Nick Leon

I am a self-employed senior user research professional. I have gained significant expertise working on user centred design projects end-to-end for leading tech, healthcare and consumer clients. I have carried out user centred design work in emerging and established markets, run client workshops and managed final debriefs for clients as diverse as Microsoft, Unilever, Amazon, GlaxoSmithKline, Reckitt and Roche. Deliverables have supported product innovation, user centred design and UX strategy. Examples of past projects include:

• Amazon, Alexa Echo 8 Show - UX

The UK study focused on usability testing Amazon’s Alexa 3rd generation prototype in care homes. I led the UX work using interviews, observation and video to capture behaviours and explore friction points with older users at a preselected partner care homes in the UK. I identified the business insights, wrote up the research report and presented the findings to the UX Global Design team to provide an understanding of the user experience when gaining consent before using the Alexa device.

• Unilever, R&D and Innovations – Customer Experience

Working alongside Unilever’s R&D team and Product Insights department I delivered cross-company insights for home brands exploring product and material performance in low to middle income region in South Africa and Asia markets. I developed engaging research materials from the fieldwork for strategy and insights sessions. This included journey maps, video content to support workshops and to communicate compelling business opportunities for brands in laundry, household and dishwashing categories.

• AstraZeneca and Youth Charity Depaul UK – Qualitative Insight

The project was part of an social impact programme to understand the lives of young homeless people and their relationship to mental health. The insights were developed alongside other insight agencies, and together with the stories and films my team developed, these were screened at Parliament with AstraZeneca and Depaul UK, as part of their work on the Young Health Programme.

Recommendations were set out for policy makers, Health and Wellbeing Boards and public service commissioners for more integrated services. The insights and portrait films were widely disseminated on digital channels as well as Depaul UK’s website and AZ’s global intranet site raising awareness of the audiences unmet needs and complex challenges.

• Pearson – Customer Experience

Working in some of the poorest regions of Tanzania, I worked with the Pearson Design team as part of a discovery phase to explore market opportunities for low cost technology in low resource areas to support children’s education. With the team I developed the business model canvas based on user needs, learning behaviours and the needs and priorities of families and their children aged between 5-12 years of old.

• Microsoft - UX and Service Design

Designed a UX study to report to Microsoft UX team on the performance of the IoT accelerator programme for tech start-ups at Microsoft’s US Redmond campus. The workshops and insights from the longitudinal immersive study informed Microsoft on the working practices of early stage companies building IoT software and hardware using cloud connected devices resulted in a road map detailing new opportunities for Microsoft to create commercially viable offerings. T his enabled the incubator to better design the next generation of programmes for the IoT accelerator.

• GlaxoSmithKline – Patient stories, External Communications

Worked alongside GSK’s Marketing, Legal and Medical, PR teams managed teams and developed audience insights into in EMEA, APAC and LATAM patient experience on over 20+ global healthcare studies. I managed projects and teams from inception to delivery. Deliverables included commercial insights and patient films which are hosted on GSK’s external and internal website, shared on social media channels and presented at global educational conferences and events. GSK’s analytics showed one internal film we created to have over 7.6K views on GSK’s Workplace. On Facebook and Instagram, our video was GSK’s best performing piece of organic content at a global conference in 2020.