Streamlining research and design operations for speed, alignment, and scalability
Client
LYTT
Role
Design Lead
Services
UX Ops / User Research
As the lead for UX Research Operations at LYTT, I took ownership of transforming how the team planned, conducted, and distributed research. My mandate was clear: create a research ecosystem that would empower UX researchers to focus on high-value insights, remove operational friction, and scale our capabilities as the product and team grew.
I led the strategic implementation of a unified research process, from initial study design through to insight delivery, ensuring every stage was optimised for speed, consistency, and cross-functional collaboration. This included establishing a centralised UX Insights Hub, standardising research templates and tagging systems, and introducing governance for our tools, including Dovetail, Miro, and Figma.
Outcome:
By building a single source of truth for research and tightly integrating it with design and engineering workflows, I elevated research from a supporting function to a critical driver of product decision-making. The result was a 30% increase in team efficiency, stronger stakeholder engagement, and a research practice that was not only sustainable but scalable for the future.
In this project, I supported UX researchers by designing and implementing structured research operations. My role was to remove operational bottlenecks, centralise insights, and create scalable processes that empowered researchers to focus on what they do best: understanding users and driving product direction with evidence-based insights.
Free up researcher time by automating and standardising repetitive tasks.
Increase visibility of research findings across teams.
Ensure consistency in how studies are planned, executed, and shared.
Bridge the gap between research insights and design/engineering action.
Build a single source of truth for research assets, learnings, and decisions.
I began by interviewing the UX researchers and observing their workflows. Key challenges included:
Scattered research files and insights stored in multiple tools.
Lack of standardised templates for study plans, recruitment, and analysis.
Difficulty in finding and reusing past research data.
Limited visibility for product managers and engineers into research findings.
Based on the findings, I designed a repeatable research process that covered:
Study Planning: Created templates for research briefs, hypotheses, and test plans.
Execution: Provided consistent guidelines for interviews, usability testing, and note-taking.
Analysis: Developed a tagging and categorisation system in Dovetail for faster synthesis.
Dissemination: Established a presentation and documentation format to share insights clearly with stakeholders.
I centralised all research artefacts into a single, searchable repository:
Video recordings, transcripts, and highlight reels.
Standardised reusable tags for themes, personas, and product areas.
Highlight canvases to help stakeholders quickly grasp the “so what?” of each study.
Full documentation of insights for long-term reference and onboarding.
Held insight review sessions with engineers to validate design feasibility early.
Open-invite research reviews for product managers and stakeholders to increase engagement.
Created research summaries that connected findings to specific backlog items or roadmap decisions.
Partnered with designers to ensure research findings informed wireframes and prototypes.
Structured Figma so design files linked directly to supporting research insights.
Helped maintain the design system with data-backed component improvements.
Built a five-pillar UX Ops model:
Process – Defined Jobs-to-Be-Done, created UX briefs, and streamlined onboarding.
Tools – Optimised Dovetail, Miro, and Figma for consistency and speed.
Insights Hub – Centralised research storage, tagging, and synthesis.
Collaboration – Embedded UX in engineering reviews and open product workshops.
Design Structure – Established a scalable design system and file organisation.
This structure increased output efficiency, reduced onboarding time, and improved insight-to-delivery speed.
Through the systematic redesign of our research operations, LYTT’s UX practice shifted from fragmented and reactive to centralised, proactive, and strategically aligned with business goals.
Efficiency Gains: The introduction of standardised research protocols, reusable insight tagging, and an integrated tool stack (Dovetail, Miro, Figma) reduced operational overhead and accelerated project turnaround, delivering a 30% increase in team efficiency across all UX deliverables.
Single Source of Truth: The creation of a UX Insights Hub consolidated all research outputs, video recordings, tagged insights, and documented findings into one accessible platform. This eliminated knowledge silos and ensured stakeholders could quickly find and act on validated insights.
Cross-Functional Alignment: Structured collaboration frameworks, such as open engineering-UX reviews and shared MVP alignment sessions, improved decision-making speed and quality. Research insights directly influenced architectural and design priorities.
Scalable Research Practice: The new system was not just optimised for today’s projects but was intentionally built to scale, enabling the team to handle an increasing volume of research requests without sacrificing quality.
Elevated UX Influence: By positioning research as a strategic driver rather than a supporting function, UX was able to influence roadmap decisions earlier, ensuring products were shaped around user needs from the outset.
This transformation meant that every research activity at LYTT now operated within a clear, repeatable, and measurable framework, giving the team the confidence and capacity to deliver actionable insights faster and with greater organisational impact.