I offer a wide range of UX research services, including in-depth interviews, segmentation surveys, journey maps, personas, and jobs-to-be-done. My research will enhance your understanding of your users and customers, enabling you to serve them more effectively.
I help to create digital products and services that people love because they make their lives easier.
- I empathise with the user and discover their hidden needs and motivations.
- I apply design thinking to my work by researching users and identifying their needs, ideating solutions, testing prototypes, and refining them through iteration.
- I think outside the box to identify new business opportunities.
- I believe in working collaboratively and cross-functionally.
Delivering value to users leads to successful products.
Proven methods & psychology
The user experience is all about a user’s needs, their expectations, and motivations. These depend on users’ goals and jobs-to-be-done. A successful product solves a problem for the user; it helps the user to ‘get their job done’. To access users’ real needs and sometimes hidden goals, you must delve deeply into the psychology of the user. Solving users’ problems turns them into happy customers!
I apply a multitude of proven, effective methods to ensure your product meets the needs of your users and provides them with the best possible experience. My work builds on knowledge from Psychology, Cognitive Ergonomics & Engineering Psychology.
Get involved in user research
Time for a reality check: Real users testing your system or app. Remotely, in a lab, at their workplace, at home, or on the road. Let’s see what users are really doing with your system; let’s hear what they’re thinking and feeling. My role is to observe their behaviour and detect thought processes, mental models, assumptions, expectations, associations, and emotions.
I view you, my stakeholder, as a partner and co-researcher. I will involve you fully involved in the research project – of course, to the extent you wish and have time. I will synthesise the research data and extract key findings and actionable recommendations, visualised in user journey maps and personas. In a workshop, we will discuss the findings and next steps. My actionable insights will help you make your application easier and more enjoyable to use – and you will have visual artefacts for easy future reference.
Which user research method to use when?
How do I determine which user research method to use in a given situation? I often hear this question – from workshop participants, mentees, and fellow researchers.
That’s why I put together a guide about the different phases of product development and which research methods you can use in each phase:
My UX research services
I offer a wide range of methods for user and customer research and various additional services to support you with your UX and product strategy:
- User & customer research
- Mixed-methods research: qualitative & quantitative methods
- UX & product strategy
- Discovery research
- Contextual research
- In-depth interviews
- Usability testing
- Concept creation & evaluation
- Remote studies (moderated and unmoderated)
- Jobs-to-be-done (innovation framework)
- Personas
- Customer journey maps
- Design Sprints
- Workshop moderation
- Surveys
- Segmentation studies (clustering)
- Agile ways of working
- Lean UX
- Government Digital Service Standard (GDS)
- UX research training for teams
Case studies – UX research
Do you want to learn more about how a user researcher works in practice? Then, read my articles with case studies about how to work agile, how to do contextual research, how to use personas, and how to work with the jobs-to-be-done framework:
Agile & UX
Duda, S., Chearman, T. (2021). Integrating user research into an agile project at NHS Digital: A case study. In: Journal of Digital & Social Media Marketing, Volume 8, Issue 4. Featured in HS Talks.
Research in context
Duda, S., Warburton, C., Black, N. (2020). Contextual Research: Why We Need to Research in Context to Deliver Great Products. In: M. Kurosu (Ed.): HCII 2020, LNCS 12181, pp. 33-49. Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020. The final authenticated version is available online at https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-49059-1_3.
Personas
Duda, S. (2018). Personas – Who Owns Them. In: Von Gizycki, V., Elias, C. A. (Eds.), Omnichannel Branding. Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH.
Jobs-to-be-done
Kalbach, J., Wermuth, Y., Duda, S., Ciontu, F. (2024). Jobs-to-be-done at scale: Disrupting the status quo with customer focus. In: Journal of Digital & Social Media Marketing, Volume 12, Issue 3.

FAQ – UX research services
How can we work together?
For working together on a project basis: Regardless of whether it involves a few hours, a few days, or several weeks, I will send you a proposal tailored to your project’s needs. For longer engagements, I can work for you as a contractor with a day rate (outside of IR35). I am also available for fractional leadership roles.
Where can you work?
For remote engagements, I can work anywhere in the UK and Europe. For hybrid engagements, I can work in the Greater London Area or Essex.
How much do I need to be involved in our projects?
You can be involved as much or as little as you like. I enjoy collaborating, but I am also happy to work independently.
Can I book you for training?
Yes, you can book me for research training workshops, both remotely and in-person. Just ask me for a proposal!
How can I schedule a mentoring session with you?
Please go to my MentorCruise profile to book me.
Where can I meet you?
We can meet virtually or we can meet in-person in either London or Essex.
How can I best reach you?
The easiest way to reach me is to fill in my contact form. But you can also email me directly or message me on LinkedIn.

