Author: Alessandro Zulberti

  • The Material of Teaching

    Teaching UX Research Through Practice

    I teach UX research as a practical discipline, not as a list of methods. The work starts before the framework, with a person trying to understand a page, complete a task, compare options, trust a service, or decide whether to continue. Sometimes the problem is explained clearly; more often, the evidence arrives in fragments: a pause, a repeated question, a skipped section, a hesitation before clicking.

    That is the material students need to learn from. My teaching focuses on the movement from messy evidence to responsible action, using a simple sequence: listen, frame, map, and test. It is the same movement I use in professional research across ecommerce journeys, service experiences, accessibility reviews, behavioural analytics, and product decision-making.

    Listen

    Students begin with raw participant evidence, not polished insights or final recommendations. They work with real comments, contradictions, and moments of uncertainty, learning to separate what the participant says from what the behaviour may reveal.

    A comment about unclear costs may also be about trust. A positive reaction to a visual explanation may not be about the image itself, but about confidence. A complaint about too much content may signal that the page is asking the user to work too hard. This is where research begins: in attention before interpretation.

    Frame

    The next step is to turn evidence into a better question. Students move from quote to structure by translating observations into a problem, an objective, and a How Might We question. This prevents the common mistake of jumping directly from one user comment to one design fix.

    A weak response is to say, “make this clearer.” A stronger response asks what the user needed at that moment, why the current experience failed to provide it, and what the team needs to learn before deciding on a solution. Research becomes direction when it starts with the right question, not the nearest fix.

    Map

    Students then place the evidence into a journey. They identify the moment, the content block, the user action, the emotion, and the opportunity, so the problem becomes concrete rather than abstract.

    Most UX issues do not live inside one isolated component. A trust signal, delivery message, review count, image, form field, or content module can change meaning depending on where it appears in the journey. Mapping shows where confidence builds, where it breaks, and where the system creates unnecessary effort.

    Test

    The final step is to turn an insight into a testable hypothesis: if we change this part of the experience, then this metric may improve, because the research showed this behaviour or risk. This is where teaching becomes close to real product work.

    Not every insight should become a recommendation. Some ideas need to be tested. Some need more evidence. Some should be deprioritised because they are interesting but not consequential enough to act on. In digital commerce and service design especially, a change can increase engagement while failing to improve the outcome that matters.

    What students learn

    The aim is not to teach students to make research look tidy. The aim is to teach them how to handle evidence without flattening it. They work with participant quotes, behavioural signals, journey maps, hypotheses, and prioritisation frameworks, while understanding that qualitative and quantitative evidence can support each other but can also disagree.

    Good UX research requires judgement. Judgement means knowing when a quote is a symptom, when a metric is misleading, when a journey map reveals a structural issue, and when a design idea needs to become an experiment rather than a recommendation. That distinction does not come from method. It comes from practice.

    Why this matters

    In real projects, evidence is incomplete, stakeholders need decisions, teams want clarity, and metrics can point in one direction while interviews point in another. Accessibility issues may be invisible until someone tests the journey differently. A service can look simple on the surface while creating operational pressure behind it.

    Students need to practise that complexity — not a cleaned-up version of it. They need to learn how to slow down, structure the material, and move forward without pretending the evidence is cleaner than it is. That means tolerating ambiguity long enough for the real problem to become visible, and being precise about what is known, what is inferred, and what still needs to be tested.

  • The Material of Desgin

    Design is not only what appears on the screen. It is the behaviour a system produces, the decisions it encourages, the assumptions it hides, and the work it transfers to the user.

    This is why I think of UX research as a material practice — not only a process for collecting evidence, but a way of working with attention, language, structure, and judgement. The material of design is found in the small moments where a system meets real use: a hesitation before checkout, a skipped content block, a service step that feels disconnected, an accessibility barrier, a page that explains too much while clarifying too little.

    These moments are not noise. They are where the work begins.

    The fold

    A fold appears when the designed flow and the user’s reality stop aligning. It may happen when someone pauses where the interface expects speed, ignores content the team considered important, or reaches a service step that sends them somewhere else to complete what should have been simple.

    The fold is not always a bug. Sometimes it is a contradiction, a missing signal, or the moment where the user reveals what the organisation has stopped seeing. In research, I try not to resolve the fold too quickly. Naming it too early can reduce it; leaving it untouched can make it disappear. The work is to hold it long enough for its meaning to become useful.

    Listening

    Research is often described as asking questions, but much of the value comes from listening. Listening means noticing what people repeat, what they avoid, what they assume, and what they do when the interface stops supporting them.

    This connects with photography as much as UX. In both practices, the first discipline is observation: learning to look before explaining, understanding that framing changes meaning, and noticing that what sits at the edge of the frame may matter as much as the subject. In UX research, the important evidence is not always in the answer. Sometimes it is in the pause before the answer.

    Method

    Methods are not neutral. An interview stretches meaning, a survey compresses it, analytics shows behaviour at scale, and a usability test reveals friction inside a task. An A/B test can show impact, but it does not always explain why that impact happened.

