Behavioral Science and Product Delight

Chat with Liz Immer, Head of Product at Vision Group

I am convinced that there’s a strong connection between building delightful products and behavioral science. Delight requires deep empathy and a profound understanding of what motivates users. These motivators can be uncovered using behavioral methods and techniques, and I was eager to get Liz Immer’s perspective as an expert and experienced product leader.

Liz Immer, Head of Product at Vision Group AG, brings a refreshingly human-centered approach to product development, shaped by her background in behavioral science. Liz learned that we have a much better chance of designing delightful products if we deeply understand human behavior. She describes delight as more than just surface-level satisfaction; it’s not simply the “cherry on top” but the entire “ice cream sundae.” This metaphor captures her belief that genuine delight must combine immediate emotional satisfaction with long-term rational fulfillment.

One of Liz’s most compelling insights is the connection between delight and self-improvement. The most successful products don’t just solve problems; they help users become better versions of themselves, while fostering meaningful connections with others. Liz illustrated this idea with Miro, a digital whiteboard tool. Miro makes users feel like better leaders, better facilitators, and better thinkers. This example highlights that delight isn’t just about usability; it’s about how a product makes users feel about themselves.

Delight isn’t exclusive to consumer tech or entertainment. It also plays a crucial role in industries that seem unemotional, such as scientific publishing. Liz shared a fascinating example from academic journals, where research showed that journals fostering emotional connection had significantly higher citation rates. When reviewers and authors felt a sense of belonging and community, they were more engaged, more likely to cite articles, and more willing to volunteer for peer review, all critical success factors in the publishing world. This demonstrates that delight isn’t just about making users happy in the moment; it’s about creating trust, emotional investment, and engagement.

One of Liz’s most impactful projects involved redesigning a debt repayment system for a telecommunications company. The original system had a 50% failure rate. Half of the customers who signed up for installment plans failed to complete them. Her team implemented a counterintuitive change: they slowed the setup process down, introducing more steps. Instead of asking users how many installments they wanted, they reframed it as “How much can you afford per month?” They added reassuring visuals, including a handshake image at the final step. The result? During usability testing, users were physically relaxed, indicating lower stress and higher confidence, and compliance later jumped from 50% to more than 80%. This example underscores how small choices can profoundly impact user behavior and delight.

Liz also highlighted the importance of effectively measuring emotional impact. She strongly prefers moderated user testing over traditional surveys, arguing that surveys often fail to capture true emotions because respondents may not even be aware of their own preferences. Instead of asking people to report their reactions with formats such as numerical scales or scales labeled with words, she suggests using visuals like emojis as answer formats. She emphasized that watching users interact with a product in a natural way reveals more about their emotions than self-reported data ever could.

Throughout our conversation, Liz reinforced that delight isn’t just about making a product fun at the moment; it’s about creating a deeper connection that makes users feel understood, valued, and even empowered.

The full interview and more stories about delight are available in the Product Delight book. You can get your copy on Amazon Now.