Inside a TSW project: from listening to people to strategic decisions

How we transform listening, research, and data into concrete design decisions

Companies often come to us with a specific need: redesigning a website, improving an app, boosting brand visibility, or making a customer journey more effective.

However, before working on an interface, content, or strategy, it is crucial for us to understand the context: what do people experience when they encounter a brand, use a product or service, or move through a space?

This is where our work begins: listening, observing, and measuring to gather evidence that guides design decisions.

From context to solution through UX research: Armani

Every project begins with a business objective: increasing conversions, clarifying an offer, consolidating positioning, improving an experience, or understanding how a brand is portrayed by artificial intelligence.

However, similar objectives may require vastly different responses depending on the people involved, the market, and the specific stage of the user experience. For this reason, we build research and design paths by combining methods and skills based on context.

In the international UX research project for Armani, for instance, we observed how people in different markets experienced the brand digitally. Through testing, we gained insights into how they navigated the site, understood the content, and responded to visual elements, thereby identifying usability friction points and aspects related to brand perception.

The findings enabled us to identify and prioritize areas for action, distinguishing between immediate fixes, strategic issues, and aspects requiring further investigation.

From hypothesis to real-world problem: Grimaldi Immobiliare

A brief establishes a starting point, but research helps us better understand the problem that needs solving.

For the Grimaldi Immobiliare digital transformation project, the challenge was to simplify the process of searching for properties and contacting agencies, while ensuring a consistent experience across the entire network.

Through qualitative interviews, surveys, and experience testing, we engaged individuals interested in buying or selling homes as well as network affiliates. These interactions revealed concrete needs—such as finding reliable property information, navigating the search process more easily, and quickly contacting agencies.

These needs translated into specific design choices: advanced filters, an interactive map, personalized notifications, more accessible contact tools, and a modular website model for individual agencies.

The insights gathered also guided UX design, accessibility, SEO strategy, and analytics governance, aligning user needs with those of the network and the business.

Co-design with users: Pampers

Involving people before decisions are finalized allows ideas and solutions to be tested while they can still be improved.

This is the approach we took during the co-design process with Pampers and Fater: moving from app usability testing to co-design sessions with mothers and expectant mothers to gain deeper insight into content, features, and expectations regarding the digital experience.

The participants were not merely the intended recipients of the solution; they brought their own experiences and needs, helping to reveal aspects that are often difficult to spot from within the organization—such as unclear wording, a superfluous step, an overlooked requirement, or a moment of uncertainty.

Co-designing does not mean shifting the responsibility for decision-making from the company to the users; rather, it means integrating their perspectives with research, specialized expertise, and business objectives to better guide choices and minimize the risk of designing solutions that lack utility.

A physical and digital experience: Salone del Mobile

In our work for the Salone del Mobile in Milan, we integrated SEO, digital analytics, and sensory research to examine an experience that unfolds before, during, and after the event—spanning everything from online information gathering and visit planning to the actual events taking place within the physical spaces.

Observations at the fair helped us identify behaviors and needs, while psychophysiological research allowed us to complement people’s self-reported feedback with data on their physiological responses to objects and environments.

Combining these perspectives provided a more comprehensive understanding of the experience, revealing the factors that influence wayfinding, attention, and engagement.

In this way, we were able to consider the experience as a whole, connecting online research, content, information tools, and physical spaces.

Brands and generative AI: Verti Assicurazioni

Today, the brand experience is also shaped by generative AI systems, which people use to search for information, compare alternatives, and guide their decision-making.

Working with Verti Assicurazioni, we applied our Amplif-AI method to observe how the brand is portrayed within LLMs. Yet, even here, we started with people, not technology.

An initial qualitative phase allowed us to observe how people use AI during their decision-making journeys—the questions they ask and the criteria they consider when comparing offers. From there, we analyzed how Verti is described, the attributes it is associated with, and its positioning relative to competitors.

The insights gathered thus serve as a foundation for guiding communication: identifying which content to update, which information to clarify, and where to adjust the strategy.

From UX research to design decisions

Contexts, tools, and objectives may change, but the principle remains the same: we do not start with the solution; we start with what needs to be understood.

We observe what people do and listen to their experiences, connecting these insights with data, design expertise, and organizational goals.

Research gains value when it translates into a decision—whether it is a priority to address, content to rethink, a workflow to simplify, a service to design, or a strategy to steer.

This is how what we learn from people can translate into tangible changes in the user experience while simultaneously helping organizations make more robust strategic decisions.