    Each method gives something and removes something, which is why I rarely trust one signal alone. I look for the relationship between what users say, what they do, where they struggle, how often it happens, and what business or service consequence follows. Research becomes useful when it helps a team understand which problem matters, why it matters, and what should be tested or changed first.

    Language

    Research changes when it becomes language. A user may say, “I clicked here because it felt safer,” but in a report that can easily become “users want clearer navigation.” The summary may be true, but something has been lost: uncertainty, emotion, risk, instinct.

    This matters because language assigns responsibility. “Users were confused” makes the problem sound as if it belongs to the user. “The interface did not provide enough reassurance at the decision point” makes the system visible. Good research writing should help teams act, but it should not erase the conditions that produced the evidence.

    Service

    Some of the most important UX problems are not interface problems. They are service problems, where the visible screen is only one part of a larger experience involving communication, operational process, timing, expectation, and trust.

    A journey may look acceptable on one page but fail across the full experience. A customer may understand the next step and still feel uncertain because the system around that step is not aligned. The question is not only whether the user can complete the task, but what effort the system creates, where responsibility moves, what the user needs to trust, and what happens after the visible interface ends.

    Accessibility

    Accessibility sharpens this way of working because it makes hidden assumptions visible. It shows where design depends too much on vision, speed, precision, memory, confidence, or familiarity, and it reveals whether a system is genuinely structured or only visually arranged.

    Accessibility is not a final check. It is a way of asking whether the experience can hold different bodies, contexts, technologies, and levels of certainty. When it is treated as part of design practice rather than a compliance layer, it improves the whole system — making content clearer, journeys more robust, decisions easier, and responsibility more explicit.

    What remains

    Most research fails before the report. Teams mistake visibility for understanding. Dashboards replace observation. Metrics become more important than the behaviour behind them. Workshops create alignment without changing the service, content, or process causing the problem.

    I have seen teams optimise journeys users still do not trust. I have seen accessibility treated as compliance while people struggle to complete basic tasks. I have seen organisations celebrate engagement while increasing effort for the customer. The issue is rarely lack of data. The issue is that interpretation requires something data alone cannot supply: a willingness to sit with the problem long enough to understand what it is actually about.

    Research becomes useful when teams connect evidence across the full experience — behaviour, language, accessibility, operational constraints, commercial pressure, and user intent. That work is slower than producing slides. It requires judgement, disagreement, and the willingness to face problems that sit beyond the interface itself. None of that is comfortable. It is, however, the part that changes anything.

  • Agentic AI Reading Instrument

    This experiment helps inspect short ideas about agentic AI through fixed critical lenses. Rather than simulating an assistant, it reads where delegation compresses context, assumes capability, and leaves hidden recovery work behind.

    Editorial experiment

    Agentic AI reading instrument

    Paste a short scenario about an AI agent. The page reads it through fixed lenses so you can see where delegation compresses context, hides repair work, or should stop.

    Not a chatbot. Not a feasibility checker. A compact diagnostic.

    Load an example

    Enter one short scenario only. This version reads one agentic situation at a time, not a list, comparison, or instruction prompt.

  • Scalable ROI Framework Matrix for UX Measurement

    Measuring UX Impact at Scale

    As UX work expanded across multiple journeys and markets, the organisation faced a growing disconnect between behavioural insight and business decision-making.

    Teams were improving checkout flows, refining product listings, adjusting navigation, and iterating on templates. Each initiative showed signs of behavioural change, yet there was no shared way to compare their value or prioritise investment across the portfolio.

    The problem was not a lack of data. It was the absence of a common financial language for UX impact.

    This case study documents how a scalable ROI framework was designed to translate UX behaviour into credible, comparable business signals.

    01 / CHALLENGE

    Challenge

    UX initiatives were evaluated in isolation.

    Checkout changes affected a small proportion of users but carried high intent. Product page listing and navigation changes reached more users but produced subtler behavioural shifts. Template updates varied by market and maturity.

    Without a shared framework, UX prioritisation stalled across initiatives and discussions defaulted to subjective judgement rather than evidence.

    The core challenge was comparability and credibility, not measurement volume.

    02 / STRATEGY

    Strategy

    The strategy was to design a single, reusable ROI framework that could be applied consistently to any UX change, regardless of journey depth or market size.

    The framework needed to:

    Core Requirements

    – Connect behavioural metrics to business impact

    – Normalise performance across different exposure levels

    – Support forecasting before launch and accountability after release

    – Prevent inflated ROI claims in deep-funnel contexts

    – Produce clear, trusted ROI tiers for decision-making

    Scalability was a deliberate design goal, not an afterthought.

    03 / EXECUTION HIGHLIGHTS

    Execution Highlights

    A Consistent Measurement Logic

    The framework translates UX behaviour into business impact using a single principle: impact is a function of behavioural change and exposure.

