Boston University

Hyper Island

🛠️ Bringing processes for trustworthy insights to fast-moving startup teams
🌏 Supporting EU, UK and US startups/scale-ups
🚀 Training teams + individuals to 3-10x your research impact

From pre-seed to scale-up, I advise early teams on optimal Customer Research and Product Discovery processes that take the least time for the most impact.

Lean product discovery processes for product teams with limited time and staff to dedicate to research. 

A few ways I've helped startup teams:
🎁 Supported the insights-driven development of a new product. It generated 3x the profit of product #1
⭐️ Pushed a pre-product startup to drop their first MVP and launch one instead that got customer satisfaction ratings >85% and proved product market fit by rapidly reaching first 1000 paid users
💰 Helped a startup launch its first subscription fee after 3+ years of a free product. Estimated risk of lost customers and potential new ones gained before price change
🌏 Helped teams avoid bad investment decisions in new markets and achieve growth by doubling down in the right places
🏃 Trained product teams to run 3-4x as much valuable customer discovery as before in the same time
 

I’m passionate about empowering founders and product teams to run their own trustworthy research for better products.

How I work: 
- Team advisor
- Workshop training sessions 
- 1:1 coaching

User Research Studio

Founder, Customer Discovery Advisor

Relive

User Research Advisor

ManyPets

Led UX Research for a team pre-product. Worked with them to establish foundational understanding of a new target audience, identify first best-fit users, narrow focus to the most important customer problems to solve, and clarify potential MVP feature set.

Dreams Sustainable

Sold in 2023. Built a highly demanded studio space and community in a craft niche. The studio was developed around lean research, identifying key insights pre-investment that enabled us to differentiate and thrive despite increasing competition and a pandemic. I used the business as a place to experiment in business model development and service design, as well as prove that customer research can make a dramatic difference for businesses of all sizes and industries.

Clayground Ceramics Berlin

Co-Founder

Led UX Research on a contract-basis for early stage fintech startup with a product but no UXR team. Helped the team define and pinpoint their best target audiences, find barriers to engagement, and prepare for risks of launching a subscription fee for the first time with minimal damage.

Later supported their first Head of UXR by providing training and mentorship to include diverse team members in research, enable more people to lead product discovery projects, and improve frequency of internal insights-sharing for full-team impact.

Dreams

Soundtrack Your Brand

I established the User Research discipline at Soundtrack Your Brand, putting research processes in place to better inform product updates, price changes, and even a major brand transition. I've worked with the full team from Product and Customer Success to C-level to constantly challenge assumptions and find the right balance between listening to customer requests and innovating for their underlying needs.

Head of User Research

Worked with large Swedish companies to innovate in their domains, and solve user problems better than their competitors. Was responsible for UX Research, Service Design, UX Design and client management for companies across banking and retail industries.

Fjord

Senior Interaction Designer

Led UX and testing of a browser-based game's second iteration, specifically teaching challenging game interactions to kids.

North Kingdom Design & Communication AB

UX Designer & Information Architect

Led design for a major consolidation of 9 internal tools used by the Stockholm healthcare system's varied workers, including many stakeholder interviews, problem statement development, various forms of testing, information architecture of the overall service and interaction design.

Rebel&Bird

UX Designer

Concept, planning and detailed design of experience flows for a Cannes Lion winning mobile game Daybreak that drove brand engagement for AT&T. Included rapid testing of both concepts and usability.

North Kingdom

Concept / Strategy & Interaction Design

Digital strategy for major US retail brands, with a focus on supporting projects with mobile and gaming components. Supported market research and product testing work in multiple projects.

Caitlin Sullivan