Customer Insights as Growth Strategy

5 barriers to leveraging user insights in product development and strategies to break through

Research is the backbone for building products users love, yet they’re often pushed aside as fuzzy, with unclear outcomes and difficult-to-prove value. Teams juggle thorough research needs with urgent roadmap pressures, metrics targets, and ROI demands.

Our own leading voices from across disciplines at AKQA Leap came together to discuss practical strategies to prove the value of research across all stages of the product development lifecycle, how to enable fast and efficient user understanding at scale without compromising quality, and the role of AI in user research.

Design Principal Gabriela Francke has distilled 5 actionable strategies that can help Product and Design Leaders demonstrate the value of user insights in driving product development, and effectively position user research as a key growth strategy.

You'll learn:

  • Practical strategies to prove the value of research across all stages of the product development lifecycle
  • How leaders can enable fast and efficient user understanding at scale without compromising quality.
  • How to strike the right balance between the speed of AI-powered tools and the need for authentic user empathy and nuance.

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Customer Insights as Growth Strategy: 5 barriers to leveraging user insights in product development and strategies to break through. By Gabriela Francke, Design Principal at AKQA Leap
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Meet the author

Gabriela is Design Principal at AKQA Leap, where she guides teams and clients through complex projects from discovery to launch. She leads both design and research initiatives, defining methodologies, creating research assets, conducting studies, and turning findings into actionable insights that actually move products forward.

She's worked on projects for major brands including Google, Vodafone, Facebook, EY, and Coca-Cola. Gabriela's award-winning work for Vodafone's Zoteria has become a cornerstone of her speaking on research and product inclusion.

About AKQA Leap

AKQA Leap might not be a familiar name, but one thing is certain - you have probably already experienced our work. Whether through Spotify Wrapped, Wallace and Gromit’s Big Fix Up, Google Maps, or Jamie Oliver’s recipes. We create the digital products you already use and love - you just didn’t know it.

AKQA Leap helps businesses launch, fix, and scale high-stakes digital products, where precision, speed to market, secure solutions and scalable value from day one are critical.

We were born out of Google in 2010, are trusted by big tech and bring Silicon Valley expertise, AKQA’s creative firepower, and WPP’s global reach to every project. Our customer-first approach drives results, with 100% of clients saying they’d work with us again.