    Rather than relying on relative uplift or raw analytics, the model:

    – Measures conversion change in percentage points

    – Weights impact by the proportion of users actually exposed

    – Applies consistent time normalisation across initiatives

    – Evaluates performance over multiple post-launch windows

    This ensured that improvements were neither overstated nor dismissed.

    Time-Based Validation

    To avoid premature conclusions:

    – Early post-launch windows captured adoption effects

    – Later checkpoints confirmed behavioural stabilisation

    This approach allowed the team to detect short-term volatility, long-term consistency, and false positives driven by novelty or traffic noise.

    Portfolio-Level Visibility

    Each UX change was documented in a dedicated update view and rolled into an overview layer showing journey step, relative exposure, direction and stability of impact, ROI tier classification, and confidence notes.

    This shifted conversations from “Is this UX change good?” to “Where should we invest next for the strongest return?”

    Discipline Through Rejection

    Several commonly used ROI approaches were explicitly rejected:

    – Relative uplift percentages that exaggerated deep-funnel impact

    – Applying changes to total site traffic regardless of exposure

    – Blind use of industry benchmarks without contextual adjustment

    – Volatile revenue-per-session models

    The final framework prioritised realism over persuasion.

    04 / OUTCOME

    Outcome

    The framework was first validated through a checkout optimisation initiative, then adopted as the standard evaluation model for UX changes.

    Key outcomes included:

    – A shared, auditable ROI language across teams

    – Increased trust in UX impact reporting

    – Faster, evidence-based prioritisation decisions

    – More disciplined allocation of engineering effort

    Importantly, the framework was also used to deprioritise initiatives with limited exposure and low strategic leverage. It proved capable of constraining investment, not just justifying it.

    UX shifted from a cost discussion to a decision-support function.

    05 / REFLECTION

    Reflection

    This work changed one foundational assumption: conversion change has no meaning without exposure context.

    Before the framework, impact discussions focused on the size of behavioural shifts. Afterwards, they focused on how many users those shifts actually affected.

    That shift reframed UX ROI from advocacy to accountability.

    The framework does not replace qualitative research, brand thinking, or accessibility judgement. It complements them by providing a clear validation layer where financial decisions require evidence.

    In doing so, it raised the maturity of UX conversations not by inflating impact, but by making it comparable, bounded, and trustworthy.

  • Designing for a Global Health Charity

    Building Trust in Evidence-Based Health Guidance

    Overcoming MS (OMS) is an international charity promoting an evidence-based, seven-step lifestyle programme for people living with multiple sclerosis.

    Its ambition was to become a globally recognised digital charity, capable of reaching people with MS wherever they were, while maintaining the personalised support and sense of community that defined the organisation.

    The challenge was not simply to publish information online, but to support informed decision-making and sustained behaviour change in a context shaped by uncertainty, fluctuating health, and cognitive and emotional load.

    OMS recognised that achieving this required a research-led UX discovery phase to understand how people with MS seek information, manage energy, and engage with support over time.

    01 / CHALLENGE

    Challenge

    The existing website struggled to support OMS’s mission at scale.

    Key issues included fragmented content structures, a lack of a cohesive design system, low conversion through digital donations, and high dependency on administrators for content updates.

    More fundamentally, the platform did not sufficiently reflect the real-life constraints of people living with MS, including fatigue, variable attention, and the need to revisit information over time.

    The core challenge was to design a platform that balanced clarity, credibility, and compassion, while supporting both educational goals and organisational sustainability.

    OMS donation step interface
    Image Donation-flow redesign focused on clarity, reassurance, and reduced friction.
    OMS user profile layout
    Image User profile concepts supporting saved content, continuity, and return visits over time.
    04 / DISCOVERY PHASE

    Discovery Phase

    To move beyond assumptions, the discovery phase centred on a diary study, allowing participants to document aspects of their daily lives over several days.

    This method surfaced:

    – Fluctuating energy levels and attention across the day

    – Non-linear information needs, with frequent revisiting of the same content

    – Emotional sensitivity around health-related decisions

    – Reliance on mobile devices for short, fragmented sessions

    The diary study provided insight into how and when people engaged with information, not just what they sought.

    Supporting methods included internal interviews with OMS staff, reviews of OMS materials, and focus groups validating early findings and testing assumptions about key tasks.

    Focus group feedback highlighted friction in sign-up and account creation, “My account” areas and saved content, and understanding how to progress through OMS resources over time.

    05 / STRATEGY

    Strategy

    The UX strategy focused on reducing cognitive load while increasing trust and continuity.

    Structuring for Clarity and Return Visits

    Information architecture was redesigned to group content into predictable, clearly labelled templates, support scanning and short sessions without losing context, and allow users to save and return to content over time.

    User profiles enabled favourites and personalised access, reflecting the need to engage gradually rather than all at once.

    Designing for Mobile-First Reality

    Given diary-study insights, mobile experience became a priority. Optimisation work contributed to a reported 30% increase in mobile traffic, reflecting improved accessibility and usability rather than acquisition-driven growth.

