Why UXR
Alumni Matt Mueller explains the value he received from the UXR program and how it contributed to his career success.
Program: UX Experience Research ’20
Manager, Sodexo Live! and found of Mindful Innovation Services, LLC
Current City: Sarasota, Florida
Matt currently serves as Insight Manager for Sodexo Live! and is the founder of Mindul Innovation Services LLC. Matt Mueller is a Forbes-recognized global innovation strategist, Top Retail Expert of 2024 and 2025, best-selling author of The Mindful Innovator, and keynote speaker who helps retail and CPG brands navigate shifting consumer behaviors and market dynamics with precision. His expertise lies in uncovering deep insights, decoding competitive landscapes, and designing future-proof customer experiences that drive massive impact with minimal effort.
Capstone Project
(UX-Pro): My project focused on a small New York bakery where sales have been trending down and profits have been a challenge. My stakeholders are unsure where their shoppers have gone, or why? My goal was to determine why sales were falling and develop strategies to revive them. I created a screener to identify useful participants and recruited shoppers for in-store contextual interviews. I documented the customer journey of shoppers using video. I then developed a shopper survey to provide broader quantitative data. Based on these methods, I developed the insights contrasting the “best bakery experience ever” that shoppers had experienced with their impressions and experience at the store. Shoppers emphasized the sensory qualities of their ideal experience and the unplanned nature of their bakery purchases. They reported being drawn to bakeries by the fresh products and pleasant smells. In contrast, they found the store clean but also sterile, and they had the impression that many items were not made fresh in the store. The bakery did not stimulate their senses and did not motivate impulse purchases. The actual baking was hidden in the back out of customer view. To deliver these insights to my stakeholders I created customer journey maps and shared interview videos. I suggested pushing more baking activity into view of the customers; baking fresh during high volume periods to fill the air with the pleasant smell of fresh baked goods, using labels that emphasized the hand-crafted products, and providing samples.
Video Transcript
[Intro Music]
>> MATT MUELLER: This course provides a great mix of reading, doing, and collaborating. And it dives deep into different methodologies of qualitative research and also how to use them. It has absolutely helped me within my career, but it’s also helped in other aspects of my life. Since this course I feel now I’m a better communicator. I am more of a strategic thinker and I’m absolutely a more confident leader.
[Music]