About
My background is in Cognitive Science, where I learned how people think, learn, and make decisions. I was on track for a PhD, but instead took a sharp turn into industry by getting offered a dream job at Alpha, Telefónica’s moonshot factory. There, I worked as a Research Scientist on large scale ideas that didn’t yet exist, combining behavioural science, quantitative methods, and strategy to help estimate the impact for potentially millions of people. It was research at its most ambitious (and yes, the snacks were excellent).
After that, I joined a very early-stage edTech startup in the Bay Area of San Francisco, founded by John Cumbers. We had almost no users, plenty of uncertainty and zero room for slow or academic research. Decisions had to be made quickly, often with imperfect data and real consequences. That experience shaped how I work today: focused, pragmatic, and biased toward clarity over perfection.
More recently, I’ve been at Kiwi.com, where I led quantitative research that directly informs pricing, messaging, and product strategy. I’ve worked across teams and with senior leadership, including the CEO, to bring evidence into complex, high-impact decisions where experimentation isn’t always possible and guessing is expensive.
Across all these roles, one pattern kept repeating: leaders rarely struggle with ideas, they struggle with making confident decisions fast. Whether it’s for their own clarity, an investor update, or a board discussion, they need timely, credible data they can stand behind and explain to others. That’s what ultimately shaped my work and led me to focus on delivering fast, decision-ready quantitative insight.
Skills
Research & Experiment Design
Survey design (MaxDiff, Conjoint, Monadic, Van Westendorp, Kano)
Experimental design & hypothesis testing
Concept & message testing
Pricing research & trade-off analysis
A/B test design & evaluation
Mixed-methods planning
Data & Analysis
Statistical modelling (regression, clustering, factor analysis)
Behavioural data analysis (SQL, Python)
Segmentation & persona development
Data cleaning, wrangling & visualisation (Pandas, matplotlib)
Machine learning for pattern detection and prediction (scikit-learn)
Behavioural Science & Psychology
Cognitive science background
Behavioural modelling & user motivation
Survey psychology & bias mitigation
Translating psychological theory into product hypotheses
Publications
CHI 2021: Pieritz, S., Khwaja, M., Faisal, A., & Matic, A. (2021). “Personalised Recommendations in Mental Health Apps: The Impact of Autonomy and Data Sharing.”
UMAP 2021: Khwaja, M., Pieritz, S., Faisal, A., & Matic, A. (2021). “Personality and Engagement with Digital Mental Health Interventions”
Public Speaking Events
Quant UX Con ‘25 Speaker: "I tried 10 AI tools for Quant UX so you don’t have to"
Quant UX Con ‘23 Speaker: "Leveraging Your Personal Background to Drive Quantitative UX Research: An Example from Cognitive Science"
Quant UX Con ‘23 Panel Participant:
“Being the first Quant UX in your company”
“Quant UX pedagogy”
Certificates
Test User: Occupational, Ability and Personality certified by the British Psychological Society / Hogrefe Oxford with special license for the NEO-PI-3 Personality Inventory