    Supporting Behaviour Over Time

    Rather than relying on one-off interactions, the platform introduced lifecycle emails triggered at meaningful moments in the user journey. These were designed to reinforce motivation, encourage return visits, and support sustained engagement without pressure.

    OMS lifecycle email example one
    Image Lifecycle messaging designed to support motivation and return visits without pressure.
    OMS lifecycle email example two
    Image Email touchpoints aligned with gradual engagement and long-term behaviour change.
    OMS lifecycle email example three
    Image A sequence of supportive communications shaped around real user timing and context.
    09 / DESIGN SYSTEM AND CONTENT ENABLEMENT

    Design System and Content Enablement

    A core constraint was OMS’s need to update and manage content independently.

    To address this, I:

    – Created a simplified design system to ensure visual and structural consistency

    – Designed modular content templates for articles, recipes, exercises, meditations, podcasts, FAQs, and events

    – Implemented Paragraphs and CK Editor to allow editors to create and update pages without developer intervention

    This reduced reliance on technical support and enabled faster iteration while preserving quality.

    10 / DONATIONS AND TRUST SIGNALS

    Donations and Trust Signals

    Donation flows were redesigned to reduce friction and increase clarity.

    Key improvements included:

    – Clear, visible donation entry points

    – Support for recurring donations

    – Options to dedicate donations in honour or memory

    – Clear explanations of how funds are used

    – Use of testimonials and third-party endorsements to reinforce credibility

    These changes aligned fundraising with OMS’s educational mission, avoiding pressure while supporting sustainability.

    OMS mission page layout
    Image Trust-building content and organisational context designed to reinforce credibility.
    OMS homepage layout
    Image Homepage structure designed for clarity, orientation, and sustained engagement.
    13 / OUTCOME

    Outcome

    The redesigned platform strengthened OMS’s ability to deliver on its mission digitally.

    User Impact

    – Clearer access to information and resources

    – Improved mobile usability for fragmented sessions

    – Better support for revisiting and saving content

    Organisational Impact

    – Greater editorial autonomy for OMS staff

    – More consistent experience through design system adoption

    – Improved alignment between content, community, and fundraising goals

    The platform evolved from an information repository into a supportive digital environment shaped around real user behaviour.

    14 / REFLECTION

    Reflection

    This project reinforced that designing for health-related contexts requires more than clarity and aesthetics.

    Effective UX in this space means respecting fluctuating capacity, designing for return rather than completion, and supporting trust without persuasion.

    By grounding decisions in lived experience through diary studies, the platform shifted from telling users what to do to supporting them as they navigate complex, personal decisions over time.

  • Designing a Professional Self-Service Platform

    Reducing Support Dependency Through Design

    Talawa Theatre Company launched Talawa Make to address a long-standing structural gap in British theatre: the lack of sustained, professional support and visibility for Black British artists across career stages.

    Talawa Make was conceived not as a single programme, but as a four-stage development ecosystem delivered through workshops, commissions, readings, and mentoring.

    The challenge was to translate this ambition into a digital platform that could support connection, opportunity discovery, and professional credibility at scale, without reproducing the exclusionary dynamics common in creative networks.

    As UX Designer, I led the design and implementation of the Talawa Make online community, shaping it as professional infrastructure, not a social network.

    01 / CHALLENGE

    Challenge

    The challenge was not technical delivery, but participation design.

    Talawa needed a platform that enabled artists to be visible and discoverable without self-promotion fatigue, supported meaningful interaction without being dominated by a small minority of users, reflected professional theatre norms, and balanced openness with moderation, safeguarding, and governance.

    Research and stakeholder discussions made one risk explicit: participation inequality would undermine the platform’s purpose.

    The problem to solve was therefore clear: how do you design a professional community where contribution feels safe, lightweight, and worthwhile, especially for early-career artists?

    02 / STRATEGY

    Strategy

    The UX strategy focused on lowering the cost of participation while preserving professional standards.

    Designing for Participation, Not Posting

    Rather than encouraging users to create content, the platform was designed so that participation emerged as a side effect of other actions such as applying, attending, bookmarking, editing, tagging, or responding.

    Profiles, events, and opportunities did most of the expressive work. This approach was directly informed by research on online community dynamics and aimed to prevent early drop-off or silent disengagement.

    Audience-Aware Access and Permissions

    Registration defined three distinct user types:

    – Artists

    – Industry

    – Casual visitors

    This distinction ensured that artists retained control over visibility and contact, industry participation supported opportunity flow without dominance, and unregistered users could explore value before committing.

    Taxonomy Before Interface

    A significant portion of the work focused on taxonomy and data structure, not screens.

    Skills, disciplines, interests, career stages, and motivations were defined early, enabling meaningful filtering and discovery, region-aware mapping, and personalised surfacing of opportunities and events.

