Thierry Raguin

Thierry Raguin

Design Strategist / Lead UX in Lyon, France

About

Hi 👋🏼

I'm Thierry, a seasoned Freelance Design Strategist / ResearchOps / DesignOps professional, as well as Lead Researcher & Designer, specialising in Product, User Experience (UX) and Employee Experience (EX), with over two decades of experience across a spectrum of organisations, from small startups to large enterprises. I'm based in Lyon, France.

My core mission is to influence strategic direction and research / design / product roadmap. My approach extends beyond strategic guidance, as I harness my deep research & design expertise to ensure the successful delivery of top-tier products and services. My robust technical background allows me to collaborate seamlessly with development teams, enabling us to engineer the most pragmatic solutions and providing efficient yet innovative designs that are a breeze to implement.

My passion thrives in international and diverse settings, where I excel in nurturing emerging talents, coaching, and mentoring aspiring researchers / designers.

💫 Let's create impactful, world-class designs together. Get in touch, and let's embark on a journey of innovation and excellence.

🗓️ I’m available for both short-term or long-term work.

📍 I prefer working remotely or in a hybrid environment around Lyon, France.

Contact

LinkedIn
Website
Dribbble

Projects

2023
MixWise Product Strategy at Holcim Innovation Center
  • Problem: Understand the needs of the business and investigate opportunities for developing an innovative product for the concrete industry based on an existing internal application prototype.
  • Role(s): Product Strategist, Design Researcher
  • Outcomes: Gave Holcim clarity on product and business goals and helped stakeholders understand what problems the product aims to solve and how it plans to solve them. Defined an initial product roadmap. Positioned the product effectively in the market and identified potential customers ready to participate in designing, developing, and testing the product.
  • Keywords: Benchmark · Product Strategy · Research · Roadmap · UX Audit
  • Timeframe: 3 months

Case study available on demand

2022
Service Management Optimization at Solvay
  • Problem: Set up the RUN organisation of a newly deployed app implementing a radical paradigm shift in service management. Initial rollout resulted in huge service backlog with large technical debt, very low user satisfaction, and exhausted teams with minimal motivation and lack of trust in integration partner. Crucial need to increase user satisfaction and trust in the new system.
  • Role(s): Product Designer, Product Coach
  • Outcomes: Structured Agile team structure with efficient product management and parallel discovery and delivery tracks to fit the context of the product. Set up continuous improvement plan to drive evolutions based on user and usage insights and needs.
  • Keywords: Agile · Discovery · Prioritization · Prototyping · Strategy · Surveys · User Interviews · Wireframing
  • Timeframe: 10 months

Case study available on demand

2021
Digital Employee Journey Roadmap at Solvay
  • Problem: Establish the Digital Employee Journey roadmap for the next 4 years and highlight any specific collaboration needs. Help in guiding the budget and priorities for the year.
  • Role(s): Design Strategist, Lead Researcher (team of 4 Researchers)
  • Outcomes: Created detailed map of experience, pain points, needs, positive points and current / planned initiatives for all employees (4 main coarse-grained personas defined) at each moment that matters of the digital and non-digital experience at Solvay. Defined a north star for the digital employee experience at Solvay. Designed a 5-year roadmap for the digital employee experience with details for the upcoming year.
  • Keywords: Atomic Research · Experience Mapping · Interviews · Jobs-To-Be-Done · Prioritization · Research · Strategy
  • Timeframe: 8 weeks

Case study available on demand

2020
Design Strategy & Studio Management at Solvay
  • Problem: Demonstrate the value of design in a young team of Agile and Design practitioners within a large chemical group. Help the team grow and devise a design strategy for the team and the group.
  • Role(s): Design Strategist, Design Manager, ResearchOps / DesignOps (team of up to 5 Researchers & Designers)
  • Outcomes: Defined clear and efficient Design Strategy and Service Offer for the team. Increased design maturity of the team and the group. Setup continuous improvement of Research and Design practices. Coached 6+ young researchers / designers. Implemented tools and methods to industrialise research and design work.
  • Keywords: DesignOps · Facilitation · Management · Mentoring · ResearchOps · Strategy · Training
  • Timeframe: 2.5 years

Case study available on demand

2020
French Parliament App Redesign at Directorate of Legal and Administrative Information (French Prime Minister Office)
  • Problem: Redesign of two 10-year old apps crucial to the functioning of French democracy to provide a modern, accessible and unified UI overhaul of the apps and more intuitive, ergonomic, simple and optimised interfaces.
  • Role(s): Lead Researcher & Designer (team of 4 Researchers & Designers)
  • Outcomes: Managed efficient research/discovery phase to identify and prioritise all pain points of current apps. Shadowing sessions helped in identifying the most important improvements. Starting work on accessible Design System early during research phase allowed to focus co-design workshops on key items and to design and validate all backlog on time (despite Covid lockdown after 1st co-design sprint).
  • Keywords: Accessibility · Atomic Design · Card Sorting · Design System · Prioritization · Prototyping · Research · Shadowing · UX Audit
  • Timeframe: 5 months

