End-to-end research across strategy, discovery, and decision-making;
from zero-maturity environments to fully scaled organisations.
Research, Insights, Strategy
10+ years across product, UX & market research
Led mixed methods work across Europe & North America
Built research foundations from zero to scaled adoption
Behavioural psychology PhD
Let’s get in touch!
lesley@lesleydeas.com
Open to consulting projects and new roles.
A Wee Bit About Me
Raised in Scotland, PhD'd in Canada, built my career with Canadian companies… now home to complain about the weather.
I’ve spent much of my career working as the only researcher or in small teams, so I’m used to figuring things out in environments where not everything is set up yet.
That’s shaped how I approach research.
I focus on helping teams get to clarity - making insights useful, accessible and rigorous - helping teams move forward with confidence and less risk.
Research Foundations
When research isn't yet part of how a team works, I set up the tools, processes, and workflows they need to start learning from users. Keep it simple and scalable.
Discovery & Decision Support
When teams are exploring a problem or working towards a decision, I run focused research that fits within real organisational constraints - surfacing behaviours, needs, and trade-offs that move things forward.
Embedding Insights
When research exists but isn't landing, I work with teams to understand why, and help them build the habits, workflows, and shared language that turn insights into something they actually use.
Projects
Getting to Know Users for the First Time
Building user understanding… when nobody asked for it.
Product teams across 11 apps in 3 continents were making decisions without ever having spoken to a single user.
There was no research culture, and no buy-in across teams for user insights to change their workflows.
The brief could have been "run a segmentation study." I framed it differently: what does this organisation need to understand about its users for the first time, and how do we make sure that understanding lives beyond a slide deck?
App Integration & Codebase Decisions
Being the user voice when the decision was already moving.
Following an acquisition, an executive decision to replace one app's codebase with another was two weeks from board approval before user retention risk entered the conversation.
Research couldn't block the decision and needed to focus on high-risk signals. I designed around those constraints: simulating the exact change users were about to experience, rather than testing a hypothetical.
B2B Discovery: Grounding In Retailer Reality
From Sales Intuition to Market Evidence
Product teams across 11 apps in 3 continents were making decisions without ever having spoken to a single user.
There was no research culture, and no buy-in across teams for user insights to change their workflows.
The brief could have been "run a segmentation study." I framed it differently: what does this organisation need to understand about its users for the first time, and how do we make sure that understanding lives beyond a slide deck?
Market Research Reports
Primary consumer research across Canada and USA
A selection of market research reports covering consumer behaviour in grocery and retail . Originally produced for Flipp, available to read in full via Flipp corp website.