KNAB Bank
Three years building KNAB's UX research function from a request line into the most data-driven, customer-centric team in the business — voicing the needs of 380+ customers and partners a year.
A digital bank with the ambition to be customer-centric — and no scalable way to be.
When I joined KNAB in 2018, the bank had a clear customer-centric ambition but no infrastructure to back it up. Research happened on a request basis. Insights lived in individual heads. Every product squad needed answers, and every answer required starting from zero.
My remit was open: build a research practice that could keep pace with KNAB's diverse product portfolio — from onboarding flows to business banking — and make customer evidence the default input to every product decision, not the exception.
"We don't want a research team that runs studies. We want a research team that changes how the rest of us think about our customers."
A weekly research cadence. Built to scale across every product team.
The breakthrough wasn't a single methodology. It was designing a flow that could feed insight into KNAB's product portfolio every week — and surviving three years of growth without breaking.
Designed a weekly research rhythm — recruitment, fieldwork, synthesis — that could absorb requests from any product squad without queuing studies for months. Average turnaround dropped from "whenever we get to it" to under two weeks.
Built recruitment infrastructure that voiced 380+ KNAB customers and partners a year. Mix of consumer and partner perspectives — feeding both feature-level and strategic decisions.
Acted as the primary research contact for product teams, owners, and the Board. Translated user evidence into language each audience could act on — and translated business goals into research questions worth answering.
Aligned the research roadmap with KNAB's long-term business strategy and OKRs — positioning research as a strategic function, not a service desk. By year one, UX research was internally recognised as the most data-driven, customer-centric team in the business.
Three years. Five inflection points.
Mapping the existing research landscape
First three months were diagnosis: where research was already happening, where it wasn't, and which product squads were operating without any user evidence at all.
Designing the weekly flow
Built and stress-tested a research cadence: every week, a study could move from question to insight. Recruitment, scheduling, synthesis — all tooling-supported and repeatable.
Earning team-wide trust
By the end of year one, UX research was consulted on every major product decision — and recognised internally as the most data-driven, customer-centric team in the company.
Scaling across the portfolio
Extended the weekly flow across consumer banking, business banking, and partner products. Became the bridge between product squads, design, and the Board on customer evidence.
Strategic alignment
Tied research priorities to KNAB's long-term strategy and OKRs. Research stopped being reactive — it shaped which roadmap bets the bank made.
The shift wasn't more research. It was making research the default operating rhythm — so customer evidence showed up before opinions did.
The research function KNAB still runs on.
Tangible infrastructure that outlived my tenure — and that the bank could keep operating without external support.
Three years. Measurable shift.
Cansu is a joy to work with. I was lucky enough to hire her back when I was setting up an in-house UX team at KNAB. We were responsible for setting up the UX lab and bringing the validation/research mindset into the company. Cansu is very ambitious, independent, is not afraid to ask the hard questions and most of all a hard working asset — a tour de force you better team up with to reach new heights.