    Talawa artist profile editing interface
    Image Profile editing designed to support professional visibility without self-promotion fatigue.
    Talawa content creation interface
    Image Participation flows designed to reduce friction and make contribution feel lightweight and worthwhile.
    05 / PROTOTYPING AND VALIDATION

    Prototyping and Validation

    Prototyping was used deliberately at three stages.

    Exploratory Prototypes

    Static visual prototypes tested layout, hierarchy, tone, and brand application. These helped align stakeholders on what professional but welcoming looked like before development began.

    Evaluative Prototypes

    Key journeys including registration, profile creation, messaging, and content posting were tested on the development environment with representative users across artists, industry contacts, and platform administrators.

    This surfaced friction around account setup, messaging expectations, and content visibility.

    Beta Validation

    A controlled beta with approximately 100 users allowed real-world observation of contribution patterns, navigation behaviour, moderation load, and profile completeness.

    This phase was essential for refining interaction rules and reducing unintended friction before wider rollout.

    Talawa artist profile page
    Image Profile experiences designed to communicate credibility, clarity, and professional identity.
    Talawa industry profile setup
    Image Audience-aware setup flows helped balance access, safety, and opportunity discovery.
    08 / IMPLEMENTATION

    Implementation

    The platform was built on Drupal, selected for its flexibility in permissions, content types, and moderation workflows.

    To support parallel development, I recommended a structured deployment pipeline using Jenkins and GitHub, allowing:

    – Features to be tested in isolation

    – UX sign-off before release

    – Reduced regression during iteration

    This was particularly important given offshore development teams and a phased launch plan.

    Talawa map and discovery interface
    Image Taxonomy and structured data enabled filtering, regional discovery, and opportunity visibility.
    Talawa homepage interface
    Image Homepage design positioned the platform as professional infrastructure rather than a generic social feed.
    11 / OUTCOME

    Outcome

    Talawa Make Online launched as a professional infrastructure, not a social experiment.

    The platform:

    – Enabled artists to present themselves credibly and consistently

    – Supported discovery of opportunities, events, and peers across regions

    – Reduced reliance on informal networks and insider knowledge

    – Gave Talawa visibility into engagement patterns without compromising trust

    By prioritising structure, permissions, and taxonomy, the platform avoided common failure modes of creative communities: noise, inequality, and disengagement.

    12 / REFLECTION

    Reflection

    This project reinforced a core UX lesson: community platforms do not fail because of missing features. They fail because participation feels risky, performative, or unrewarded.

    Designing Talawa Make required treating UX not as interface optimisation, but as social infrastructure design, where clarity, boundaries, and governance matter as much as interaction.

    The success of the platform lay not in how much content users created, but in how confidently they chose to participate.

  • Creating a Seamless Omnichannel Service

    Reducing Fragmentation Between Channels

    Excess Baggage operated luggage storage, insurance, retail, and travel accessory services across 15 international airports and 18 rail stations.

    As customer numbers and spend increased, the organisation committed to digitising its services to support a more coherent omnichannel experience.

    The challenge was not introducing digital touchpoints, but ensuring that online services reduced friction in high-pressure, time-critical airport contexts while integrating cleanly with physical locations and operational systems.

    01 / CHALLENGE

    Challenge

    Several services relied on fragmented booking and operational flows. The online booking process for left luggage and storage, in particular, required unnecessary steps and fields, increasing interaction cost at moments when travellers were already under stress.

    In parallel, new services such as remote baggage check-in, confiscated item return, and excess baggage handling introduced additional complexity across channels.

    The core challenge was to reduce interaction cost for customers while maintaining operational clarity for staff across locations.

    Excess Baggage store in Dubai
    Image Physical service environments shaped the constraints and expectations behind the digital journeys.
    Excess Baggage store in Gatwick
    Image Omnichannel design had to work across physical locations, operational processes, and digital touchpoints.
    04 / APPROACH

    Approach

    Optimising the Booking Journey

    The left luggage and storage booking flow was streamlined to reduce unnecessary steps and form fields, with a clear focus on speed, clarity, and predictability.

    Key improvements included:

    – Clearer progression through booking steps

    – Reduced cognitive load during data entry

    – Early visibility of pricing and storage duration

    – Support for post-booking actions such as charge tracking and retrieval reminders

    The goal was not only to improve usability, but to lower interaction cost at scale across multiple locations.

    Service Blueprinting for Omnichannel Alignment

    To support consistency across digital and physical touchpoints, I created service blueprints mapping frontstage user interactions, backstage staff actions, and supporting systems and dependencies.

    In a security-constrained, time-critical environment like airports, service blueprints were essential to align customer-facing flows with staffing, logistics, and physical space constraints that could not be resolved at interface level alone.

    This work exposed misalignments between customer expectations and operational reality, helping teams coordinate changes across departments rather than solving issues in isolation.

    Solutions were typically piloted in a limited number of locations, validated against real operational constraints, and only then scaled across airports and stations.

