Ilaria Simone

International research and insights firm helping clients gain a competitive advantage in the digital landscape through benchmarking, user experience research, and data-driven insights across financial services and insurance industries.

• • Delivered 6 end-to-end user research projects across 4 international markets (Spain, UK, Canada, USA), managing 570+ moderated interviews and qualitative surveys (including the full translation process) across distinct teams, KPIs, deliverables, and timelines, often running 2 to 3 projects simultaneously in an agile, fast-paced environment. Built and launched quantitative surveys across multiple projects in UserZoom, exporting and structuring response data into clean handover packages for the technical team.

• • Drove successful recruitment outcomes across high-complexity participant profiles by coordinating 3 panel vendors simultaneously (Respondent, Askable, and UserInterviews) managing screening, scheduling, no-show recovery, and bilingual participant communication throughout each study.

• • Managed a distributed team of 3 to 4 moderators per project sourced and onboarded via Upwork, providing briefings, session feedback, and ongoing coordination across different time zones and languages to maintain consistent research quality.

• • Reduced post-production delays on video analysis by introducing AI-assisted workflows using HeyMarvin, enabling faster turnaround on session tagging, translation, and synthesis delivery to clients.

• • Maintained full project visibility and stakeholder alignment across concurrent studies using Teamwork, tracking task progress, flagging risks early, and ensuring on-time delivery for every project phase.

• • Moderated 1-on-1 usability research sessions and in-depth user interviews across multiple markets, guiding participants through structured tasks on digital products while capturing nuanced behavioural insights and pain points.

• • Maintained objectivity and consistency across sessions by following discussion guides precisely, probing effectively without leading participants, and adapting communication style to different participant profiles and cultural backgrounds.

• • Translated qualitative findings from sessions into structured summaries, contributing directly to data driven recommendations shared with product and strategy teams.

University-industry collaboration as part of the MSc programme, working directly with Cloudera (a global data and analytics technology company) to solve a real business challenge under genuine commercial constraints.

• Contributed to a cross-functional team of designers, engineers, and business analysts tasked with analysing and automating a complex internal pricing process for Cloudera, translating real business requirements into a functional software solution.

• Led the UX research and design phase, applying design thinking, user journey mapping, and process analysis to identify workflow inefficiencies, then prototyped solutions that directly informed the final system architecture.

• Ownership of technical development workstream using Django, MySQL, and JavaScript, driving the project from concept through to a working, tested system delivered to the client within project timeline.