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Strategic Research

Usability studies · UX Audits · Competitor Analysis · Research Ops

Understand before building.

Speed is only an advantage if you're pointed in the right direction. We find out what people actually do, who they're doing it for, and who is already serving them — before the build starts, and again once it's live.

Then we build it — in days, not quarters. AI Prototyping & Building

Three modes

  1. 1

    Understand the ground

    Before there's anything to test, the question is who this is for and what they're actually trying to get done.

    • Jobs to be Done segmentation — Segments defined by the job people hire a product to do, not by age bracket.
    • User segmentation — Built from behaviour we've observed, not from personas invented in a workshop.
    • Market trends analysis — The direction of travel, and what would have to stay true for the bet to keep working.

    You get the frame a product decision can be made inside: who, doing what, in a market moving which way.

  2. 2

    Test what exists

    Once there's a product — yours or someone else's — the question becomes what people can actually do with it.

    • Usability studies — What people could and couldn't do, and why. Not opinions about the interface.
    • Expert UX audit — A structured read of the product against how people behave, not a checklist score.
    • UX journey mapping — Where the journey breaks, ordered by what each break costs you.
    • Competitor analysis — Where you lead, where you match, where you're behind, with the evidence for each.

    You get findings you can act on this quarter — ranked, with the reasoning attached.

  3. 3

    Ride alongside the build

    The mode this practice is built for, and the one that pairs with prototyping: research running at the speed of the build rather than ahead of it.

    • Embedded, not commissioned — We sit with the build. Findings arrive while the decision is still open.
    • Quick-fire rounds — Short cycles sized to the sprint rather than to the study.
    • Evidence into the room — Insight goes where decisions get made, not into a deck nobody reopens.

    This is where speed usually breaks down: teams either research once at the start and never again, or ship on opinion and call it velocity.

Research OpsThe three modes above are projects. This is the machinery that keeps them running after we've gone — set up, then watched over.