UX Research across 2 retail platforms
Product Discovery · Mixed Methods · Usability Testing · Card Sorting · Emotion AI · NPS/CSI · Stakeholder Management · Research Operations · Service Design · B2C · eCommerce · Grocery
As Head of UX Research, I led product discovery for a digital department at 20M MAU grocery group spanning two retail chains. Scale comparable to Tesco and Sainsbury's combined running on one shared tech platform.
Discovery ran in parallel: multiple concepts tested at once, AI emotional analysis for signal quality, smaller cycles for cost.
I built the UX research function: 6 researchers, 1 recruiter, 2 UX writers across 4 platforms and ~25 product teams.
NPS/CSI grew 30%, hitting the 2025 target ahead of schedule.
Discovery ran in parallel: multiple concepts tested at once, AI emotional analysis for signal quality, smaller cycles for cost.
I built the UX research function: 6 researchers, 1 recruiter, 2 UX writers across 4 platforms and ~25 product teams.
NPS/CSI grew 30%, hitting the 2025 target ahead of schedule.
Project examples
Homepage Discovery and first widgets for the unified platform
Card sorting · Usability testing · Quant testing · Beta · CSI analysis · Sep 2023 → Nov 2024 · role: Researcher and servise designer
The problem wasn't just UX — it was prioritisation
The homepage is where delivery, loyalty, promotions, in-store marketing, and CVM compete for space. The strategic direction: a widget platform of reusable content units deployable anywhere. My research derisked it across three waves; the homepage shipped first.
The problem wasn't just UX — it was prioritisation
The homepage is where delivery, loyalty, promotions, in-store marketing, and CVM compete for space. The strategic direction: a widget platform of reusable content units deployable anywhere. My research derisked it across three waves; the homepage shipped first.
Delivery navigation concept
Card Sorting · Qualitative UT · Quantitative test with AI emotional response analysis · Nov 2023 → Q1 2024 · role: Researcher and servise designer
Using AI to settle what qualitative testing alone couldn't.
Three methods escalated step by step: card sorting revealed structure, qualitative UT validated the concept, quant + emotion AI caught the layout-level details.
Using AI to settle what qualitative testing alone couldn't.
Three methods escalated step by step: card sorting revealed structure, qualitative UT validated the concept, quant + emotion AI caught the layout-level details.
NPS that fed the backlog
Survey design · Open-text analysis · AI-assisted tagging · Backlog integration
I relaunched the NPS and CSI methodology changing it into the closed-loop measurement system.
The biggest change was in how findings moved through the teams - we put the changes into the PDLS. Research, design and POs ran joint prioritisation for the critical issues. When design work was already in flight, findings fed straight into it.
Evidence
I relaunched the NPS and CSI methodology changing it into the closed-loop measurement system.
The biggest change was in how findings moved through the teams - we put the changes into the PDLS. Research, design and POs ran joint prioritisation for the critical issues. When design work was already in flight, findings fed straight into it.
Evidence
- NPS/CSI +30% over 18 months; 2025 target hit in Q3 2024
- Churn and other research findings routed directly into product backlogs
Context & Approach
X5 is one of the harder environments to move fast in. Two major retail chains with different audiences run on the same backend. Unified delivery, omnichannel loyalty programme, personalised promotions, CVM - user flows and business interests combined on the same apps.
Everyone wants to cut time-to-market by skipping design and research iterations. It can work for a while but you'll eventually find yourself in the worsening loop of growing systematic mistakes. So we replaced stakeholder decision meetings with iterative concept and feature testing. Fewer debates, more data — and discovery moved from a bottleneck to the thing that made the whole system faster.
The same approach — discovery as decision infrastructure, embedded across teams, measured end-to-end — is what I bring to the next role.
The same approach — discovery as decision infrastructure, embedded across teams, measured end-to-end — is what I bring to the next role.
More cases