Building an embedded UX research practice.
As the first Head of UX at StepStone Continental Europe - operator of Europe's largest network of online job boards - I built and led the research function across five markets: competency profiles and hiring, a qual-led continuous-monitoring framework, and an embedded, dual-track operating model that closed the loop from discovery to post-release.
Disclaimer: this case study was NOT written by AI. Honest.
I joined StepStone Continental Europe in 2015 as its first Head of UX. The business ran the largest network of online job boards in Europe at the time - spanning Germany, Benelux, France, Poland, and the UK and Ireland - but research wasn't yet an established, evidence-based part of how product got built.
The mandate was to make research a permanent, operational capability - embedded in delivery rather than bolted on as a project, qual-led but quant-backed - and to hire and shape the team that would run it. Over time that team grew to three researchers working alongside me.
I built the practice on four pillars - structure first, so the work could scale beyond any one person.
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01
Researcher profiles & competency framework
Defined the UX Researcher role explicitly - a competency framework spanning generative and evaluative methods, qual and quant, and the stakeholder craft to turn insight into decisions. Deliberately T-shaped profiles: deep in a core method, literate across the rest.
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02
Hiring & interview process
Owned recruitment end to end - sourcing, structured interviews, and method-based assessment tasks - calibrating a consistent hiring bar so every addition raised the team's mixed-methods capability, not just its headcount.
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03
A continuous research framework
Replaced ad-hoc, request-driven testing with a framework of regular UX monitoring across key journeys and experience KPIs - recurring usability benchmarking, heuristic evaluation, and triangulated mixed-methods studies, qualitative-led and quantitatively validated, feeding a shared insights repository.
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04
Researchers embedded with product
Placed researchers directly alongside product owners so discovery ran continuously and evidence landed where roadmap and prioritisation decisions were actually made - not in a deck nobody reopens.
Researchers worked in a dyad with UX designers - one paired with one, on each problem space.
The pairing kept the design process anchored in validated user need, and forced that need to be reconciled against the stated business requirements at every step. Designers brought solutions; researchers brought evidence; together the dyad arbitrated desirability, usability, and viability before a line of production code was written. It made user-centred design the default path, not the exception.
The practice ran as a closed loop - dual-track by design, with discovery feeding delivery and delivery feeding the next round of discovery.
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01
Ideation & iteration
Continuous discovery framed the problem and pressure-tested early concepts against user need and jobs-to-be-done, before the team committed to a direction.
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02
Development support
Researchers stayed embedded through build, resolving open questions in-flight so delivery was never blocked waiting on evidence.
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03
Pre-release testing
Formative and summative usability testing validated flows against acceptance criteria and usability benchmarks ahead of launch.
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04
Post-release monitoring
After ship, continuous UX monitoring tracked real-world behaviour and experience KPIs against the targets set back in discovery.
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05
New requirements → back to ideation
Monitoring surfaced fresh requirements and opportunities, which fed straight back to the top of the loop - keeping the roadmap evidence-led and the cycle closed.
The result was a durable, embedded research practice - one that outlived any single project or person.
Research stopped being a service desk and became continuous discovery: a standing capability that product, design, and leadership leaned on to make decisions. The dyad model and the closed loop weren't initiatives to be championed - they became simply how the organisation built product.