    05 / LUGGAGE WEIGHT CHECK

    Luggage Weight Check

    Problem to Solve

    Passengers often face stress and inconvenience at the airport due to uncertainty about luggage weight, leading to unexpected fees and delays.

    Benefit

    – Save time and avoid unexpected fees

    – Enhance the user experience through an intuitive, multilingual interface

    – Offer a cost-effective service model for airports and airlines

    Feature Set

    – Precise weight measurement

    – Multilingual support in 15+ languages

    – Flexible payment options including NFC and coin payments

    – Cross-selling opportunities for additional airport services

    Luggage weight check interface one
    Image Concept interface for a fast, self-service luggage weight check experience.
    Luggage weight check interface two
    Image Multilingual, time-efficient interactions designed for airport decision-making under pressure.
    Luggage weight check interface three
    Image Service concepts balanced speed, reassurance, and operational practicality.
    09 / POST & FLY SERVICE

    Post & Fly Service

    Problem to Solve

    Travellers rushing through airport security with prohibited or restricted items faced a difficult choice: dispose of the items or find a quick, reliable solution.

    Desired Outcome

    Post & Fly was designed to offer a seamless retrieval service through:

    – A streamlined online portal

    – Timely collection and processing by staff

    – A transparent 30-day retrieval timeframe

    UX Methods

    – Empathy mapping

    – User interviews

    – Mental-model analysis

    Post and Fly service interface one
    Image Service concepts focused on reducing stress after confiscation and restoring a sense of control.
    Post and Fly service interface two
    Image Digital touchpoints designed to support retrieval tracking, options, and reassurance.
    12 / OPERATIONAL DASHBOARDS

    Operational Dashboards

    Problem to Solve

    In a fast-paced airport environment, fragmented dashboard experiences can lead to confusion, frustration, and decreased efficiency for both employees and customers.

    Desired Outcome

    – Unify the user experience across services

    – Enhance employee productivity through clearer workflows

    – Optimise for a fast-paced, time-sensitive environment

    Operational dashboard screen one
    Image Dashboard concepts unified service visibility for operational teams.
    Operational dashboard screen two
    Image Internal tools were designed for clarity, speed, and decision-making under operational pressure.
    Operational dashboard screen three
    Image A more consistent internal system reduced fragmentation across services and locations.

  • Accessibility as a Strategic Foundation in the D2C Ecosystem

    From Compliance Checks to Organisational Practice

    The Company was evolving rapidly: new eCommerce platforms, a shift to composable architecture, a global design system rollout, and increasing regulatory pressure across markets.

    Yet accessibility quality remained inconsistent. Issues accumulated across templates, UI components, and content practices, creating friction not only for users with accessibility needs but for anyone navigating the site under real-world constraints.

    Teams were committed to delivering high-quality experiences, but with competing priorities and fragmented ownership, accessibility was often treated as a corrective task: reviewed late, fixed locally, and rarely scaled.

    As Senior UX Researcher and accessibility lead, I established a structured, organisation-wide approach that positioned accessibility as a driver of product quality, risk reduction, and user trust rather than a compliance checkbox.

    01 / CHALLENGE

    Challenge

    The accessibility challenge was structural, not symptomatic.

    Legacy SAP Commerce Cloud pages coexisted with new headless components, creating inconsistent patterns and uneven accessibility quality. The design system lacked WCAG-aligned guidance and governance, and responsibility for accessibility was unclear across design, development, content, and QA.

    Teams shipped quickly. Reviews happened late, accessibility debt accumulated, and fixes became increasingly costly.

    The core challenge was not identifying accessibility issues, but building the structures, processes, and shared understanding required to prevent them.

    02 / STRATEGY

    Strategy

    The accessibility program was built on four parallel pillars designed to embed accessibility into everyday decisions rather than post-release correction.

    Accessibility Governance and Foundations

    I authored and introduced an accessibility roadmap aligned with WCAG 2.2 AA and tailored to the Company’s platforms and component libraries. It defined responsibility boundaries, acceptance criteria, mandatory checkpoints, and escalation paths.

    Embedding Accessibility in the Design System

    Working with design and engineering leads, I integrated accessibility requirements directly into component specifications, including semantic structure, contrast constraints, keyboard behaviour, error handling, and inclusive copy guidance.

    Continuous Audits and Behavioural Validation

    I established an audit program combining automated scanning, manual WCAG reviews, and user-centred observation using screen reader workflows.

    Cross-Functional Enablement

    I supported teams with training and lightweight tooling, including accessibility office hours, pattern libraries with dos and don’ts, sprint-level checklists, and pre-release smoke tests.

    03 / EXECUTION HIGHLIGHTS

    Execution Highlights

    Transforming the Checkout Experience

    Checkout was prioritised due to its complexity and revenue sensitivity. I supported the redesign by mapping the screen reader journey, standardising form structures, aligning validation logic, and ensuring dynamic steps were announced and focus-managed.

