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Fractional UX Leadership & Product Experience Strategy
Why isn't your product landing the way it should?
I partner with growing product organizations as a fractional UX leader, helping teams uncover the right problems to solve, align around customer needs, and make confident product decisions.
◆Currently accepting 1–2 new clients
Most teams don't lack talent or effort.
They lack clarity.
Two decades of this work. Now available fractionally.
- →Owned design, UX, and research vision for an EdTech platform serving 25M+ users
- →Led an onboarding redesign that doubled activation and drove 10× retention
- →Directed search redesign lifting keyword match from 36% → 90%, plus a product experiment generating 2.3M+ organic visits in six months
- →Launched product engagement tooling delivering 200%+ first-year ROI through engineering time saved
Services
How we can work together
Two ways to work together — a focused diagnostic to get clarity, or an ongoing retainer that scales to what your team actually needs.
Experience Strategy Sprint
A fixed-scope diagnostic to find what's really holding your product back — and the strategy to fix it.
Starting at $6,000 · 2–4 weeks
What you get
- Expert review of your product experience
- Analysis of your existing customer evidence and data
- The real problem, diagnosed — not just the symptom
- A prioritized experience strategy and roadmap your team can execute against
Best for
Teams who need clear direction on a specific product problem before committing to a build.
Monthly Advisory Retainer
Senior product experience leadership on retainer — a director's strategy and direction, without the full-time hire.
Starting at $6,000/mo · ~1 day per week
What you get
- Ongoing experience strategy and product direction
- Design and research leadership — I set the direction and review the work; your team (or a specialist I scope) executes
- Prioritization and roadmap guidance
- Team coaching and mentoring
- Measurement and feedback loops so you know it's working
Need More?
Need me more hands-on? Deeper embedded engagements available.
Best for
Growing product teams that need senior strategic direction — between hires, or alongside a team that needs a steadier hand on experience strategy.
Common questions
What does “fractional” mean?
Fractional UX leadership is exactly what it sounds like—a fraction of a senior UX leader’s time, on a retainer. You get a director’s strategic judgment, team guidance, and prioritization discipline without the cost or commitment of a full-time executive hire.
How is this different from an agency or a freelancer?
You’re hiring a leader, not extra hands. An agency or freelancer executes against a brief. I help shape experience strategy, develop the team, and guide the decisions that determine where UX investment will have the greatest impact.
How much of your time do I get?
It depends on the engagement. Advisory is occasional, on-call guidance. Fractional Leadership is ongoing involvement, typically more days per week. Embedded is a deeper, hands-on partnership inside your week. We right-size it to what your team actually needs.
What kinds of teams do you work with?
Growing product organizations that need senior UX leadership, often teams with a few designers but no director, companies between leadership hires, or orgs building UX maturity for the first time.
How do we get started?
A short intro call to understand your situation, then a scoped proposal.
Process
How I work
Diagnose first
I start by understanding your product, team, goals, and constraints.
Strategy before design
Before anything gets designed, we establish a clear experience strategy — defining the real blockers, priorities, and direction.
Deliver clear guidance
Actionable recommendations, practical frameworks, or direct UX leadership.
Build lasting capability
The goal is to leave your team and product organization stronger.
Free resource
Free resource: The Experiment Readiness Scorecard
A one-page gut-check to decide whether a release is ready to teach you something, not just ready to ship. The same thinking I bring to engagements.
About
About Lauren
Lauren Schaefer is a UX leader with more than 20 years of experience helping product organizations turn customer insight into product strategy, organizational alignment, and better product experiences.
Her career spans early-stage startups to platforms serving tens of millions, including 12 years at Ultimate Software where she helped guide design through growth to an $11B acquisition and built the company's first product research function. Underpinning the work is a foundation in Human Factors: a deep understanding of how people think, behave, and make decisions.
Highlights
- 20+ years in UX, research, and product experience
- Built and scaled design and research teams from the ground up
- Led UX strategy for products serving millions of users
- Led UX and design through significant enterprise growth and an $11B acquisition
- M.S., Human Factors in Information Design — Bentley University
- Former UXPA International Board Member
- Founder of a 3,000-member UX community (13 years)
- Adjunct instructor and international speaker
My Approach
I help teams uncover the right problems to solve and make better product decisions, creating experiences that are both strategically sound and genuinely useful.
Contact
Let's talk
Tell me a little about your team and what you're working through.
◆Currently accepting 1–2 new clients