Context

Conflicting Demands and Competition From All Sides

The client company was investing heavily in a new wellness platform, driven by large client demands and a need to stay competitive in a saturated market.

Feature requests were constant and often conflicting. Product decisions were being made reactively, with no clear prioritisation framework. As a result, the roadmap was expanding in multiple directions at once, with increasing delivery risk and little alignment across teams.

Our team was tasked with providing strategic direction for the overall user experience, and delivering a redesigned platform with significant improvements.

Challenge

Balancing Customer Demands with User Needs

Direct access to end users was limited, and internal perspectives were heavily influenced by sales pressure and competitor activity.

The team needed clear direction, but lacked the evidence and shared understanding required to make confident, strategic decisions for user experience improvements.

Example of a workshop where team members aligned on user needs.
Snapshot of a workshop where stakeholders aligned on UX improvements based on insights from user research.
Approach

Triangulating Insights with Mixed Methods

I focused on building a defensible foundation for decision-making by pulling together multiple sources of data and connecting user needs to business priorities.

  • Synthesised existing behavioural data to identify usage patterns and drop-off points.
  • Designed and deployed targeted surveys to capture user motivations and unmet needs.
  • Ran unmoderated usability studies to evaluate key workflows at scale.
  • Conducted structured competitor analysis to separate parity needs from true product differentiation in the market.
  • Incorporated academic and industry research to validate patterns where direct access was limited.
  • Facilitated working sessions to translate insights into roadmap decisions.
Example of findings from user research.
Data collected during unmoderated usability studies.
Overview of key outcomes from our company's work.
Outcomes from our company's redesign and implementation.
Screens showing product iterations as a result of usability testing.
Countless product iterations based on user feedback and observed behaviours in testing and analytics.
Findings

Providing for Core User Needs > Feature Bloat

  • Many customer-requested features addressed edge cases rather than core user needs.
  • Critical usability gaps were undermining adoption of existing functionality.
  • Competitor parity was driving reactive decisions without improving user value.
  • Users prioritised simplicity, clarity, and outcomes over feature breadth.
Impact

Clear Focus Areas for Product Roadmap

  • Reframed the product roadmap around highest-value user needs.
  • Reduced internal conflict by grounding decisions in shared evidence.
  • Deprioritised low-impact features, narrowing scope and improving focus.
  • Increased leadership confidence in product direction.
  • Established a repeatable, evidence-based approach to prioritisation.
My Contribution

The Team's Top Fact-Finder

As the sole researcher, I guided the product team from fragmented, assumption-driven debates to a clear, evidence-based direction.

I introduced structure where there was none, connecting disparate data into a coherent narrative and ensuring that research directly informed product strategy. My role extended beyond insight generation to actively shaping what the organisation chose to build.

Clarity transformed a reactive feature battleground into a focused and strategic roadmap.