Hi, I am Ondrej Henek.
I love bringing business value
by combining user research insights
and data driven experimentation.

The Business Value

Does it make sense to build the thing?

  • Product Manager Sonet 2020+

    Currently I am managing a few B2C products in Sonet as the first and only PM. Sonet is an oldschool B2B company recently refocusing on B2C. Therefore, my job includes creating new processes, glueing dev, marketing and support silos together, introducing the value of jobs to be done customer research and stirring up talks about business models and markets. It might sound like loads of work that would make your head spin. And yes, it does. :)

  • Product Manager & CTO Nugis Finem 2012-2018

    In Nugis Finem I was part-time Product Manager of Entoo (2012+), PF UPOL Nástěnka (2015+) and Nostis (2016+). I was leading a programmer and a graphic designer, prioritizing their work. I emphasized collaboration with stakeholders and users concerning further development and use of our limited resources.

    As the co-founder and CTO I was taking care of the technical side of all of our online projects making sure systems were running and people were taking care of them.

    "Ondrej was the IT brain of Nugis Finem responsible for keeping our online enterprises afloat. His technical skills, insights from user research and down-to-earth data-driven mindset was part of the reason why our products succeeded." John A. A. Gealfow, President of Nugis Finem

The User Research

Are we building the right thing?

  • Product Designer University of Southern Denmark 2015-2017

    During this hands-on master's degree we were researching, designing and prototyping services for Kolding Municipality, Låsbyhøj Rehabilitation Center and various local businesses. The emphasis was on collaborative innovation – often connecting business stakeholders and users in interactive workshops.

  • User Researcher House of Řezáč 2018-2019

    I have planned and conducted several user research activities often including user interviews, surveys and behavioral web analysis. One of the challenges was to understand the lingo and specifics of various user groups including artists, energy managers, agricultural workers, marketing specialists...

The experimentation

Are we building the thing right?

  • Self-Employed Web Designer & Full-Stack Developer 2012-2017

    I used to develop complex web applications using technologies like: SQL, CakePHP, vanilla JavaScript, Bootstrap, Git, Linux servers... With this experience I can quickly understand any problem my dev team is tackling.

  • Web Analyst House of Řezáč 2017-2019

    In House of Řezáč, my responsibility was to setup various analytical tools in order to extract relevant data and gather actionable knowledge. This included understanding of the business, measurement planning, JavaScript hacking, A/B testing and prioritizing next steps based on the data.

    "Ondrej is a brilliant analyst and programmer with skills in design and user research that always seeks new challenges and improves stuff. It was a pleasure to work with him for 3 years on various design projects." Jan Řezáč, CEO of House of Řezáč

Case studies

  • Business opportunity prioritization

    In House of Řezáč I was one of the two designers helping a delivery company to improve their service. The first step was to understand the business of our client. Using tools like Lean Canvas, Wardley Maps and stakeholder interviews we identified core revenue streams, user segments and current challenges. Adding insights from user research, we have created an Opportunity Solution Tree and a basic roadmap of our focus.

    We pinpointed the major delivery business bottleneck – a lack of manpower. Since the advent of Uber, Wolt, DameJidlo and other delivery service disruptors, there has been a shortage of couriers. This had a great impact on the quality of the delivery service. In the short run, we worked on a marketing campaign to quickly recruit more couriers. In the long run, we proposed experiments for improving the effectiveness of their current fleet based on data analysis and exploitation of crowdsourced delivery.

    The second issue hindering the service quality was flawed web order form and therefore a high load on customer support. We chose to do a complete website redesign because of a huge technical debt. Our KPI was increased customer satisfaction measured in NPS and our solution was a streamlined order process without rarely used functionality.

    One of my takeaways from this project is experience with the Opportunity Solution Tree by Teresa Torres. This tool helped us to organize important insights from user research, focus on just one business opportunity at a time and broaden our solutions.

  • Engaging stakeholders in research data

    Together with my colleague, we planned a user research for an energy consulting company. The goal of the project was a complete redesign of their website and marketing strategy. We interviewed a dozen of customers and a few employees. Then we started searching for the right way to present our data.

    In our previous projects, we presented the research in a form of classic slides and posters. This static handover of data often resulted in low enthusiasm and trust from our clients. But we knew there was much more potential in the data. Therefore, this time we decided to engage all the stakeholders in a sensemaking workshop – a collaborative technique used to validate, organise and interpret research data.

    During the workshop, we discovered that customers saw a high value in this energy consulting service and therefore had no problem with high price tag. This insight was in conflict with our client’s former assumption that people perceive their service as unnecessary additional cost. To our surprise, attending CEO proposed a revision of their pricing policy and sales approach and everyone else were on board.

    In this new workshop format, we saw that all stakeholders took the data seriously and did not hesitate to act upon them. My takeaway is that it does not matter how good the research output is, the final outcome is what counts.

  • Great insights lie deep in the data

    For more than a year I was a project manager and main executor of an e-shop optimization efforts. One of the opportunities we wanted to tackle was a visually chaotic price area on a product detail page. The e-shop was targeting very price sensitive customers. Therefore, our hypothesis was that emphasizing discounted price and free shipping will increase the conversion rate.

    To test this hypothesis, I ran an A/B test. After a few weeks, our testing tool reported no change in conversion rate. A disappointing result. But after deeper analysis, I found a substantial user segment (using IE or Seznam search) where our test was causing a big drop in conversions. But for the majority, our test was a success!

    After several other experiments, a clear pattern emerged: A resistance to our improvements in this conservative user segment. We were building the right thing for most users, but not for everyone. This led to implementation of personalized experience for different user segments.

    After steady experimenting, we ended the year with a 20% increase in conversion rate and a lot of new knowledge about customers. My takeaway is that a quick analysis can mislead you, the most valuable insights are hidden deep in the data.

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