Anna Pilyutik
Lead UX Research & Service Design Practitioner | London
I build research functions and embed discovery into product organisations from zero to operating at scale. Nine years, three function builds - at Alfa Bank (top-five Russian bank with 2M B2B clients), X5 Digital (Russia's largest grocery retailer, Tesco and Sainsbury's combined in scale), and m10 (Azerbaijan's leading digital wallet, comparable to Wise at Series B).
I work across UX research, service design, and the connector role between them - methodology, ops, stakeholder alignment, executive advocacy. The current piece of the work is piloting AI inside Discovery at scale - where I let it in, where I deliberately don't, what holds up in production.
I work across UX research, service design, and the connector role between them - methodology, ops, stakeholder alignment, executive advocacy. The current piece of the work is piloting AI inside Discovery at scale - where I let it in, where I deliberately don't, what holds up in production.
Lead UX Research at BirMarket · part of Pasha Group's BirEcosystem
How I pilot AI in my Discovery practice
Current work
Where I let AI into Discovery, where I deliberately don't, where I'm still piloting. The piloting is about scaling how I already work - holding many planes of a project at once.
Reusable Claude skills for usability briefs and hypotheses. AI tagging for multilingual feedback at scale.
Where I let AI into Discovery, where I deliberately don't, where I'm still piloting. The piloting is about scaling how I already work - holding many planes of a project at once.
Reusable Claude skills for usability briefs and hypotheses. AI tagging for multilingual feedback at scale.
Head of Product Research B2B · Top-5 Russian bank with 2M B2B clients
Building a B2B research function the bank didn't have — and the research that helped take the B2B app to the top of Markswebb's small and medium business rankings. Three years, 16-person team, the figital lab with eye-tracking and emotion AI behind it. VoC +14.5% sustained over 3 years
Head of UX Research · 20M-customer grocery group · 2 retail chains
Building research across two retail chains running on one platform.
The closed-loop NPS/CSI system that turned survey data into joint prioritisation across product, design, and research.
Hands-on: End-to-end Discovery for the 2024 app vision, from concept to post-release.
NPS/CSI +30% in 18 months
The closed-loop NPS/CSI system that turned survey data into joint prioritisation across product, design, and research.
Hands-on: End-to-end Discovery for the 2024 app vision, from concept to post-release.
NPS/CSI +30% in 18 months
Service designer· Azerbaijan's leading digital wallet
End-to-end service design: CJM, blueprint, qualitative + quantitative testing + what one piece of research can seed across five parallel workstreams.
Hands-on: Launching a digital card.
8 months · multilingual and multicultural context research AZ · RU · EN
Hands-on: Launching a digital card.
8 months · multilingual and multicultural context research AZ · RU · EN
Speaking, teaching & writing
More projects
Wonderfull Lab
2016-2020 · Lead Interactive Designer, Senior CX/UX Researcher
Four years at an experimental design thinking agency where CX methods met industries that hadn't yet adopted them. Discovery and usability testing with farmers for FosAgro on digitalisation needs. Organisational design and employee journey research for Leroy Merlin. Web portal Discovery and UX/UI design for Tele2.
Personas, CJM and EJM, service blueprints, wireframes, prototypes, design systems. Workshop facilitation with cross-industry clients. The years that taught me to move between designer and researcher inside the same project.
Personas, CJM and EJM, service blueprints, wireframes, prototypes, design systems. Workshop facilitation with cross-industry clients. The years that taught me to move between designer and researcher inside the same project.
Trend research practice · Wonderfull Lab
2017-2019 · Designer · Author · Analytic
A standalone methodology project I built inside Wonderfull. The goal: a repeatable system for turning global trends into product ideation, for clients across agriculture, retail, banking, and beyond.
The system had three parts. A card-based brainstorming game that translated trends into product hypotheses. A large analytical review across consumer behaviour, technology, and lifestyle shifts. And a facilitation methodology for running trend-led ideation sessions with cross-industry teams. Used in client engagements at Wonderfull and adapted to several teaching contexts since.
The system had three parts. A card-based brainstorming game that translated trends into product hypotheses. A large analytical review across consumer behaviour, technology, and lifestyle shifts. And a facilitation methodology for running trend-led ideation sessions with cross-industry teams. Used in client engagements at Wonderfull and adapted to several teaching contexts since.
Design Thinking Camp
2017-2019 · Co-organiser, communications design lead
Annual industry event for designers, researchers, and educators. I was part of the core organising team, owning the full communications design layer end to end.
Online: the event website, registration flow, and the visual system that carried across all promotional materials. Offline: on-site navigation and wayfinding for hundreds of attendees, signage across all rooms and zones, the main photo zone. One design system running across both - the kind of cross-format consistency that becomes invisible when it works and very visible when it doesn't.
Online: the event website, registration flow, and the visual system that carried across all promotional materials. Offline: on-site navigation and wayfinding for hundreds of attendees, signage across all rooms and zones, the main photo zone. One design system running across both - the kind of cross-format consistency that becomes invisible when it works and very visible when it doesn't.
Design Thinking for teens and Educators
Design thinking methodology - teens then educators · 2018-2019 · Design Thinking Centre
I built a design thinking methodology for teenagers from scratch - tested formats with real students, iterated on what worked. The methodology was then adapted for teachers and university lecturers as the Educators Project, a training programme on how to run design thinking with younger learners.
At Design Thinking Camp 2019 I produced the Educators track end to end: selected speakers, planned sales, assembled the full programme, and led sessions myself walking teachers through the teen methodology. The track sold out in a few days.
At Design Thinking Camp 2019 I produced the Educators track end to end: selected speakers, planned sales, assembled the full programme, and led sessions myself walking teachers through the teen methodology. The track sold out in a few days.
Articles
Qualiative research for FosAgro
Focus: key needs and level of digitalisation of farmers in Russia.
Instruments: hypotheses, in-depth interviews, clustering and data analysis, CJM, personas, gap analysis in user scenarios, digital prototyping.
Instruments: hypotheses, in-depth interviews, clustering and data analysis, CJM, personas, gap analysis in user scenarios, digital prototyping.
Organisational design & research for Leroy Merlin
Focus: employee journeys for Head-office managers and store employees.
Instruments: hypotheses, in-depth interviews, clustering and data analysis, CJM, personas, gap analysis in user scenarios, design thinking workshops.
Instruments: hypotheses, in-depth interviews, clustering and data analysis, CJM, personas, gap analysis in user scenarios, design thinking workshops.