Three case studies from my time in the CEF group, at City Electrical Factors, iCS and Pik-a-Pak, plus freelance work.
Case study 01: Research operations
I built CEF's research function from scratch. It showed search was much harder than the business believed, and the changes that followed raised add-to-basket rates and cut repeat searches.
City Electrical Factors2023 to 2026
80%said finding products was the main problem
Case study 02: Information architecture
iCS, an EV charging company in the CEF group, needed one website for installers and potential customers. Usability testing showed customers could barely find an installer, so I recommended reorganising the pages by audience.
iCS2023
18moderated usability sessions
Case study 03: B2B ecommerce
Pik-a-Pak's stockists reorder items they already know, often by product code. Interviews shaped a redesign with every code listed, precise restock dates and shorter product pages.
Pik-a-Pak Distribution2024
6online interviews with stockists
Accessibility
ScopeAssisting researcher
As a freelancer, I assisted user research sessions with Scope, the disability equality charity, helping disabled people access government digital services.
Who took part: Disabled people using government digital services
Discovery
Independent farm shopFreelance user researcher
I delivered a discovery project for an independent farm shop, one of a range of organisations I worked with as a freelance researcher.
Aurelia MumbyPronouns: she/her
I turn what people say, do and click into better products.
I'm a user researcher with over three years' experience turning qualitative and quantitative insight into product improvements.
At City Electrical Factors I was the first and only insights specialist in a global business. I built its research and discovery function from scratch, and ran studies with electricians and tradespeople across the UK, USA, Canada and Australia.
My degree in Politics and Sociology gave me a working knowledge of GDS standards and the public-sector context they operate in.
Research covers the whole service.
When people talk about a service, a company or an experience, they will talk about the whole experience, not just one aspect that's online. They will want to talk about the in-shop experience, the delivery and themselves, which are all critical aspects of one bigger journey. I use those conversations to map how the parts of a service depend on each other, and I treat the digital journey as one of those parts.
I challenge assumptions with evidence.
I've shown teams that features they wanted to rebuild were already working, that a feature given a prominent place was not useful enough to warrant that space, and that search was much harder for users than they believed.
I go where users are.
Not everyone is "online first", so I also met users in branches and at trade conventions. I updated my research plans as each round of interviews taught me more.
I make research a shared activity.
A US development team I worked with had no established UX practice, so I built a two-way relationship with them. I helped with their work, and they became invested in the insights. I coached teams on how research works and built it into every stage of a project. I was also open about what research can and can't tell you, and I didn't let it just get used to validate ideas.
I plan for accessibility from the start.
You never know when you'll meet a participant with access needs, or what those needs will be. I've worked with Scope, supporting disabled people to use government digital services, and with vulnerable participants at CEF. That work taught me to adapt each session to the person rather than the other way round.
Not every finding is useful straight away.
Over the years, those findings built up context, and that context gave later studies a much better-informed starting point.
Before research, I worked on farms. For more than three years I milked a 200-strong dairy herd twice a day for J & S Arrowsmith and kept its medicine records accurate. At the same time I worked on D L Blanchard's arable and pig farm, caring for animals, building and growing crops, on my own and as part of a team.
Farm work is early starts, close observation and careful records, whatever the weather. It turned out to be good training for research: noticing what people actually do, writing it down accurately and seeing it through.
In July 2022 I started working as a freelance user researcher. In February 2023 I joined City Electrical Factors as its first insights specialist.
Over three years as a user researcher. Before that, more than three years working on farms.
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City Electrical Factors (CEF)
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Self-employed
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J & S Arrowsmith
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D L Blanchard
BSc Politics and Sociology (2:1)
University of Surrey
Included a study placement at Monash University, Melbourne. The University of Surrey was ranked 18th nationally.
User Research (short course)
Paper Design
I'm open to user research roles. If you're hiring, or want to talk about a research question, email me or download my CV.
