics trailed the market. A three-year transformation programme set ambitious targets: remove 6,000 roles, achieve AUD 1 billion in cost savings and improve CX enough to protect revenue growth. (Source: BCG)
The bank worked with BCG to redesign journeys front-to-back, using human-centred design and agile methods across the transformation. (Source: BCG)
Key outcomes included:
- Record productivity in consecutive financial years
- A 30-point average uplift in NPS
- More than 400,000 banker hours saved
- Over 80% reduction in end-to-end onboarding cycle times
- Account opening cut from six days to around ten minutes for 90% of SME customers
The human-centred element sat in the way journeys were defined and tested. Teams built around customer episodes, not internal functions, and used rapid experimentation with real customers and frontline staff to refine both digital and analogue steps.
This is exactly the combination most CX leaders now seek. Strong economics, better customer outcomes and simpler frontline work, all achieved by designing around people rather than channels or systems.
Case study 3: Human-centred design in digital health
Healthcare provides another proof point where poor design has serious consequences. Recent work on digital health interventions, such as the co-creation of the ADAPTS app to support children with cancer taking mercaptopurine, shows how human-centred design improves both usability and clinical relevance. (Source: Wiley Online Library)
Researchers used iterative co-design with patients, parents and clinicians to:
- Understand daily routines, fears and medication barriers
- Prototype features that fitted into real-world life, including just-in-time reminders and supportive messaging
- Test language, tone and interaction patterns for clarity during stressful moments
That degree of human involvement often feels time-consuming at the start. Yet the alternative is a familiar story: expensive tools that clinicians resist and patients abandon.
Why AI makes human-centred design more important, not less
Executives face new pressure to “do something with AI”. Generative models now summarise call transcripts, draft messaging and automate parts of customer support at scale.
BCG’s research on CX notes that leading companies already use generative AI for tasks such as personalised outreach, content creation and real-time customer help. (Source: BCG)
These tools change the cost and speed equation, but they do not change what people value.
Several truths keep reappearing:
- Customers still prefer human interaction for sensitive or complex issues, even when they accept chatbots for simple queries. (Source: superstaff.com)
- Employees experience higher fatigue when technology is imposed on them without involvement or clear benefit. (Source: IT Pro)
- Poorly designed automation can quietly bake bias, exclusion or frustration into interactions at massive scale.OECD+1
Human-centred design gives CX leaders a way to steer AI responsibly.
Instead of deploying algorithms first and fixing complaints later, teams can use HCD to:
- Map where automation genuinely helps and where it should hand over to a human
- Co-create AI-supported journeys with frontline teams and customers, not for them
- Test prompts, workflows and escalation rules with real users, then refine before wide rollout
That approach preserves the “augmented intelligence” opportunity: machines handle pattern recognition and scale; humans handle judgment, empathy and exception handling.
Seven moves CX leaders can make in the next 12 months
Human-centred design does not require a new department. It requires a different way of working. These moves fit within most existing CX or digital programmes.
1. Put one life episode at the centre
Choose a single high-value journey such as “first-time onboarding”, “resolving a serious complaint” or “claiming support during a crisis”. Assemble a cross-functional team around that episode and make one person accountable for the human outcome, not the technology delivery.
2. Commit to weekly contact with real people
Set a simple rule for that team: talk to or test with at least five customers or users every week. Short, regular sessions beat big, occasional research. Capture what surprised the team, then base decisions on those surprises.
3. Design for the edges, not just the middle
Deliberately include people who are often excluded. That may mean low digital literacy, disability, rural connectivity or non-native language speakers, depending on your category. If a service works for them, it usually works even better for everyone else.
4. Tie HCD work to CX and financial metrics
Measure success using a mix of:
- Experience indicators such as NPS, CES or emotional response
- Operational measures such as cycle time, error rates and handle time
- Financial outcomes such as cost-to-serve, conversion or retention
BCG’s banking case shows that human-centred CX redesign can produce large cost savings and market share gains when anchored to hard metrics.BCG
5. Integrate HCD into governance, not just projects
Update change approval templates so any new initiative must show:
- Evidence of direct user involvement
- A hypothesis about how the change will improve a defined episode
- A plan for testing and iteration with real people
That simple gate keeps “technology for its own sake” away from the roadmap.
6. Train leaders to ask human questions
Senior leaders often fall back on technology questions: which platform, what license, which vendor. Encourage a different set of questions during steering committees, such as:
- Which human problem does this solve better than today
- Which journeys or episodes improve
- How did real customers or employees respond in tests
Over time, that shift in questions changes culture more effectively than posters or slogans.
7. Treat AI as a design material, not a destiny
Use human-centred design methods to explore AI use cases. Rapidly prototype AI-supported flows, test them with customers and frontline teams, and refine based on their reactions. Resist the temptation to deploy automation where it simply adds steps or confusion.
Conclusions
Technology now gives brands the ability to touch people’s lives at astonishing scale. The open question is whether those touches feel helpful, humane and effortless, or bureaucratic and draining.
Human-centred design does not slow progress. It keeps progress pointing in the right direction. For CX leaders, that makes it less of a “nice to have” and more of an insurance policy against wasted investment and eroded trust.
The organisations that will win the next decade will not be those with the most technology. They will be those that stay closest to the humans that technology is meant to serve.
