Kate Rylance leads the User Experience (UX) Research Team at The Very Group – the people behind very.co.uk, but how she got into this role is far from usual when it comes to career stories!

After taking a Master’s in Psychology, Kate worked with the Police to support them with problem solving, her role was to understand what issues they were having and then to come up with technical solutions. If like us, you are wondering how she went from the Police, to working for one of the UK’s largest pure play retailers, sit back and let us tell you how it happened!

So, it turns out Kate is fascinated why people do what they do, this means that the skills she gained during her Master’s and what she learnt about people and behaviour during her time at the Police was totally transferable into the world of User Experience.  In her four years at The Very Group she has gone from being a part of the team to leading it. Kate’s team work very closely with their valued customers to understand their shopping behaviour, what they want and how they want to shop in the future. The research her team does ranges from the blue-sky thinking of the discovery phase, right through to the validation work and testing that solutions are fit for purpose.

There is no one size fits all when it comes to getting into the world of UX, researchers come from all disciplines and backgrounds from sociology to science.  Kate told us that the most important things needed to be a good UX researcher are adaptability, curiosity and customer centricity. The Very Group equip their teams with the latest and most innovative research tools, train them in new research methods and have crafter and richly diverse team to deliver leading research and solutions.

Kate’s advice was that UX is a new field which means you need to think about your transferable skills, build a portfolio of research and then just go for it…and Kate, we couldn’t agree more!