Pattern & Proof — Research for founders ready to scale

Research that moved the needle.

Real outcomes from real engagements — survey programmes, funnel diagnostics and validation studies that ended in shipped decisions, not slide decks.

Product priorities

A complex build was halted after user research revealed the wrong features were being built.

14+ months saved

Funnel fixes

Identified a misaligned signup for a platform with >1M users.

1M+ users impacted

Scaling decisions

Evidence for a major scaling decision identified in a single sprint for a platform with 1M+ users.

1× sprint reframed

The problem we solve

You've built something real. Now what?

Scaling on instinct

You've been making decisions on feel since day one and it's worked. But at this stage, gut decisions get expensive fast. What worked for 100 users doesn't always work for 10,000.

The funnel mystery

You can see where users drop off. You might even have AI summaries telling you why. But synthesis isn't understanding, and without the behavioural context, you're often solving the wrong problem entirely.

Misaligned messaging

Your copy made sense to you when you wrote it. But your users are arriving with different vocabulary, different expectations, and different questions. Research closes that gap.

Building the wrong thing next

Before you commit the next three months of development to a new feature, it's worth knowing whether users actually want it — and whether it solves their real problem.

What we offer

Three ways to work together.

Structured engagements designed around the decisions you're actually facing — not open-ended retainers that drift.

1 · Sprint

Research Sprint

A focused two-to-four week engagement built around a specific decision. Fast, hands-on, and immediately actionable.

Stakeholder alignment & problem framing workshop
User interviews with behavioural analysis
Insight synthesis and recommendation report
Recommendation and playback session

From£2,000/ project

2 · Programme

Validation Package

Deeper mixed-method research for founders facing a significant decision, new market, major feature, strong change.

Behavioural barriers and motivation mapping
Mixed-method research (Qual, quant, or both)
Decision-ready persona development
Strategic recommendations deck with prioritised actions

From£14,500/ project

3 · Retainer

Research Retainer

Continuous research support for scaling teams who need insight built into their decision-making rhythm, not bolted on after the fact.

Monthly research sprints aligned to your product cycle
Ongoing user panel with behavioural tracking
Living insight library your team can self-serve
Quarterly strategy review & roadmap input

From£3,500/ month

How we work

The Adaptive Insight Cycle.

Research that adapts to what you find, not a rigid process that ignores it. Each phase informs the next, and any phase can loop back when the evidence demands it.

Discover

We start by understanding the decisions you're facing and the assumptions underneath. The right research question changes everything.

Validate

We go to your users with rigorous methodology — interviews, surveys, behavioural analysis — and find out what's actually true.

Refine

Insights get stress-tested, cross-referenced, and turned into clear prioritised recommendations you can act on immediately.

Grow

With clarity on what your users need and why, you scale with confidence — knowing you're growing something worth growing.

Selected work

Research that shaped real decisions.

Anonymised where required, but the outcomes are real. Below: three engagements that ended in shipped changes — not parked decks.

Quant + Qual · Mixed methods / Gamified entrepreneurship app

Full validation programme that re-prioritised the roadmap.

A pre-launch startup commissioned this study to test build-vs-buy on three features. The research used a 1,200-person survey, 15 in-depth interviews and a 4-person validation panel. The same flag — onboarding clarity — appeared in every signal.

1,200₊

Survey participants

150₊

Interviews

Validation personas

Survey clusters · n = 1,247

eCommerce / Thematic analysis

UX research for a platform with >1 million users.

A platform with over one million users had data complete enough for us to be specific. We re-coded six months of feedback, ran competitor analysis on five direct rivals, and shipped a prioritisation framework for the next quarter.

1M₊

Platform users

Themes surfaced

Theme weight · 6-month corpus

eCommerce / Funnel analysis

Conversion funnel audit revealing where and why users dropped off.

An e-commerce brand was losing conversions at the same stage of their funnel for months. When we combined behavioural data with user interviews, we discovered the real issue wasn't the page design; it was upstream. Their email campaigns weren't reinforcing the true decision drivers behind why customers buy. They were echoing surface-level desires instead of highlighting the underlying value. A strategic shift in copy aligned with actual purchase psychology fixed what a redesign couldn't.

Friction points identified

Sprint to fix

Funnel · before vs. after

UX Copy / Terminology testing

Copy and terminology research to align product language with user mental models.

A product team was puzzled by low engagement on a feature they knew users needed. The feature wasn't the problem — the words around it actually were. Users were scanning the UI looking for terms they recognised and not finding them. We mapped the vocabulary users actually used against the product copy, and the language guide that came out of it informed both the interface and every marketing channel.

UX Copy

Specialism

Language Guide

Deliverable

User vocab ↔ product copy

In their words

Founders we've worked with, on the work itself.

Annabel helped us segment our users, and understand the behaviour behind each of them. She then made product strategy recommendations based off what we learned — what our goals were, and where we are right now.

Aurelio TanziCEO — ZRO

We got the data we needed to seek out funding for our idea. What would have taken us weeks took 1 week.

Priya IyengarFounder — Petalsmap

As a small business we don't usually have the ability to invest in data & research, but they helped us increase our email to check out metric with a few suggestions.

Winter Gear Company

The research they did helped us to understand what our students needed to know from our conversational AI bot, this meant students could chat to a professor bot if they couldn't get ahold of their own.

ANSR

They undertook market research and customer research for us so that we could validate our cookie idea, it saves us months of thinking about ideas and strategies which ultimately wouldn't have worked out.

Sports Cookies

Who you're working with

Annabel Lovegrove.

When you work with us, you're working with a researcher who has led studies for platforms with over a million users, built full mixed-methods validation programmes from the ground up, and understands what it actually takes to translate research into decisions people act on.

I started Pattern & Proof because I kept seeing founders at pivotal moments making expensive decisions without clear validation, not because they didn't value research, but because they didn't have access to it in a way that was rigorous and commercially grounded.

I also work with founders to integrate AI into their research and decision-making processes, without outsourcing judgment.

That's the gap I'm here to close.

— Annabel

Mixed methodsBehavioural analysisSurvey designUser interviewsFunnel diagnosticsK-means clusteringCOM-B & predictive processingAI integration

Stop scaling the wrong thing.