UX Research & Strategy — Toronto
Christopher
Norman
Research that earns its place in the room. Strategy that makes it stick.
Senior UX researcher with deep experience across enterprise software, consumer digital products, and high-stakes B2B platforms. I run studies that surface what actually matters — and translate findings into decisions that teams can act on.
Selected Work
Modernising the call center
for agents who trained themselves
End-to-end UX research, strategy, and prototype design for a major overhaul of IBM Sterling's call center order management platform. Twelve months of weekly sponsor user sessions with Sephora and Target, plus moderated testing with call center agents across four concurrent workflows.
Read case studyBuilding online ordering
from a blank page
Foundational UX research for a beloved QSR brand's first digital ordering platform. Competitive audits of leading QSR and retail apps, followed by unmoderated A/B testing and moderated interviews to validate interaction patterns before a single pixel was finalised.
Read case studyOrder Details redesign
and the A/B test that freed the team
Three years embedded at Walmart Canada across post-purchase UX. A competitive benchmarking study of fulfillment patterns at Home Depot, Canadian Tire, Best Buy, and Amazon set the design direction; moderated usability testing with eight participants sharpened it.
Read case studyTwo redesigns validated.
One scored a perfect 7.0.
Two rounds of unmoderated A/B testing for audiences making high-stakes decisions about senior care. The community page study returned 75% preference for the redesign; the luxury community study achieved a perfect average ease-of-use score of 7.0 on both mobile and desktop.
Read case studyAn intranet redesign
across five employee personas
Moderated in-person usability testing of the GNIE portal redesign, reaching employees across five distinct personas from claims adjusters to senior leadership. 90% satisfaction rate with targeted navigation findings that shaped the final information architecture.
Read case studyStakeholder research
for a platform unification initiative
Qualitative stakeholder research mapping the strategic, operational, and cultural landscape ahead of a major platform consolidation. Annotated interview guides, synthesis across business units, and a findings framework designed to survive the handoff to product and leadership.
Read case studyAbout
Researcher, strategist, designer.
My foundation is academic: an M.Sc. in Consumer Studies, a discipline built on qualitative and quantitative research methods applied to understanding how and why people make decisions. That training shapes how I approach every engagement — starting with what needs to be known, not just what can be easily tested.
In practice I've operated across a broader range of roles than most researchers. In addition to leading research programmes, I've designed and built high-fidelity prototypes, directed UX design teams, written and maintained design systems, and managed stakeholder relationships across complex, multi-party engagements. That range makes me most useful on projects where research and design are tightly coupled and the team needs someone who can move fluidly between them.
I'm based in Toronto and work across North America, primarily on large-scale digital products in enterprise, retail, and consumer contexts.
Unmoderated A/B testing
Stakeholder interviews
Competitive benchmarking
Design research
Think-aloud protocols
Userzoom
Usertesting.com
Figma
Miro
JIRA & Confluence
Dovetail
Optimal Workshop
QSR / Consumer
Retail / E-commerce
Financial services
Senior living
Insurance
Findings decks
Synthesis frameworks
Prototype validation
Stakeholder readouts
IA recommendations