I help organizations uncover the signals behind customer behavior and turn those insights into stronger experiences and smarter products.
Through continuous discovery, strategic research, and journey analysis, I help teams understand what’s shifting in the market, align around opportunity, and make confident decisions that create meaningful connections.
—Story Safford
Services
Get the strategic depth of a Netflix or Meta lead without the full-time overhead. I provide high-stakes research leadership for your product, engineering, and design teams, ensuring cross-functional alignment and scalable roadmap planning during critical pivots or modernization initiatives.
Is your MVP actually ready to ship? I provide a high-impact diagnostic of your product before you spend another dollar on engineering. I identify critical user friction, trust gaps, and technical hurdles, providing a Go/No-Go report and a prioritized list of must-fixes to ensure your launch doesn't flop.
I help build relationships with customers by transforming behavior, motivations, and unmet needs into business advantage. Through Agile qualitative research, continuous discovery, and journey analysis, I see the patterns and signals that help organizations see what’s changing in their market, reduce uncertainty, and make decisions with confidence.
Case Studies
Netflix: Franchise Product Strategy & Multi-Channel Ecosystem
Role: Strategy, Research & Development
Architected the 360-degree productization of a flagship Netflix IP, transforming a singular television property into a scalable, cross-platform multimedia brand. As the strategic lead, I defined the vision and roadmap for a multi-channel ecosystem spanning digital, experiential, OOH, and broadcast touch-points.
Strategic Impact:
Franchise Scaling: Directed the end-to-end product strategy that expanded audience reach and retention across diverse platforms, resulting in a Clio Bronze Award for excellence in brand transformation.
Cross-Platform Alignment: Synthesized complex brand requirements into a unified experience framework, ensuring product-market fit across both physical and digital fan engagements.
Evidence-Led Growth: Developed and executed the foundational strategy that moved the brand from a single-format show to a high-growth multimedia ecosystem.
Cigna: Telehealth Product Strategy & Digital Care Scaling
Role: UX Research, Service Design, Product Development
Led the multi-year product discovery and strategic evolution for Cigna’s national telehealth platform.
I navigated the complex transition from pre- to post-pandemic care models by architecting a digital ecosystem that optimized patient journeys and bridged the gap between at-home care and clinical providers.
Strategic Impact:
Product Roadmap Definition: Directed the digital health experience strategy, utilizing mixed-method discovery to resolve uncertainty in long-term engagement and retention initiatives.
Insight-to-Action Pipeline: Built a scalable Voice-of-Customer system that consolidated fragmented patient feedback into a unified engine for high-stakes product planning.
Experience Optimization: Translated behavioral care-navigation barriers into prioritized product improvements, redesigning digital access pathways to improve care coordination.
Regeneron: Strategic Trade-offs & Market Velocity
Role: UX Research, Service Design, Product Development
Navigated the inherent friction between stringent compliance and the need for product velocity within a heavily regulated environment. I architected a lean discovery-to-delivery framework for Regeneron that prioritized rapid validation over premature scaling. By designing a system that embraced iterative learning—even at the calculated risk of future rework—I enabled the team to move at market speed without compromising on essential risk mitigation.
Key Strategic Impact:
Reduced Time-to-Market: Overcame institutional inertia by implementing lean processes that allowed for faster cycles of evidence-based learning.
Managed Technical Debt: Explicitly defined the trade-offs between immediate validation and long-term scalability to ensure stakeholders were aligned on the product's evolution.
Evidence-Led Governance: Balanced complex regulatory requirements with a user-centered approach to ensure the solution was both compliant and highly functional for the end-user.
Comic-Con HQ: Scaling Cultural Experience into Digital Product Strategy
Role: Research, Strategy & Discovery
Architected the MVP and long-term product roadmap to transform a seasonal, four-day live event into a 365-day digital subscription (SVOD) ecosystem. I defined the foundational strategy for Comic-Con HQ, bridging the gap between high-intensity physical experiences and a scalable digital experience that maintains fan engagement year-round.
Strategic Impact:
MVP Definition & Prioritization: Directed the core product requirements and feature prioritization for the initial launch, ensuring the platform delivered immediate value while establishing a foundation for future scale.
Digital Transformation Strategy: Developed the strategic frameworks required to translate the unique, "lightning-in-a-bottle" quality of a live conference into a recurring, evergreen digital experience.
Risk Mitigation & Alignment: Utilized foundational behavioral analysis to resolve competing stakeholder assumptions and secure alignment on the platform’s core information architecture and user experience.
Evidence-Led Roadmap: Built a strategic pipeline of insights that informed investment prioritization, balancing the needs of a niche, high-expectation audience with business growth objectives.
North American Launch
Softbank Robotics
I defined the product-market fit strategy for Softbank Robotics’ Pepper, leading the high-stakes discovery phase to navigate deep-seated consumer friction and societal ambiguity. By translating complex human patterns into a clear, actionable product trajectory, I resolved critical uncertainty regarding the robot's place in the market, directly driving a landmark go-to-market launch.
Zyrtec “Parks Unleashed”
Owned the behavioral strategy and product discovery for Zyrtec’s digital ecosystem, identifying high-intent customer triggers to integrate brand value into daily user routines. Spearheaded the cross-functional execution of "Parks Unleashed," a non-linear digital experience recognized by Mashable as one of YouTube’s "Most Impactful" campaigns for its innovative approach to market awareness and engagement.
Architected the product vision and full business requirements for Zyrtec.com, designing a dynamic personalization engine and information architecture that utilized implicit and explicit inputs to scale traffic to 50,000+ unique monthly visitors. This strategy included the development of an integrated loyalty platform, bridging marketing objectives with a high-conversion user experience.
