Your users are telling you something. Let’s make sense of it.
Independent UX research consulting. I run research that changes product decisions, and I build research teams that keep doing it long after I’ve left.
Ten years as UX Research Lead at Google: Gmail, Calendar, Tasks. Based in Zürich, working remotely everywhere.
What teams tell me, sorted into what I can do about it
Illustrative notes, overheard in kickoff interviews.
Hands-on research
- We’re about to build it, and nobody has watched a user try.
- The survey said yes. Usage says no.
- No researcher on the team, and we need answers this quarter.
Research team enablement
- We hired fast. Now we need one shared craft bar.
- Every researcher writes findings up differently.
- Our juniors interview well but can’t push back on a PM.
ResearchOps & templates
- PMs run their own interviews. Nobody knows what we already learned.
- We have forty research decks and nobody reads them.
- Recruiting participants takes three weeks, every time.
Workshops & strategy
- Design, product and engineering each carry a different roadmap.
- The VP wants a vision by next month.
- We keep re-debating the same decision.
Four ways to work together
Pick one, or combine them. Every engagement leaves something behind that your team can keep using.
Hands-on research
For product teams without a researcher, or with more questions than researchers.
What we often hear: We’re about to build it, and nobody has watched a user try.
End-to-end studies, from the question to the recommendation: interviews, usability and concept tests, diary studies, surveys and cognitive walkthroughs. I pick the method that fits the decision you have to make and the time you have.
My focus is qualitative research. For quantitative work I can help with basic questions, or introduce you to experienced quantitative researchers.
What you keep Findings your team can act on, the evidence behind them, and a readout that lands with leadership.
Research team enablement
For Heads of UX and Research whose team is growing faster than its shared practice.
What we often hear: We hired fast. Now we need one shared craft bar.
I design and deliver an enablement program for your UX research team: a common craft bar, moderation and synthesis training, critique rituals, and coaching for researchers who need to hold their ground with product leadership.
What you keep A curriculum, playbooks and a team that runs it without me.
ResearchOps & templates
For organisations where research happens everywhere, and gets lost everywhere.
What we often hear: We have forty research decks and nobody reads them.
A research operations and process concept that fits how your company actually works: intake, recruiting, consent, storage and sharing. It comes with standardised templates that designers, PMs and engineers can use on their own without lowering the bar.
What you keep A documented process, a template set, and a place where past insight can be found again.
Workshops & strategy
For leadership teams that need to agree on what to build next, and why.
What we often hear: We keep re-debating the same decision.
Design sprints, executive and customer workshops, research roadmaps and stakeholder alignment. I bring design, product and engineering into one room, or one call, and leave with decisions rather than sticky notes.
What you keep A shared direction, a prioritised roadmap and the reasoning behind it.
How an engagement runs
Listen
Short interviews with the people around the problem: product, design, engineering, leadership, and sometimes customers. Before anything is proposed, I find out what the real question is.
Make sense of it
I sort what I hear into a small number of problems worth solving and agree with you which one matters most. That scope sets the plan.
Do the work, with your team
Studies, programs, templates or workshops, run alongside your people rather than behind a curtain. Mentoring and coaching are part of every engagement.
Leave it behind
A clear handover: the findings, the materials and the habits. Success is a team that no longer needs me for this.
Where the experience comes from
For more than ten years I led UX research at Google on Gmail, Calendar and Tasks, shaping product strategy for products used by over a billion people.
I owned research roadmaps and executive readouts for teams of 20+ engineers and designers. I ran a rapid research program with 10 external researchers across 5 product teams, and facilitated a design sprint where ~25 cross-functional partners set a three-year strategy.
With enterprise customers I ran workshops alongside executives and IT admins. I’ve spoken at 20+ internal conferences and panels, and co-taught a course on moderating research sessions.
2015 – 2026
UX Research Lead, Google
Mountain View and Zürich
Gmail, Calendar, Tasks and Google Workspace. Led a cross-product initiative on how AI should work across Calendar, Gmail and Chat. Brought research into the hybrid-work launches that followed COVID-19.
2013 – 2015
UX Researcher, Google X / Waymo
Mountain View
Human-factors and ergonomics research on prototype self-driving vehicles, and usability studies for the rider app. Included ride-alongs with visually and mobility-impaired participants.
Hi, I’m Lalida
I came to UX research through psychology, and I still start from the same place: how people actually behave, not how we assume they do. Whether it’s office workers, executives or IT admins, the job is to turn that behaviour into products that fit their lives.
I care about research that gets used. That means clear, well-structured work and readouts that leadership acts on. It also means investing in the people doing the research: I have mentored and coached researchers throughout my career, and it’s the part of the work I enjoy most.
I live in Zürich and work in English with teams anywhere, remotely or on site. I also speak Thai and conversational German.
- Based in Zürich, Switzerland
- Works Remotely, worldwide, and on site in Switzerland
- Languages English, Thai, German (B1)
- Methods Interviews, usability and concept studies, diary studies, surveys, cognitive walkthroughs, workshops
Tell me what your users are telling you.
Send a short note about what you’re trying to learn. I’ll get back to you personally, and if it looks like a fit, we’ll set up an intro call to talk it through.
Email me directly
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