Design research · Service design · Strategy

Andrea Fioretti

I run qualitative research, work out what’s worth solving, and turn the evidence into strategy and services that teams act on.

Consulting with Cast, a London design strategy studio Based in Italy

Selected work

With Cast

2025 to present Client names withheld

Client
Wellness and longevity venture
Sample
n = 10
Interviews
25 h
Role
Interviewer, synthesis lead

Why people trust a new ritual

How people discover, adopt and keep up a demanding wellness practice, researched to shape a new venture’s service and launch.

Brief
An early-stage venture needed to understand its future customers before defining its service and how to take it to market.
What I did
Ten in-depth interviews with people ranging from fitness enthusiasts to a studio founder. I interviewed alongside a colleague and led the synthesis: an AI-assisted transcription pipeline, theme boards built from verbatim quotes, and cross-participant analysis that kept what people said separate from our interpretation.
Outcome
Showed how ritual, tradition and provenance work as trust signals, and built a four-part segmentation. The findings shaped the go-to-market approach and the end-to-end service definition.

In-depth interviews · Thematic synthesis · Segmentation · Service definition

Client
European industrial equipment manufacturer
Scope
Adjacency strategy
Audience
Executive team
Role
Research and strategy

Where an industrial manufacturer grows next

An adjacency strategy for an established manufacturer looking beyond its core markets.

Brief
Find the adjacent markets and capabilities worth R&D investment.
What I did
Mapped opportunities across functional, technological and value-chain adjacencies, and researched new sectors from data centres and vertical farming to food manufacturing and mining. I framed each opportunity around the operational problem it would solve for customers in that sector.
Outcome
A conceptual roadmap that anchored the executive vision for R&D investment and the future direction of the business.

Adjacency mapping · Sector research · Strategic roadmapping

Client
Japanese motorcycle company
Fieldwork
Italy
Status
In progress

Customer research for a motorcycle brand

A qualitative study now under way: screener and sample design, recruitment through a specialist fieldwork agency in Italy, and in-depth interviews with a workshop built into the sessions.

Client
Global technology company
Horizon
2040
Role
Strategy

An innovation direction to 2040

Grounded the company’s product vision in emerging market signals, sharpening its positioning and setting priorities for R&D investment.

In-house

2024

Company
Garmst, menswear SaaS startup
Role
Service designer
Sample
n = 10+
Result
+32% email engagement

A startup’s first customer research, through to results

Setting up customer research from scratch and turning it into changes customers could see.

Brief
Garmst had never run customer research. The founder wanted to understand what customers valued before deciding where to take the business.
What I did
Planned recruitment, wrote the interview guides and ran more than ten in-depth interviews with customers and prospects, working alongside the founder so he could learn the practice. I clustered the findings into a decision roadmap, then redefined positioning, the customer journey and the service model with design and product.
Outcome
CRM flows rebuilt by user stage and membership type lifted email engagement by 32%. Redesigned team workflows improved efficiency by 29%.

Recruitment · In-depth interviews · Decision roadmap · Customer journey · CRM

Side projects

Apps, tools and websites I design and build myself, mostly with AI coding tools. Building them keeps me close to how products get made.

  • Murmurflow

    Mac app

    A voice dictation app for Mac, built as my own take on Wispr Flow.

  • Notch

    Mac app

    One line on what it does and who it is for

  • UK visa checker

    Web tool

    One line on what it checks and who it helps

  • Website for Nataly

    Website

    One line on her business and what the site does

  • Essays on design and AI

    Website · Live

    A home for a Cast colleague’s essays. I rebuilt the first version from the ground up in layers, so it loads quickly and holds together on phone, tablet and desktop. Cast now sends it to design leaders to start conversations.

  • Salone del Mobile guide

    Microsite

    A guide to Milan Design Week 2026 for Cast, with trend predictions on flip cards and a slideshow of places to visit, each with a map.

  • Interview pipeline

    Research tool

    My workflow for interview data: WhisperX transcription with speaker labels, logged corrections, clean transcripts, and theme boards of timestamped verbatim quotes.

Earlier work

From my master’s year in London.

Partner
Arup × Royal College of Art
Year
2023 to 2024
Recognition
Core77 Student Notable

Library of Living Minds

A skill-sharing service that turns underused library space into somewhere older adults can find purpose after retirement. I ran five in-depth interviews in public libraries, then a participatory design process with librarians, tutors and participants to shape and test how the service would run.

Partner
UK Ministry of Defence × RCA
Year
2024
Sample
n = 20+ stakeholders

Climate measures on defence farmland

Interviews across government departments and tenant farmers about biochar and enhanced weathering, two ways of removing carbon from the air using farmland. This was a team project. I mapped where positions diverged, and co-developed a financial model and site-assessment toolkit that balanced climate targets with farmers’ livelihoods.

Organisation
New Grounds
Year
2024
Fieldwork
4 months, n = 6 interviews

Homelessness and financial exclusion

Weekly volunteering and ethnographic fieldwork across several organisations, plus six in-depth interviews with people experiencing homelessness, charity leaders and policymakers. I mapped the barriers to reintegration, including how low trust in institutions shapes everyday decisions.

How I work

  • Evidence you can trace

    Every insight sits next to the verbatim quote it came from, and my interpretation stays separate from what people said.

  • AI, with a researcher in charge

    I use AI to transcribe, clean and search interviews, with a local model when the material is confidential. Judging what it means stays with me.

  • Research that ends in a decision

    Each study ends in something a team can use: a segmentation, a service model or a roadmap.

About

I trained as an industrial designer at Politecnico di Milano, then studied Service Design at the Royal College of Art and spent three years working in London. I’m now based in Italy and consult with Cast.

Languages
Italian (native), English, Swedish, Portuguese
Education
MA Service Design, Royal College of Art, 2024
Innovation for Impact elective, London Business School, 2024
BA Industrial and Product Design, Politecnico di Milano, 2022
Recognition
Student Notable, Design for Social Impact, Core77 Design Awards 2024

Contact

For roles or projects, email me.

Email
LinkedIn
linkedin.com/in/andreafiorettidesign