U1 Group
Research and strategy for some of Australia's best-known brands and public services, each with their own brief, budget and question to answer.
The role at a glance
- Business
- U1 Group, a Sydney UX consultancy offering insight and strategy to teams building digital experiences.
- Hired to
- Design and run research for client teams, and turn the findings into recommendations they could act on.
- Key wins
- Custom research plans for clients including Qantas, Telstra, Westpac, Foxtel, Big Fish Games, the Australian Passport Office and NSW public services.
- Moved on
- In 2016, to Search Party, as product manager and designer.
Insight and strategy, for hire
U1 Group is a UX consultancy in Surry Hills, Sydney, offering research, insight and strategy to teams building digital experiences. I joined after moving to Sydney, and worked alongside UX specialists with a wide range of strengths.
A new question every few weeks
Each brief was different: evaluate a prototype, create a content strategy, or understand a new market. My job was to work out what each client needed, then design and run the research to answer it.
From scoping to recommendations
Scoped each project with the client
I worked with clients to set each project's scope, budget, objectives and goals, then designed a custom research plan to get the most from it.
Understood people in context
I explored each client's audience: how people found the product, when they used it, and what it did and didn't offer them. Depending on the project, I used ethnography, exploratory interviews, co-design workshops, large-scale surveys and custom validation.
Made the findings usable
I presented findings and recommendations to stakeholders, describing users, how they saw the product and how the work fit the client's needs, and workshopped options for putting the recommendations into practice. I used data visualisation to make the findings easy to take in.
Commit and care
Consulting taught me something about how I like to work. I'm always glad to advise, but I do my best work end to end, deeply, on a product I can commit to and care about. So at the start of 2016 I moved in-house, to Search Party, to manage and design a product of my own.