Service
UX Strategy & Research
UX strategy and research is the work of turning an ambiguous problem into a defensible plan — what to build, for whom, in what order, and how you will know whether it worked.
When teams call us about this
- The team has a backlog and no agreement about which item actually matters.
- You have analytics telling you what happened and nothing telling you why.
- Design keeps losing the budget conversation because the case is made in adjectives while someone else brings a spreadsheet.
What's included
Research that answers a decision
Scoped to a question someone is waiting on, not a general survey of users. If a finding wouldn't change what you build, we don't spend a week gathering it.
Journey and flow mapping
Where people enter, where they stall, and where they quietly leave — mapped against what the system actually does, including the states nobody documented.
A prioritised roadmap
Sequenced by impact against effort, with the reasoning visible so it survives the next reorg and the next person who asks why.
The business case
The cost of the current problem, the plausible range for fixing it, and the assumptions behind both — built so a finance person can push on the inputs instead of dismissing the conclusion.
How it runs
1
Frame
Agree the decision this work has to inform. Everything after gets judged against that.
2
Research
Talk to real users, watch real sessions, read the support tickets nobody reads. The tickets are usually the cheapest insight in the building.
3
Synthesise
Flows, findings and a roadmap — with the trade-offs stated rather than smoothed over.
4
Measure
Define the numbers up front, including the one that would prove us wrong.
Where we've done it
Every one of these is live and clickable — a working product, not a screenshot.
What an engagement looks like
Strategy and research engagements are usually two to six weeks — long enough to talk to real users and read the evidence you already have, short enough that the answer still matters when it arrives. Delivered as flows, findings and a sequenced roadmap, plus the business case if a budget conversation is coming.
When this isn't the right fit
This is not the right service if the decision is already made and what you want is evidence to support it. That work exists, it is just not research, and we are bad at it on purpose. It is also wrong if you need a number by Friday for a deck — good research on a real question takes longer than that, and a fast answer you cannot defend is worse than no answer. If you have never read your own support tickets in bulk, start there before hiring anyone; it is free and it often reframes the question.
Common questions
How do you make the business case for design work?
By starting from the cost that already exists rather than the upside nobody believes. Support tickets about one confusing screen, hours lost re-keying data between systems, the share of people who start a flow and never finish. Those numbers usually sit in a tool the company already pays for. Once you have the cost of the status quo, the ask stops being an opinion about design and becomes arithmetic — and you present it as a range with the assumptions visible, because an estimate with no showable math is what actually gets rejected.
How much research is enough?
Enough to change a decision, and not more. Five well-run sessions on a specific question beat fifty on a vague one. The failure mode we see most is research that produces a beautiful deck nobody acts on, usually because the question was never tied to a decision anyone was waiting to make.
Can you work with what we already have?
Usually, yes. Most teams have more evidence than they think — analytics, support tickets, sales-call notes, churn surveys — that has never been read together. Starting there is cheaper and faster than commissioning new research, and it often reframes the question before you spend anything.
Need help with UX Strategy & Research?
The first 30-minute call is free, and it's where we scope it. You'll leave with a clear picture either way.