Departmental setup within a SaaS Scaleup
UX Research Department Setup in a SaaS Scaleup
As a 400-employee market research provider scaled following its second round of investment, my mission was to establish a user-centric practice to support its growth as a Consumer-Grade SaaS offering. Through education, hiring, and operational setup, I not only ensured organizational success but also had a direct impact on revenue and company vision.
The company had strong product managers and designers but needed to elevate its practices to meet consumer-grade standards. I started by conducting educational sessions and evaluating the current approach to UX research. My hands-on sessions sparked excitement and interest in improving collaboration between product and engineering teams.
Strategy, Evangelism, and Coaching
My strategy focused on three key areas:
Evangelizing UX Research: I introduced myself to teams across the organization through networking, meetings, and presentations. This helped me build relationships with departments like Strategy, Customer Experience, and Revenue, essential for cross-team collaboration.
Coaching and Educating: I identified 23 individuals within the product and engineering teams and tailored their involvement based on interest. I hired two full-time specialists and a research operations expert, ensuring UX research was a shared responsibility across the company. Through personalised coaching, I helped researchers maintain high standards.
Operational Infrastructure: I established processes for GDPR compliance, created templates, and formalised quality control measures. I hired a UX Research Operations professional to streamline global recruitment and incentivise participation in research activities.
Results and Impact
The immediate outcome of my work was organisational knowledge. I facilitated company-wide meetups, regularly attended by 25–30 people, to share insights and training. I also encouraged a process of meta-analysis, where researchers contributed to a holistic view of product changes. This helped iterate customer personas and refine user scenarios, which directly influenced the company's strategy
My leadership increased the number of sessions conducted by 25% over one quarter. This was an increase of 40+ hours of insight.
I got buy-in for, and became responsible for, a dedicated participant incentivisation budget. This was supplemented by additional project budget.
Over a 12 month period, the team reached a solid working knowledge of the practice.
I collaborated with product and business leaders to align the product structure with value streams, informed by the research insights. This included refining the strategy and approach across teams.
Outcomes
Trained Researchers in Every Squad: Ensured autonomy and faster decision-making.
Cross-Silo Knowledge Sharing: Built a strong community that shared insights and avoided knowledge barriers.
Operational Maturity: Improved processes, compliance, and global recruitment, leading to swift research turnaround.
Customer Personas & Strategy Pivot: Iterations to personas led to a refined organizational vision and strategy.
Direct Business Impact: UX research contributed to renewals, new business, and increased monthly active users (MAUs) and engagement.
Through this approach, I built a user-centered UX research practice that directly supported the company’s growth, leading to improved product outcomes, customer satisfaction, and business success.
Praise
“Aoife is always on call to offer support to anyone who needs her expertise in user research, human centred design and agile ways of working. She consistently guides cross-functional teams and individuals to work collaboratively, while also coaching them to understand how all of the above will help improve their practice and drive better decision making. There hasn't been a call I've been on where I haven't watched someone have a 'lightbulb moment' as Aoife distils her expertise into simple and fun language that everyone can understand in order to improve their practices.” - co worker
The way she introduced UR into [silo] was not always comfortable, but by having the opportunity to try it for ourselves (and having the opportunity to fail!) we learnt a lot more, and got better, quicker as a [silo] - co worker
“I've witnessed Aoife guiding tech teams, breaking down silos, creating synergy and getting them involved in rich research discussions so they can really understand the impact their work will have on users and vice versa, in order to drive better outcomes. She demonstrates new methods and approaches to colleagues, even at management level so they can work things out on their own. I've seen them return for her feedback once they complete their tasks. She is always delicate, not too critical and consequently offers constructive and encouraging feedback.” - co worker