UX Research Studio · Global · Remote-first
De-risk your product decisions with senior UX research.
Penalva Research helps international companies replace opinion with evidence — product discovery, user research, and ResearchOps for teams in the US, UK, Canada, Europe, LATAM, and Asia.
- 11+
- years in UX research & strategy
- 60+
- projects delivered
- 25+
- industries served
- Top 3%
- Toptal-vetted talent
Trusted on engagements for global enterprises in consumer goods, HVAC, pharma, banking, media, and retail — including Fortune 500 and billion-dollar brands.
Why research pays
Research is not a cost center. It's decision insurance.
Every claim below pairs a business outcome with the method rigor behind it — because executives deserve both.
Cut build waste
Most feature ideas fail with users. Validating desirability before development means engineering only builds what customers actually want.
60–80% validated desirability gating roadmaps on recent AI-platform engagements.
Grow conversion & revenue
Research finds the exact friction and words that move buying decisions — insight that A/B testing alone takes months to stumble on.
+15% subscription rate from one qualitative insight into a single call-to-action.
Reduce churn & support costs
Churn has root causes hiding in the service experience. Triangulating surveys, interviews, and business data exposes them precisely.
+56% annual-plan subscriptions after research-led churn analysis and service redesign.
Decide faster, with confidence
ResearchOps — templates, panels, repositories — turns research from a bottleneck into a fast, repeatable decision engine.
33 experiments with 3,360 users run in one year via standardized ResearchOps.
Selected work
Cases from our talent
Verified engagements published on Toptal — banking, enterprise AI, retail, and service design.
Consumer goods & pet health — global enterprise
Product Discovery & UX Research Strategy for AI Platforms
Led discovery and research strategy for two AI-powered internal platforms, taking them from proof of concept to MVP with user validation gating every roadmap decision.
60–80% validated desirability on shipped features
View case on Toptal ↗
Private banking
Field Research for ATMs & Bank Branches
Ethnographic field research across physical banking touchpoints — in-branch observation and ATM interaction analysis with video capture — feeding redesigns of both physical and digital service moments.
In-depth ethnographic analysis of real customer behavior on-site
View case on Toptal ↗
Fintech / banking
UX Research for a Mobile Banking App
User interviews, usability testing, and participatory design sessions shaping the information architecture and core flows of a mobile banking experience.
Usability findings translated directly into shipped IA changes
View case on Toptal ↗
SaaS — customer service operations
CX Improvement & Service Design at Scale
End-to-end service design program: mapped 200 user stories, redesigned four core support departments, and triangulated survey data with business analysis to attack churn at its root causes.
56% increase in annual plan subscriptions from churn insights
View case on Toptal ↗
Retail & food — enterprise
UX Strategy for a Billion-Dollar Retail Food Company
UX strategy and experience improvements for a billion-dollar retail food business — expert audits, research-driven prioritization, and UI/UX optimization of high-traffic commercial flows.
Research-backed UX strategy adopted at enterprise scale
View case on Toptal ↗
Research for every kind of product
- Mobile Apps
- Dashboards & SaaS
- E-commerce
- IoT & Connected Products
- AI Products
- New Business Ventures
- UX Optimization
Services
Find the right method for your goal
Seventeen research services, filterable by what you need to achieve, where your product is in its lifecycle, and the method you're looking for.
Specialty
ResearchOps: research that scales with you
Participant panels, governance, repositories, and enablement — the operating system that turns research from a bottleneck into a company capability.
“Standardized templates for 11 study scenarios. 33 experiments. 3,360 users engaged. One year.”
"Fixed-price audit. 50–100 findings. User testing videos. Prioritized roadmap."
Productized Research
Know your UX debt. Fix it faster.
A UX Audit is a scoped, fixed-price diagnostic: expert review + user testing + actionable roadmap. For e-commerce, SaaS, IoT, and AI products.
Tools & Resources
Know your research budget instantly
Interactive calculator for user interview studies. Choose your market, tool, and study type — see real 2024 pricing for UserZoom, Maze, TestaIsso, Respondent, and more. US, Brazil, LATAM, Europe.
Learn
Build your research expertise
Free UXR guides, paid video courses, templates, and exclusive client resources. Everything you need to level up your research practice.
- 📚Free UXR guides on methods & analysis
- 🎓Paid video courses with real examples
- 📋Ready-to-use templates & worksheets
- 🔒Exclusive client-only research reports
Bring evidence to your next product decision.
A 30-minute intro call is enough to scope whether research can de-risk what you're building next.