Table of contents TL;DR Context and research objective Research process Research results Reflection and personal learnings
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TL;DR: Project overview
Osome is a startup that builds financial and accounting services for entrepreneurs.
With sales falling and investor pressure rising, the team ran a design sprint focused on the first 90 days of UK customers' experience after incorporation.
In two weeks and on a minimal budget, I surfaced key user needs and pain points, turned a scattered set of hypotheses into a coherent picture, and gave the team something concrete to design and test. The project didn't just point the team in specific directions. It showed that research, even under tight constraints, can deliver fast and tangible results.
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Impact for product
A clear, unified understanding of a critical stage in the customer journey.
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Impact for the company
Concrete solutions shipped to improve the customer experience at that stage.
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1 · Context and research objective
The company was going through a rough patch: sales were falling, investor pressure was rising. The business needed to turn things around and find levers for quick growth.
At the time, the fastest-growing segment was UK newborns: entrepreneurs in the UK who had just incorporated their business through Osome. From my previous research, we knew the main thing about this segment: the first 90 days after incorporation are both a window of maximum opportunity and a moment of maximum vulnerability. The customer is still getting to know the product and they can still be won over, but this is also a time full of noise and chaos.
We had plenty of knowledge and hypotheses about this segment. What we didn't have was time for a full research cycle. So the business reframed the challenge: move fast, design solutions, and ship as you go.
The design director proposed a design sprint. A small team (one designer, one product manager, one researcher), two weeks, concrete deliverables.
→ The original research objective:
Test solution hypotheses for a specific segment.
Conditions. Two weeks, a minimal budget for recruiting a handful of customers. Concept-test format: the designer builds a prototype during the day; we test it the next day.
My role as researcher was to organize and moderate the concept tests. The designer would conduct the interviews and test their own solutions.
2 · Research process