2026 · Product strategy

Building clarity for ambitious teams

Turning an inventory of gaps and opportunities into north stars.

The opportunity

Turning scattered research into a clearer plan

The problem

We had years of UX research, customer feedback, data, and insights scattered across different project documents. Each study focused on one small part of the product or journey, so it was difficult to step back and see the full picture.

Useful findings were easily forgotten or buried. This meant we sometimes missed connections between problems, overlooked opportunities, or didn’t have the right insight when an important decision was being made.

The design team also lacked clear evidence of which experience problems would make the biggest difference. We had a sense of where the trouble spots might be, but not enough proof to confidently decide what to investigate or fix first. Other teams, such as Customer Support, had valuable information too—but their data wasn’t connected to what we had learned through research.

The approach

Making the evidence useful to the wider team

I wanted to bring these scattered pieces together and turn them into something the wider team could actually use.

  1. Gather past findings in one place and create an inventory of known problems and opportunities.
  2. Connect them across themes, journeys, and touchpoints.
  3. Compare their impact, urgency, and the effort needed to address them.
  4. Bring in evidence from other teams, such as Customer Support’s most common enquiries.
  5. Use the shared picture to shape priorities and build a roadmap together.

How I did it

Building a shared inventory

I started by going through our past and ongoing research. This took time because I didn’t want to pull findings out of context. For each project, I looked at what we were trying to learn, why the research was needed, how it was carried out, what we found, whether anything had changed since, and if the findings were still relevant.

Next, I created a simple system to organise everything:

  • Domain: The broader goal or stage of the customer journey.
  • Theme: A recurring problem or pattern within that domain.
  • Touchpoint: The specific moment or interaction where the problem appears.

One domain could contain several themes, and each theme could include several touchpoints. This helped us see how smaller issues connected to the wider experience.

I then brought everything into one shared inventory. For the first time, we could see our known experience gaps and opportunities together instead of searching through separate project files.

From there, I worked with teams across product, customer experience, and data to agree on what “impact” meant and how we would prioritise the work. We compared each opportunity based on its impact, urgency, and the effort needed to address it.

The executive summary

Five biggest gaps and opportunities

Finally, I turned the findings into an executive summary of the five biggest gaps and opportunities. Each one explained:

  • What was going wrong.
  • Examples of where it happened.
  • Which parts of the journey were affected.
  • Who was affected.
  • Why it was worth fixing.
  • The likely impact on customers and the business.
Image placeholderOpportunity overview
Image placeholderImpact and urgency matrix
Image placeholderExecutive summary

The outcome

One shared view of customer experience

We created one shared view of customer experience gaps, supported by research, customer feedback, and data from across the business.

It also gave different teams a common set of priorities. When new work or roadmap changes were discussed, we could point to the same evidence and have a clearer conversation about what mattered most.

Image placeholderRoadmap workshop
Image placeholderShared priorities
Image placeholderCustomer experience roadmap