You don't need a full-time research lead. You need the right one, part of the time.
Matt Wallens is an Atlanta-based UX research consultant and fractional research lead with 25 years of experience. He founded 80 Watts to help organizations understand their customers before they build the wrong thing. His methods range from in-depth contextual inquiry to AI-enabled synthesis.
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Most teams are making important decisions without enough information.
They're moving fast, guessing at what their customers need, and finding out they were wrong after they've already committed. That's where I come in.
Who I work with
Product teams, agencies, and early-stage founders. If you need senior research without adding headcount, that's what I do here.
Ways I can help
- Discovery Research
- Research Lead
- Sprint Advisory
- Market Validation
What clients say
"I've worked with plenty of researchers over the years. I've learned it's something that's easy for people to do... poorly. It's incredibly hard to do it well, and no one exhibits mastery of the domain as much as Matt does. He's truly at the top of his craft and it shows up in the outcomes."— Jon Ellsworth, Sr. Dir. Technology, NAPA
"Matt is great to work with. He is a good listener, quick study and valued partner. He was able to quickly get up to speed on the customer problem and work with us to develop the right approach and questions. He does a great job making customers feel comfortable during user testing. And I was most grateful that when under a tight deadline, he was able to synthesize the customer feedback in a short period of time so we could immediately act on the results."— Michelle Quiles, Product Manager, Mailchimp
"Matt took the time to really review and understand the designs and ask lots of questions in advance of the interviews to be sure he understood everything correctly. He is very thorough, detail-oriented, flexible, and easy to work with. I would be happy to work with Matt again any time."— Cheryl Buersmeyer, Project Manager, User Insight
"During testing, Matt was amazing at working with the users. His questions elicited thought out responses, his patience in working with the users and the tools was saint-like. All in all, I couldn't ask for a better research partner."— Phillip Zannini, UX Director, Center for Creative Leadership
A few of the teams I've worked with
Free Resource
Market Validation for Startups
The most expensive thing you can build is the wrong product. This playbook walks you through six steps for confirming, with real evidence, that a market exists and that people would pay to have the problem solved.
Download the free playbook