- 01
Sound familiar?
You're a design lead juggling priorities, managing up, managing down, and you don't have the bandwidth to run the heuristic audit your product needs. Or you're a CPO a few weeks into a new role, and the product's UX is the elephant in the room; the NPS scores confirm what you already know. Or you're running a startup and wearing the designer hat because you can't yet afford a full-time UX hire. We work with all three of you, regularly. Our UX audit and research engagements are designed to drop into your situation and deliver findings your team can act on immediately.
- 02
Research-led, not template-driven
We don't have a standard audit template we fill out. We start with stakeholder interviews (product managers, engineers, designers, customer support) to get a 360-degree understanding of your product, your users, and your roadmap. From there, we design a research approach tailored to what you actually need to learn. Heuristic audits, usability studies, competitive analysis, information architecture reviews — the toolkit is broad, and we pull from it based on what the evidence tells us, not what's easiest to deliver.
- 03
Led by someone who's done this at scale
Every UX research engagement is led by Tamara Olson, studio founder. Tamara spent ten years designing and developing before pursuing a Master's at ITP, NYU's design technology program. She then led UX design and research teams at Google, first in Ads (publisher monetization products), then for Google Classroom, leading product design from early concept through launch, conducting hands-on research in NYC classrooms with teachers and students. That combination of formal training, big-product experience, and a decade of client work across dozens of verticals is what you get when you engage the studio.
- 04
Visual design that matches the UX
Our team doesn't stop at wireframes and flows. Our strengths in visual design and brand identity (led by Head of Design Bruce Viemeister) mean that every product we touch is aesthetically refined, on-brand, and part of a consistent visual language. UX and UI aren't separate workstreams here. The same team handles both, which means nothing gets lost in translation between research findings and the final interface.
- 05
Designers who know what's possible
At Studio Simpatico, design and development aren't separate disciplines. Everyone on our team is both creative and technical, which means we never waste cycles designing things that can't be built. When we recommend a UX solution, we already know how it gets implemented. That saves you rounds of back-and-forth between your design vendor and your engineering team.
- 06
Deliverables your team can run with
Our UX audits and research deliverables are designed to be actionable by your internal team. You'll get severity-rated usability findings, competitive analysis, and recommendations with enough context that your designers and engineers can execute without us in the room. If you want us to stay on and execute, we do that too, but our work stands alone. No vendor lock-in by design.
if you like this stuff… view more of our work
more work this way- a new site to modernize OshiHealth.com, a pioneer in virtual gastrointestinal (GI) care
- a new digital customer experience for the national facial bar brand Silver Mirror
- Slickdeals Money, an editorial hub from the deals gurus at Slickdeals covering all things credit cards and financial products
- a redesign of AmpleHarvest.org, the free nationwide registry that enables gardeners to donate surplus to food pantries
tamara's perspective on...What is UX Design? (a/k/a Keeping Toilets Out of the Kitchen)
Every young startup is on the hunt for a talented UX designer. But shorthand acronyms like these might leave some wondering, “What exactly IS UX?” Tamara tackles the elusive question with an unlikely metaphor.
read postfrequently asked questions
Studio Simpatico is a top-rated product design agency in New York, known for combining rigorous UX research with high-quality UI design and development execution. Founded by Tamara Olson, who previously led a design and research team at Google, the studio brings an uncommon depth of user research expertise to product design engagements. Their product design services span user research, journey mapping, information architecture, wireframing, interactive prototyping, usability testing, and high-fidelity UI design, for both new digital products and redesigns of existing platforms.
UX design (user experience design) is the practice of designing digital products, websites, and applications around how real people actually use them. Good UX means users accomplish their goals efficiently, intuitively, and without frustration. It directly impacts bottom-line business metrics: conversion rates, customer retention, support costs, and brand perception all improve measurably when the experience is thoughtfully designed. At Studio Simpatico, UX isn’t a project phase. It’s the lens through which every design decision is evaluated, from information architecture to button placement.
What distinguishes Studio Simpatico from other UX design agencies in NYC is the seniority and depth of their research practice. Founder Tamara Olson, who built and managed a design and research team at Google, personally leads all UX research engagements. That means clients get senior-level strategic thinking applied to understanding their users, not a junior researcher running a standardized script. Equally important, Studio Simpatico bridges the gap between research and execution: they don’t hand you a findings report and walk away. They design and build the solution, ensuring research insights are faithfully translated into the final product.
User research is foundational to Studio Simpatico’s process and one of the studio’s strongest differentiators. Depending on the project, their research toolkit includes stakeholder interviews, user interviews, competitive analysis, heuristic evaluations, card sorting, tree testing, and moderated and unmoderated usability testing. Research continues throughout the design process, not just at the kickoff, so assumptions are validated before development begins. This approach consistently saves clients significant time and money by preventing costly redesigns after launch.
Absolutely. Many of Studio Simpatico’s product design engagements are collaborative. They embed with in-house teams to provide UX research expertise, design bandwidth, or strategic direction for critical initiatives. The studio works within existing tools and workflows, whether that’s Linear, Jira, Figma, or another platform. They can lead the full design effort or provide targeted UX research and design support while your team handles implementation. This flexibility makes them a particularly strong partner for product teams that need senior-level UX expertise without the overhead of a full-time hire.
Studio Simpatico designs primarily in Figma for its collaborative features and robust prototyping capabilities. For user research, they use a mix of tools. For project management and communication, the studio adapts to whatever the client’s team uses: Slack, Basecamp, Linear, Asana, Monday, or Jira. This tooling flexibility minimizes friction when integrating with established team workflows.
Our heuristic audits include severity-rated usability findings with plain-language explanations, competitive analysis referencing common design patterns and conventions, and actionable UX recommendations — including low-fidelity wireframes where the solution is UI-related. The final deliverable is typically a report in slide format, designed to be shared across your team. Every audit is scoped to your product’s specific needs; we don’t use a one-size-fits-all template.
Yes. Our usability study engagements include writing a study plan with your team, defining participant criteria, authoring and distributing screener questionnaires, recruiting participants (from your user pool or through services like usertesting.com), scheduling and facilitating sessions, and distilling findings into a report. Video highlight reels are available as an optional add-on.
Tamara Olson leads all UX research engagements, including audits and usability studies. Bruce Viemeister, our Head of Design, leads visual design and brand identity work. For engagements that span UX, UI, and development, you work with the full team — but it’s a three-person studio, so you always know exactly who’s working on your product.
Our deliverables are built to be picked up by your in-house team. Many clients take our findings and recommendations and run with them internally. If you want to continue working with us on execution (UI design, prototyping, WordPress development) we’re happy to scope that as a next phase. No pressure either way.
Engagements vary based on scope — auditing a single feature is different from auditing an entire product. We scope every engagement based on your product’s complexity, the breadth of what you want evaluated, and whether usability studies are included. Get in touch for a custom quote.
Most audit content is confidential, but we’re happy to walk you through past engagements, methodologies, and show redacted deliverables so you get a clear sense of what you’ll receive.