Adam Banks

I work as a UX Researcher, Head of UX, and Head of Research Operations on a contract basis for a range of clients. I specialise in planning and leading user research to uncover needs, behaviours, and pain points - particularly in AI adoption and digital transformation.

My expertise includes matrix management of researches and research ops teams, communicating between researchers and senior managers, championing qualitative research within large organisations, and presenting research outcomes across stakeholder organisations.

I collaborate closely with stakeholders - from technologists to senior leaders - to ensure user-centred design drives decision-making.

Passionate about embedding research into agile workflows, I also champion best practices, mentor teams, and contribute to research communities through talks and thought leadership.

My strength lies in communicating complex findings in clear, compelling ways to influence design and strategy at all levels.

I founded a course teaching the specifics of User-Centred-Design to designers, PMs, and consultants in the Audio Visual domain. This combines my long experience in both AV and UX.

I built the world's first platform for in-person user research, enabling research teams to capture, analyse, and share insights seamlessly.

I designed accessible, scalable research infrastructure to support diverse user groups (by allowing researchers to travel to users, not the other way round).

This system is being used by companies and teams whenever they need to use any real-world space for research - particularly for accessibility testing.

I founded UX-Study in 2016 to focus on providing UX as an embedded service to clients.

I helped them to grow UX practices internally, and I provided technology and systems necessary to automate and scale UX in growing organisations.

I enabled companies to expand the impact of user research without drastically growing teams.

We bootstrapped the company from two founders to a profitable global company with ~$1mn turnover.

Clients included:

• Spotify
• Natwest
• BT
• Royal Bank of Scotland
• Digital Catapult
• Satellite Catapult
• Pfizer
• Pearson Education
• Department for Business (UK)

Focused on UX transformation: embedding User-Centred Design, Design Thinking, accessibility, and UX best practices into client teams:

• I managed local and remote teams of Researchers placed into client organisations, designing and running user studies to meet the needs of the product and other stakeholder teams (inc. big tech, pharma, government, & banking).
• Delivered 10x growth in research impact for two FTSE100 companies by designing research architecture & managing people and technology to embed automated research practices.
• Helped them to recruit UX practitioners and managers to take over the work I established.

Counseled senior management in client organisations on process and organisation design for product teams, focusing on automation of process to enable teams to scale. Designed and managed hundreds of research projects, employing a wide range of qualitative & quantitative methods. Partnered with accessibility consultants to embed accessible design as a core principle.

Supported companies to scale research practice by outsourcing (or insourcing) and expanding mechanical processes.

• Helped research managers at various companies to identify and automate repetitive tasks (usability testing, participant recruitment, admin, research operations) in order to free-up ~30% of Researchers' time. This vastly improved the speed and efficiency of the User Centred Design process.

Designed, built, and deployed research technology to clients: UX Labs, Design Sprint spaces, bespoke UX software.

• Built UX Labs across several offices globally for 20+ large companies.
• Provided software to manage the UX process, and to increase the efficacy of each dollar spent on research.

Led User Research for internal project teams, focusing on development and improvement of engineering systems. Embedded user-centred design process to teams previously very engineer-led.

• e.g. I was the first UX researcher (later manager) on a long-established team of engineers that had never followed UCD processes. I introduced new practices, persuaded the teams of the benefits of change, ran in-person and remote studies with stakeholders, introduced & managed structured research processes, then hired a team of researchers and operations staff to continue and expand the process.

Designed & built Google's first knowledge management system for UX: the company's first 'research repository'. This formed the foundation for Google's internal library for managing and tracking all user research globally.

Designed & implemented 100+ UX Labs & research technology systems: I managed the team of 8 PMs and Engineers that was responsible for the rollout and management of all technology and spaces related to user research.

Built and managed Google's global Research Operations team and infrastructure - team of 10 supporting the admin and operation of UX Research work across all organisations in all regions.

End-to-end design & running of UX testing: user discovery, usability testing, survey design, quantitative data analysis, collaborative design, in-field research, stakeholder research trips.

I worked in a range of teams and disciplines, owning the research process and reporting findings directly to decision-makers in engineering & product.

• e.g. my research helped to change the direction of an ill-fated attempt to redesign Google Sites to become an automated content gathering system.

I was responsible for the design of many types of AV space globally for Google - conference facilities, presentation spaces, cinemas, cafes - anything that contained an element of Audio Visual.

I managed the team of AV contractors for Europe, who were responsible for the day-to-day running of facilities and events.

I designed and managed the AV for all of Google's large conferences in Europe.

I began working at Goldman Sachs as an AV Technician - testing and maintaining AV systems (video conferencing, presentation systems, etc) and designing new systems for their London office

Whilst continuing in that role, I moved on also to manage the internal video production department - responsible for production of all internal talks, presentations, training materials, and guest lectures.