    The most confusing interaction before standardisation was the transition between checkout steps. Users, especially those using screen readers, received no announcement of context change and often did not realise the page had advanced. Resolving this significantly reduced ambiguity and cognitive load for all users.

    Component-Level Accessibility Fixes

    Several components required systemic intervention, including accordions, tabs, filters, product carousels, and heading structures.

    Addressing these issues at the design-system level ensured fixes scaled consistently across global markets rather than being reintroduced through local variations.

    Accessibility Monitoring and Dashboards

    To support prioritisation, I introduced a structured approach to tracking automated scan trends, issue recurrence, component regressions, and accessibility debt over time.

    Recurring regressions in design-system components proved most effective in shifting stakeholder prioritisation. They demonstrated that the cost of inaction multiplied across markets and releases, prompting leadership to prioritise systemic fixes over page-level patches.

    Redefining Content Practices

    Accessibility extended beyond UI components. I worked with content and marketing teams to evolve alt-text practices, heading usage, link naming, and inclusive copywriting standards.

    These changes improved clarity for assistive technologies and reduced cognitive load more broadly, reinforcing that structural clarity, not content reduction, was the primary driver of improved readability.

    04 / OUTCOME

    Outcome

    The accessibility program reshaped how the organisation approached digital quality.

    Strategic Impact

    Accessibility became part of the standard definition of done. Platform migrations launched with stronger foundations, fewer regressions, and a reduced backlog of accessibility debt.

    User Impact

    Screen reader journeys became more predictable. Form-heavy flows such as checkout, account creation, and repairs showed reduced friction and clearer progression.

    Organisational Impact

    Design system teams adopted accessibility-first component governance. Development teams integrated checks into CI/CD workflows. Content and marketing teams embedded inclusive writing practices as standard.

    The clearest signal of change was the integration of accessibility criteria directly into the design system’s component acceptance process: no new component or update could ship without meeting accessibility requirements.

    Accessibility moved from specialist review to shared expectation.

    05 / REFLECTION

    Reflection

    Accessibility is not a sprint deliverable. It is an organisational capability.

    This work demonstrated that sustainable improvement depends on shared ownership, clear standards, early intervention, continuous validation, and a unified source of truth.

    It also reinforced a core NN/g principle: accessible design improves usability for everyone.

    The foundation established here supports every future platform, every market rollout, and every digital experience the Company will launch.

  • Scaling Research for Strategic Decisions

    Embedding Research into Strategic Planning

    The Company is best known for its iconic Swiss Army Knife, but its digital ecosystem had grown into something far more complex: multiple eCommerce platforms, service portals, and brand-led websites operating across markets and systems.

    As the ecosystem expanded, delivery speed increased faster than shared clarity. Platform and feature decisions were increasingly driven by internal opinion, legacy assumptions, and isolated performance metrics. The risk was not slow delivery, but accelerated launches without validating user impact or accessibility implications.

    As a Senior UX Researcher, I worked across product, marketing, engineering, and service to raise UX maturity, integrate research into decision-making, and restore a shared definition of success across platforms.

    01 / CHALLENGE

    Challenge

    The Company was undergoing a major transformation: a move from a monolithic commerce platform to a composable, headless architecture; the launch of new digital platforms; and an ambition to increase eCommerce performance globally.

    At the same time, accessibility requirements were rising, internal ownership was fragmenting, and teams were under pressure to deliver quickly.

    The core challenge was not change itself, but how to make high-impact decisions during change without relying on assumptions, internal opinion, or partial metrics.

    Video Brand film used as contextual reference for the ecosystem and positioning.
    03 / STRATEGY

    Strategy

    I led a research-led transformation focused on turning fragmented signals into shared evidence, structured around four pillars.

    Continuous Discovery

    I embedded mixed-method research across web properties to surface behavioural friction early and create a steady flow of decision-ready insight.

    Across platforms and over time, one pattern remained consistent: persistent friction around navigation clarity and content hierarchy. Users repeatedly struggled to understand where they were in the journey and how to progress, particularly in product exploration and service flows.

    These observations reinforced that the issue was not visual design, but semantic precision and hierarchy.

    Cross-functional Enablement

    I worked closely with eCommerce, Development, and Marketing to translate research findings into prioritisation inputs, ensuring insights informed roadmap, content, and feature decisions.

    Operationalising Accessibility

    I acted as a point of escalation for digital accessibility, embedding WCAG requirements into delivery processes so compliance became a design and development concern rather than a late audit.

    Platform-First Thinking

    During the SAP Commerce Cloud migration, I supported the evolution of the design system to meet new development constraints, enabling consistency across Community Online, B2B, and brand platforms while preserving flexibility.

    Video Design-system walkthrough used to support platform migration and consistency across releases.
    05 / EXECUTION HIGHLIGHTS

    Execution Highlights

    Revenue Optimisation via UX Research

    I combined behavioural analytics with usability testing on key product subcategories to understand where personalisation and navigation workflows broke down.

    These signals helped distinguish genuine engagement from uncertainty-driven interaction and guided targeted adjustments to structure and content.