Case study available on demand

2015
  • Problem: The Pullman Paris Tour Eiffel Hotel wanted to equip itself with a tablet application to facilitate breakfast management and avoid billing disputes.
  • Role(s): Product Designer, Creative Technologist
  • Outcomes: Simple and efficient app design bringing an immediate ROI to the hotel 👉 Watch testimony on ROI: dropbox.com/s/ihl0ynkneyru… 🎬
  • Keywords: Agile · Mobile · Prototyping · Sketching · Wireframing
  • Timeframe: 3 months
2015
Mobile Intranet MVP at SNCF
  • Problem: Less than 5 months to imagine, design, develop, and deploy a Mobile Intranet based on an existing Web Intranet rejected by all employees.
  • Role(s): Scrum Master, Product Designer, Creative Technologist
  • Outcomes: On-time delivery of Mobile Intranet with immediate success. Simple app concept with innovative UX answering user needs. Adapted methodologies to project’s constraints (Dual-Track with fast lane bridge between discovery and delivery).
  • Keywords: Agile · Mobile · Prioritization · Prototyping · Research · Sketching · Wireframing
  • Timeframe: 5 months

Case study available on demand

Work Experience

2019 — Now
Lyon, France

Services provided:

  • Design Strategy / Design Management / ResearchOps / DesignOps
  • Service Design (including User Research)
  • UX Design (including User Research)

Skills: ResearchOps · UX Design · Design Strategy · Design Management · Service Design · DesignOps

2023 — 2023
Lyon, France (Remote)

Holcim Innovation Center was investigating the opportunity to further develop an internal digital application into a full-fledged product for their customers. I offered my services to support them in taking on a product-oriented approach and define a vision and roadmap for such a product. At the end of the mission, Holcim Innovation Center had all the necessary insights to decide on pursuing or not this product.

Main missions:

  • Define the product vision (using Roman Pichler's extended Product Vision Board canvas)
  • Benchmark the competition
  • Audit the existing internal app (using Nielsen's Usability Heuristics for UI Design)
  • Define proto-personas for the main target user groups identified
  • Conduct customer interviews to validate the personas and gather insights to finalise the vision and roadmap
  • Define the roadmap for the product

Skills: Product Vision · Product Roadmap · UX Audit · User Research

2022 — 2022
Lyon, France (Remote)

Main missions:

  • Define the vision and the strategy of the Multi-Experience (MX) platform to respond to the vision and needs of the Group in terms of design research work and experience design in close collaboration with peers from other teams to elevate the efficiency of the operating model
  • Provide leadership to a team of co-located and distributed Product Designers leading research and design work throughout the product development lifecycle
  • Strengthen a dedicated research and design team that is passionate about our users (Employees, Customers, Distributors, etc.) and how they work
  • Lead specific research and design activities to ensure best-in-class methodologies

Key Outputs:

  • Research & Design Processes
  • Improve existing processes to maximize engagement and reduce duplicated efforts
  • Define clear metrics of success based on business goals and ensure team alignment
  • Establish a clear scheme of research and design delivery in line with overall operating model
  • Continuously monitor and disseminate relevant industry and market trends and methods to the team and Solvay in general
  • Team Coordination
  • Work hand-in-hand with the MX Platform’s Coordinators to forecast work and manage resourcing (including the use of externals when necessary)
  • Recruit, mentor and nurture a highly engaged and passionate team of Design Researchers and Product Designers
  • Set up clear and efficient recruiting standards based on forecasted needs
  • Research & Design Tools
  • Standardize the tooling and methods used to ensure consistency, efficiency and adoption
  • Research & Design Culture
  • Create a Research & Design culture and promote it within Solvay
  • Evangelize research and design at Solvay
  • Establish strong cross-functional relations with other teams to foster collaboration and efficiency, and contribute to breaking down silos and improving processes within an Agile organisation

Skills: ResearchOps · User Research · UX Design · Design Strategy · Agile · Service Design · DesignOps

2020 — 2022
Lyon, France (Remote)

#1 Lead UX Researcher / Designer: Identify needs and correlations within a team. Choose appropriate methodology and ensure delivery from business requirements to interfaces. Promote continuous improvement

  • Research Planning and Recruitment
  • Data Collection
  • Data Analysis
  • Presentation of Insights
  • Strategy

#2 Upskill the Design Studio team on Service and UX Design methodologies: UX Brief, UX Audits, Inclusive Design & Accessibility, UX for Dataviz, Prioritization methods, etc.

