Case Study — Senior UX Research & Insights Leadership

Spark NZ | SolarZero | Seequent

Context

Across three senior roles at Spark (Senior UX Researcher → Research Manager), SolarZero (Customer Insights Lead), and Seequent (Manager, Customer Insights), I designed, executed, and integrated UX/CX research programs that informed digital product strategy, service design, and customer experience at scale.

While leading teams and building capability, I remained deeply hands-on in research design, moderation, and analysis, ensuring I stayed close to customer interactions and could model best practice for my teams.

Approach

Strategic Research Leadership + Active Execution

  • Designed and embedded proprietary agile UX/CX research frameworks unifying product, marketing, retail, and service approaches.

  • Built and maintained a 20,000+ member research community to enable same-week recruitment and validation.

  • Personally moderated hundreds of in-depth interviews, usability tests, and workshops across desktop, mobile, app, and in-person retail environments.

  • Led by example in tools such as Qualtrics, FullStory, UserZoom, and Miro, conducting data analysis, coding qualitative themes, and building dashboards myself.

  • Authored research playbooks, survey templates, and test scripts used directly by squads.

  • Mentored researchers in-session, co-moderating and reviewing analysis to maintain quality.

  • Optimised $3M+ in agency partnerships while still running key studies in-house for speed and control.

Hands-On Research Examples and Measured Impact

Spark NZ

Broadband Buy Journeys
Approach: Moderated 25+ remote and in-lab usability sessions testing plan comparison layouts, decision aids, and pricing presentations. Iterated between rounds to validate improvements.
Impact: Increased plan selection conversion by 14%, reduced decision abandonment by 21%, and shortened selection time by 40 seconds.

MySpark Landing Page
Approach: Designed and ran A/B tests comparing control and optimised versions with clearer navigation and bill payment CTAs.
Impact: Improved click-through to key account areas by 9%, increased repeat logins by 6%, and boosted digital self-service usage by 8%.

Click & Collect
Approach: Conducted 15 moderated checkout usability tests to identify payment and delivery friction points.
Impact: Increased successful transactions by 12%, reduced checkout abandonment by 15%, and lowered pickup complaints by 18%.

Order Tracker
Approach: Performed mobile heuristic evaluations and 10 user interviews focused on order tracking expectations and reality.
Impact: Reduced order-related support calls by 18%, improved delivery perception scores by 11%, and raised fulfilment trust ratings from 7.8 to 8.5/10.

SolarZero

End-to-End Experience Framework
Approach: Designed a research methodology for the full 20-year solar customer lifecycle, moderating 20 early lifecycle interviews to validate critical touchpoints.
Impact: Informed $1.2M in service design initiatives, aligned teams on shared metrics, and improved installation satisfaction NPS by +0.5 within 6 months.

Brand & Market Tracker
Approach: Built a longitudinal tracker capturing sentiment and NPS from 5,000+ touchpoints annually, integrating results into leadership dashboards.
Impact: Supported a brand messaging pivot that improved positive sentiment by 14% and increased lead conversion by 9%.

Digital Onboarding Redesign
Approach: Moderated 12 usability sessions pre- and post-launch, testing lead capture, setup, and dashboard orientation.
Impact: Reduced setup time by 28%, increased onboarding completion by 19%, and boosted first-week dashboard logins by 22%.

Seequent

Global Voice of Customer Program
Approach: Designed and launched Qualtrics survey flows across EMEA, NAM, LAM, and APAC, in English, Spanish, Russian, and Portuguese, capturing feedback from 30,000+ customers.
Impact: Delivered a unified feedback source that fed directly into product and marketing roadmaps.

BlockSync UX Improvements
Approach: Facilitated 15 moderated usability tests with rapid iteration cycles during MVP development.
Impact: Reduced onboarding errors by 23% and improved first-week activation rates by 18%.

Navigation Redesign
Approach: Personally ran tree testing and card sorting, analysed heatmaps in FullStory, and conducted SME and customer interviews to restructure the global navigation.
Impact: Increased path-to-content speed by 22%, improved support page engagement by 18%, and lifted Journey NPS by +0.6 for navigation-related feedback.

Leapfrog Product Onboarding
Approach: Moderated 15 usability sessions and reviewed behavioural analytics to streamline workflows.
Impact: Reduced time-to-first-model by 35% and increased trial-to-paid conversion by 12%.

Licensing & Entitlement Workflow
Approach: Used intercept surveys (n=800) and card sorting to optimise task flow.
Impact: Cut licensing-related support tickets by 25% and reduced completion time by 15%.

Multi-Language Documentation UX
Approach: Ran surveys in EN/ES/PT/RU (n=2,000) to prioritise translation updates.
Impact: Increased non-English CSAT by +0.7.

Seequent Central Cloud Collaboration
Approach: Combined contextual inquiries with FullStory session analysis.
Impact: Increased active cloud project usage by 19% in 6 months.

Customer Support Portal Redesign
Approach: Conducted tree testing and unmoderated usability studies.
Impact: Improved ticket submission success by 22% and cut time-to-article by 40%.

Qualtrics Insights Dashboard
Approach: Co-designed and tested dashboard usability with PMs.
Impact: Raised adoption from 35% to 78% in under 3 months.

Trial Signup Form Optimisation
Approach: Combined A/B testing with qualitative interviews.
Impact: Improved form completion by 17% and increased trial volumes accordingly.

Overall Impact Across All Roles

  • Reduced time-to-insight from 3–4 weeks to 3–5 days by embedding research into agile sprints.

  • Tripled research participation by building and managing a 20,000+ member global research community.

  • Cut research costs by 20% through tool consolidation and agency optimisation.

  • Elevated research to a strategic driver in senior leadership decisions while staying personally connected to customer conversations through hands-on moderation, testing, and analysis.