Stop guessing what users want. We'll find out.
Most product decisions are made on opinion: what the founder thinks users want, what the loudest customer requested, what the competitor launched last quarter. UX research replaces opinion with evidence — interviews that reveal what users are actually trying to do, usability tests that show where they fail, analytics that confirm or contradict assumptions. We run research as a standalone service for teams who have design capability but lack the research practice, and for teams making high-stakes product decisions who need evidence before committing to a build.
What's included
- User interviews & Jobs-to-be-Done analysis
- Moderated usability testing (remote & in-person)
- Unmoderated testing via Maze or UserTesting
- Heuristic evaluation & expert UX audit
- Analytics interpretation & funnel analysis
- Survey design & quantitative research
How we deliver
- 1Research plan & participant screener
- 2Moderated interview & testing sessions
- 3Synthesis workshop with your team
- 4Insight report with prioritised findings
- 5Opportunity map & design recommendations
- 6Presentation-ready deck for stakeholders
Technologies we use
- Maze
- UserTesting
- Hotjar
- FullStory
- Lookback
- Dovetail
- Google Analytics 4
- Mixpanel
- FigJam
Why Origin for UX Research & Consulting
Participant selection determines research quality
The wrong participants produce misleading findings. We write screeners that find your actual users — not people who vaguely match the demographic, but people who have the problem you're solving.
Synthesis workshop, not just a report
Research findings delivered as a slide deck get read once. We run a workshop with your team so the insight becomes shared understanding — the kind that informs decisions six months later.
Opportunity maps, not just problem lists
We don't hand you a list of everything that's wrong. We deliver a prioritised opportunity map — which problems are most worth solving, ranked by frequency, severity, and design effort.
Industries we serve
“We were certain our checkout was the problem. Research showed users were confused at the product page, long before checkout. We fixed the right thing and conversion went up 31%.”
Frequently asked questions
- How many users do you need to interview to get useful findings?
- Five well-selected participants reveal the majority of usability issues — this is the Nielsen Norman finding that's held up for decades. We typically run 6–8 interviews to have redundancy, recruit against a specific screener that matches your actual user profile, and analyse sessions systematically (not based on memorable quotes). The quality of participant selection matters more than sample size for qualitative research.
- What's the difference between moderated and unmoderated testing?
- Moderated testing: a researcher facilitates a live session, can ask follow-up questions, and can probe when something interesting happens. Best for complex tasks, new concepts, and when you want to understand the 'why' behind behaviour. Unmoderated testing: participants complete tasks independently, recorded by a tool like Maze. Best for high-volume testing of simpler tasks, remote participants, and when you need quantitative completion rates. We use both — moderated for insight, unmoderated for validation.
- Can you run research on a competitor's product?
- Yes — competitive UX analysis is a valuable input at the start of a design project. We recruit participants who currently use competing products, run moderated sessions observing how they use those products, and identify what works well and what frustrates them. This surfaces design patterns worth learning from and weaknesses worth exploiting, grounded in actual observed behaviour rather than opinion.
- We think we know what's wrong with our product — can research validate that?
- Research can confirm, refute, or add nuance to your hypothesis. More often than not, the problem you think you have is real — but the root cause is different from what you assumed, or the same root cause is manifesting in a place you didn't expect. The most valuable research engagements are ones where the team arrives with a hypothesis and leaves with a more accurate one.
- How do you turn research findings into design action?
- We run a synthesis workshop with your team after the research sessions. Together we cluster observations, identify patterns, and prioritise findings by frequency and severity. The output is an opportunity map — a ranked list of design problems worth solving, with enough context to brief a designer or product manager. If you need us to continue into design, we can. If your team takes it from there, the handoff is structured for that.