#3 Evangelisation of Service and UX Design within the company

Skills: ResearchOps · User Research · UX Design · Design Strategy · Service Design · DesignOps

2017 — 2018
Lyon, France

Manager of the eXperience Design practice: hi!

  • Building and promotion of our offer and strategy
  • Management of a team of 10 designers
  • Partnership management
  • Management of pre-sales and consulting services
  • Consulting on Service Design, UX Design, Innovative Services
  • Human resources

AI / Chatbots Lab Manager:

  • Building and promotion of our offer
  • Partnership management
  • Management and consulting on chatbot and conversational services
  • Pre-sales, consulting, demonstration and delivery of innovative artificial intelligence and chatbot solutions

Skills: Mobile Application Design · Conversational Design · Innovation Consulting · UX Design · Design Strategy · Service Design · DesignOps

2012 — 2018
Lyon, France

Building offerings and strategy of our UX, mobile (iOS, Android, Windows) and Apple innovation services:

  • Pre-sales, promotion and demonstration
  • Management, consulting and delivery of innovative solutions to customers of Econocom, Digital Application Services
  • Management of technical partnership with Apple
  • Strong links with other domains of the Digit-all Labs structure: Internet of Things (IoT), Security, Smart Data, Cloud Solutions, Unified Collaboration, Google Innovations, Microsoft Innovations

Skills: Mobile Application Design · Mobile Consulting · Innovation Consulting · UX Design · Design Strategy · DesignOps

2010 — 2012
Consultant / Project Manager at Alter Systems
Saint-André-de-Corcy, France

Design of a real-time supervision and operation solution for the Greater Lyon water purification network

Consultant on tailored .NET and mobile solutions (iOS, Android, Windows Mobile/Phone): functional and technical consultant in support of existing projects and in pre-sales; design of B2C iOS and Android applications; pre-sales in collaboration with sales manager

.NET Project Manager: management of specific .NET development projects, off-shore development team management, respect of deadlines and quality.

Responsible for monitoring national and international public tenders (BOAMP, JOUE, APA, Press, United Nations): identification of tenders, drafting of technical and commercial proposals, referencing of the company with the United Nations.

Skills: Mobile Development · IT Consulting · UX Design · Project Management

2001 — 2010
Lausanne, Switerland

Product manager, lead architect, designer and developer of NetUnion's Salut guided self-help programs for Bulimia (Salut BN) and Binge Eating Disorder (Salut BED).

Project manager on EU and national R&D projects.

European R&D projects:

  • PlayMancer: A European Serious Gaming 3D Environment (FP7-215839)
  • INTACT: Individually Tailored Stepped Care for Women with Eating Disorders (MRTN-CT-2006-035988)
  • DiOGenes: Diet, Obesity, and Genes (FP6-513946)
  • ENABLED: Enhanced Network Accessibility for the Blind and Visually Impaired (FP6-004778)
  • Active-Health: Active Environment for Health Promotion and Disease Prevention (IST-2001-37857)
  • Agentcities.NET: TrustFoundry.Lausanne (IST-2000-28385)
  • CASENET: Computer-Aided solutions to SEcure electroNic commercE Transactions (IST-2001-32446)
  • Salut: Intelligent Environment for Diagnosis, Treatment, and Prevention of Eating Disorders (IST-2000-25026)
  • OCTANE: Open Contracting TransActions in the New Economy (IST-1999-20553)

Other projects:

  • RISIKO: guided self-help program for pathological gambling
  • Pilot secured proposal submission for the Swiss National Science Foundation
  • Salut Chat: chat application for ADHD, autistic and Tourette syndrome patients in Sweden
  • Internal payment system for Salut applications
  • Firefox and Internet Explorer extensions for the Health On the Net Foundation

Skills: Web Development · Product Management · Innovation Consulting · User Research · UX Design

Volunteering

2023 — Now
Lyon, France (Remote)

Member of the team behind Wikihero.

I share my knowledge, experience and latest discoveries on the following topics:

  • Design Strategy
  • Design Management
  • ResearchOps / DesignOps
  • User / Design Research
  • Experience Design / UX

We're a group of ten or so seniors who have come together to raise the level of UX practice through peer-to-peer sharing, and to create the highest-quality open-access library in our field.

Discover our manifesto and join us 👉 bit.ly/3Rbwt7M

Certifications

2016
Certified DocuSign Administrator from DocuSign University
2013
eSCM-SP (eSourcing Capability Model for Service Providers) v2.0.2 from ITSqc, LLC