    Service Blueprint for Repairs

    I mapped the end-to-end journey for the Repair Service, connecting frontend interactions with backend processes. The service blueprint exposed misalignments between user expectations and internal workflows, creating a shared reference for operational and experience improvements.

    Platform Migration Support

    During the transition to a headless architecture, I partnered with development and content teams to maintain UX coherence across releases. Documentation and design-system updates helped balance speed, branding, and consistency during parallel launches.

    Accessibility as a Cultural Shift

    Recurring failures in semantic structure, contrast inconsistencies, and keyboard-navigation traps clearly indicated systemic design-system issues rather than isolated defects. This evidence proved decisive in prioritisation discussions and shifted accessibility from reactive fixes to structural improvement.

    06 / OUTCOME

    Outcome

    This work helped reposition UX research as a stabilising force during transformation.

    Decisions became more evidence-led, accessibility risks were surfaced earlier, and platform changes were supported by a shared understanding of user behaviour.

    We shifted from release-driven decision-making to evidence-informed prioritisation, using research as a standard checkpoint rather than an optional add-on.

    07 / REFLECTION

    Reflection

    Scaling UX research in this context was less about introducing new methods and more about changing how certainty was earned.

    When research consistently showed where assumptions failed, and when signals were shared across teams, UX moved from being a support function to a source of clarity during change.

    Related method

  • Clarity in High-Season Sales

    Reducing Cognitive Load During Peak Traffic

    The Company approached its holiday campaigns with a clear ambition: convert seasonal traffic into meaningful engagement and confident purchasing decisions.

    Earlier campaigns assumed that high holiday intent meant users already understood the product value and needed only visual appeal and refreshed layouts to convert. In reality, users required reassurance, guidance, and clearer differentiation, especially under time pressure.

    I led UX research and usability testing across successive holiday campaigns, guiding their evolution from surface-level optimisation toward behaviourally informed experiences.

    01 / CHALLENGE

    Challenge

    The initial goal was direct: understand why a visually refined landing page failed to convert during high-stakes holiday moments.

    Usability testing revealed that users were not lost; they were unconvinced. Under time pressure and emotional load, behaviour changed markedly. Users became more risk-averse, scanned less, and relied on quick heuristics.

    These hesitation points reappeared across successive holiday seasons, particularly around uncertainty about product suitability, shipping timing, and gift appropriateness.

    Quantitative data confirmed limited engagement beyond the first scroll. Qualitative sessions explained why: unmet expectations and delayed reassurance.

    Holiday campaign research slide one
    Image Early campaign analysis focused on where visual polish failed to create decision confidence.
    03 / SURFACE CLARITY

    Surface Clarity

    Primary Methods

    – Remote usability testing, including five-second tests

    – Targeted user interviews

    – Scroll-depth and click data analysis

    – Prototype evaluation of new layout variations

    Diagnosing Misalignment Through Usability Testing

    The same pattern emerged repeatedly: users were not confused enough to stop, but not confident enough to convert.

    One participant captured the tension clearly: after filtering, they felt mostly confident they had found the right product, but still worried there might be a better option they had missed.

    Holiday campaign research slide two
    Image Later design directions focused on decision support rather than visual dominance.
    05 / DESIGNING FOR DECISION

    Designing for Decision

    With baseline issues identified, the focus shifted from diagnosis to intentional redesign.

    One design direction was deliberately deprioritised: a visually dominant, hero-first layout that pushed explanatory content further down the page. Testing showed that users needed clearer value framing and decision aids earlier, not more visual emphasis.

    Using behavioural principles, the journey was reshaped to reduce cognitive load, strengthen salience, and align content order with how decisions are made under pressure.

    The landing page evolved from a static presentation into a sequence of deliberate decision moments, separating inspiration from commerce, elevating the Gift Finder, clarifying support pathways, and rewriting copy for rapid scanning.

    06 / VALIDATING IN MOTION

    Validating in Motion

    Primary Methods

    – Scenario-based usability testing

    – GA4 behavioural data review

    – ContentSquare heatmaps

    – A/B test planning

    – Device-specific observations

    – Feedback analysis from live prototypes

    Real-Time Research During Campaign Rollout

    Before launch, we conducted pre-live validation to refine nuance rather than uncover major flaws.

    At one point, analytics suggested improved click-through on promotional elements. However, usability sessions revealed that many of these clicks were driven by uncertainty rather than true engagement.

    The tension was resolved by restructuring the hierarchy so promotional elements supported, rather than replaced, decision-critical content.

    07 / REFLECTION

    Reflection

    A small change produced a disproportionate effect: introducing concise, high-salience value statements such as warranty, gifting suitability, and delivery certainty directly above the product grid. This reduced early-journey hesitation and restored confidence.

    This project was not about redesigning a landing page. It was about learning how people decide when attention is fragmented and stakes are high.

    Clarity, in these moments, is not aesthetic. It is functional.