User Researcher working across product and service design
With an architecture background and five years at one of the UK's largest news publishers leading strategic and tactical initiatives, such as audience frameworks used across teams, and a subscription product that reached 50,000 subscribers. Based in London.
01 - Selected work
From discovery to delivery
Rebuilt four unused audience archetypes into an intent-based framework product teams could apply without a researcher in the room.
Behavioural frameworks · Co-design workshops · Mixed-methods synthesis · Usability testing
Mapped the full breaking-news lifecycle across two contrasting newsrooms, then prototyped a personalised notification system.
Workflow mapping · User interviews · Prototyping · Usability testing
Defined the problem from scratch, ran four rounds of RITE testing and co-designed the redesign with editorial teams.
Stakeholder workshops · RITE testing · Co-design workshops · Usability testing
Three years of embedded research: Kano model, competitor analysis and six studies, steering a premium product to launch.
Kano model · Competitor analysis · Surveys · Semi-structured interviews · Usability testing
02 - Ways of working
Research that moves things forward
Good design starts by asking the right questions. I follow a problem back through the system that produces it, because the part that's visibly failing is rarely the part that needs to change.
1. Find the right problem
Stakeholder interviews
Workflow mapping
Root cause analysis
Service blueprints
Journey mapping
Desk research
Competitor analysis
Analytics analysis
The right method is the difference between useful insight and wasted effort. I match the approach to the question, not the other way around.
2. Design the approach
User interviews
Shadowing
Diary studies
Survey design
Usability testing
RITE testing
Kano model surveys
Unmoderated testing
Research ops
Impact-effort matrices
Research works best when it belongs to everyone. I bring stakeholders along the way, so by the time findings land, the answer feels obvious to everyone in the room.
3. Bring people with you
Co-design workshops
Stakeholder ideation
Participatory design
How Might We framing
Affinity mapping
Research readouts
Empathy mapping
A project is not finished when the report is delivered. It is finished when something has changed because of it.
4. Stay until it lands
Research advocacy
Jobs To Be Done framing
Mental models
Personas
Post-launch research
Heuristic evaluation
Storytelling
Insight repositories
03 - Testimonials
Don't take my word for it
“One piece of his work has genuinely stuck with me: some extremely detailed research he did into our editorial workflows, so thorough that people are still referencing it as a useful artefact years later. That kind of depth doesn't happen by accident, especially when you're covering as much ground as he is.”
Shiv Abbott - Principal product manager at Reach PLC
“Plenty of people in tech and product talk about systems thinking. Tomas is one of the few I've seen actually do it. Across several research projects we worked on together, Tomas brought a strong grasp of the process, from interviews through to gathering and synthesising the evidence. Tomas turns complex findings into clear, actionable recommendations and brings designers, product managers, developers and stakeholders together around a shared understanding of the user.”
Christina Sanders - Senior Researcher at Reach PLC
04 - About
Buildings to systems
I started my career as an architect, but became more interested in how people experience buildings than the buildings themselves. That curiosity took me into UX, research and service design.
Architects are systems thinkers by training. You can't move a wall without moving the structure, the services, the circulation and the cost along with it, so you learn to hold the whole thing at once and trace what one decision does to everything else.
Products work the same way. My research follows problems back to their roots and builds artefacts that make the whole system visible, so what gets fixed is the actual problem and we know what else changes with it.
I transitioned from architecture to UX and joined Reach plc, one of the UK's largest news publishers. In the 5 years I have worked for them, I progressed from UX designer to the organisation's only researcher.
I'm now looking for my next role, ideally somewhere with an established team and problems worth getting absorbed in.
