Design for a customer you understand

Video: The customer you thought you knew. 120 seconds. Filmed by Ryan Fielding

Research to inspire and inform design

I’m Nick Bowmast, an internationally respected design researcher based in Aotearoa New Zealand.

I’m trusted by some of the worlds most innovative companies, to understand their existing and future customers, through immersive, in-market, in-context qualitative research.

I work with product, design, brand, marketing and innovation teams to understand the motivations, emotions, and belief systems that shape behaviour – how people choose, use and experience a product or service.

Insight from my studies fuels confident, strategic decision making – from defining product-market fit to refining the feel of a product in a customer’s hand.

I’ve worked with physical and digital products, services and environments – from vehicles to vitamins, vacations to virtual reality … and that’s just the V’s.

 

Selected clients:

 

From insights to outcomes

A deep focus on fieldwork spanning five continents and dozens of industries have refined a creative and considered approach to discovery with engaging, high quality delivery:

  • Market validation: knowing whose problem you’re solving and why it matters.

  • Closing the empathy gap: making needs not just understood, but impossible to ignore.
  • Pushing past paralysis: to internal team alignment and momentum.
  • Better customer experiences: built on evidence, not opinions.
  • Valuable business outcomes: accelerated decisions, time to market and customer uptake.
  • Upskilled teams: research immersion lifts in-house capability and customer culture.

 

From a sea of data, to data you can see

I specialize in bringing real-world insights to life through compelling visual narratives, large-format storytelling and video that resonate within organizations, sparking alignment and action.

My visuals are known to distill complexity into clarity, conveying rich worlds in seconds with content remaining relevant for years.

These powerful visuals become platforms for conversation and collaboration. They create social movements ensuring those closest to the problem feel engaged in shaping the solution.

I also produce bespoke visuals for in-house research teams.

Request examples of visuals.

 

Contact Nick to talk about how deep customer understanding, bringing a new lens on their world can transform yours.