How we build the evidence before we design.
UX research isn't a survey we send before the "real work" starts — it's the structured, nine-phase investigation that turns assumptions into decisions our clients can defend.
Nine phases, in sequence
Each phase below feeds the next — you can't map a user journey before you've interviewed the user, and you can't test a prototype before it exists. This is the order we actually work in, not a checklist.
Project Understanding & Discovery
Understand the business before touching the design. We talk to everyone with a stake in the outcome, and audit whatever already exists.
Founders, product owners, marketing, sales, support and devs — collecting business goals, success metrics, frustrations and technical limits.
For existing products: navigation, flows, content structure, visual hierarchy, accessibility, performance and conversion problems.
Market & Competitor Research
Before designing anything new, we map what already exists — direct competitors, adjacent solutions, and the industry's unwritten standards.
Direct competitors (same service, same audience) and indirect ones (different solution, same problem) — features, flows, pricing, positioning.
Study category leaders for shared patterns and best practices — e.g. Revolut/N26/Wise for banking, Amazon/Shopify for e-commerce.
User Research
Direct contact with real users — what they say, what they do, and the gap between the two.
5–15 users minimum, asked how they solve the problem today, what tools they use, and what frustrates them.
Quantitative layer — demographics, preferences, behaviors and satisfaction at scale.
Observing users in their real environment to surface hidden problems and workarounds interviews alone miss.
Users log their own actions, problems and feelings over time — useful for fitness, finance and habit products.
User Understanding
Raw research gets synthesized into tools the whole team can design against.
Research-based fictional profiles — goals, frustrations, behaviors and tech comfort — standing in for real user segments.
Four quadrants — Says, Thinks, Does, Feels — to separate what users voice from what they actually mean.
The full experience end to end — awareness, research, purchase, delivery, retention — with pain points and opportunities marked.
Research converted to need statements: "As a [user], I want to [action], so that [benefit]."
Information Architecture Research
Before we structure anything, we test how people naturally expect it to be organized.
What exists, what's missing, what's outdated, what should be cut.
Users group information themselves, revealing categories, navigation structure and mental models.
Testing a proposed navigation structure before any visual design exists — can users find "Cancel subscription"?
User Flow Research
How users actually move through a task, step by step — and where they stall.
Breaking a task like "book a hotel" into its real steps — search, filter, select, pay — to flag friction and drop-offs.
Diagrams of entry points, decisions, actions and end points, ready to hand to design.
Testing Before Development
Nothing reaches engineering until real users have tried to break it first.
Users perform real tasks on wireframes — "find a product and purchase it" — while we watch for errors and confusion.
Measured against effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction — completion rate, time on task, error rate.
Two real versions compared head to head — e.g. "Start Free Trial" vs. "Create Account" — measured on conversion.
Accessibility Research
Usable for everyone isn't a final pass — it's checked against a standard.
Color contrast, typography, screen reader support and keyboard navigation, checked against WCAG 2.2.
UX Research Report
Everything above, synthesized into a single document design and engineering can both work from.
Scope, objectives and methodology.
Personas, empathy maps and journey maps.
Competitor analysis and benchmark findings.
User flows, pain points, opportunities and next steps.
Where research hands off to design
Research doesn't end when this report ships — it's the input for everything that follows.