Gumshoe is an experience research, strategy, and design practice founded by Rob Fay.
The name reflects the method: investigate before intervening. Gumshoe examines what people do, what they need, where services break down, and which organizational conditions create those outcomes. The work turns that evidence into clearer product, service, and operating decisions.
Rob is an experience design executive whose work spans customer and user research, service design, product experience, measurement, DesignOps, ResearchOps, design systems, and enterprise transformation. He has led teams and programs in healthcare, government, education, staffing, and intellectual property.
Leadership at scale
Rob’s work has included supporting an enterprise portfolio of more than 180 contracts and 50 products and services, building research and design operations, advancing enterprise design-system adoption, establishing experience measures, and training more than 1,500 people in human-centered methods.
His background in education, psychology, and counseling informs a leadership approach grounded in inquiry, observation, systems thinking, and the ability to make complex evidence useful to decision-makers.
AI-assisted design, grounded in evidence
I use AI throughout my design practice to explore options, prototype interactions, develop provisional personas, and apply changes consistently across multiple pages.
AI-assisted audits help identify accessibility issues, responsive behavior problems, and differences between prototypes and implementation, particularly alignment with the design system. Real data in staging and development reveals variations that mockups can miss, informing the next round of prototyping and testing.
Across 110 logged design and research items, I achieved approximately 5.2 times the output per hour compared with estimated manual effort.*
Based on 314.75 estimated manual hours versus 60.35 logged AI-assisted hours through October 16, 2026.
What Gumshoe believes
- Customer evidence should change a decision, not merely decorate a presentation.
- Experience quality is an operating concern tied to cost, trust, risk, adoption, and service performance.
- Research must include what people say and what they actually do.
- Durable improvement requires governance, tools, incentives, and shared accountability across organizational boundaries.
- The strongest design intervention may be a change to a process, policy, measure, or operating model rather than another interface.
Discuss a challenge Connect with Rob on LinkedIn
The views and information presented on this site are Rob Fay's own and do not represent any current or former employer, client, or government agency.