USER RESEARCH LEAD | GAMES · E-COMMERCE · CONSUMER TECH
I build research functions and
partner with teams
to turn player and customer insights into decisions.
I'm Charlese Saballe. I lead UX and Player Research at Metacore Games, where I built the research function for Merge Mansion from the ground up. Before that, I was a Senior Quantitative User Researcher at Zalando. My work runs across player research, quant, qual, and inclusive design. I'm at my best connecting the dots across different types of data and weaving them into something that drives action and strategy.
Selected Research
A few highlights
A taste of my work – from building a research function to advanced quant and inclusive design. The full set lives on the work page.
Building the Player Research Function
How I turned ad-hoc research requests into a system: intake tied to decisions, a live roadmap, and an AI-queryable insights repository.
Research went from reactive and disposable to a function that product teams now use.
What Drives Players to Stick
Merge Mansion had high awareness but low retention. I set out to find what actually moves players to keep playing and where we stood against competitors.
Became the evidence base for a major brand initiative and a design priority.
Beyond the Numbers: Why Players Churn
Analytics showed churn rising but couldn't say why. I triangulated game data, community feedback, and a churn survey to find out why. Each one filled a gap the others couldn't.
Reframed churn into a segmented, actionable picture, and a reusable lifecycle framework.
Black-Owned & Focused Brands
Evidencing whether Black-owned and Black-focused brands were missing from the platform, for whom, and in which categories plus the awareness gap underneath.
Presented to category buyers; informed Zalando's commitment to onboard 70+ Black-owned brands.
How I work
A few principles run through all of it.
Whatever the method or industry, the same beliefs shape my work.
Research should serve a decision.
The most useful research is tied to a decision someone needs to make. Research anchored to a decision tends to get used; research that isn't tends to sit in a folder.
Connect the dots across methods and sources.
Behaviour, attitudes, and community feeling each tell you something different — no single source gives the whole picture. I lean on numbers for scale and conversations for meaning, and I'm at my best bringing them together into something a team can act on.
Ask who it works for and who it leaves out.
It's easy to design for one kind of user and treat them as the norm. I'd ask early who an experience leaves out, resisting the ‘average user’ and making sure those most likely to be excluded are represented in what we know.
Be honest about the evidence.
I'd rather flag a limitation than oversell a finding, and be clear about who did what. Being honest about the edges is what makes the rest worth trusting.
Things I build
Tools & frameworks
Alongside research projects, I build tools and frameworks to make an idea concrete enough to test. A couple of recent ones below.
AI Research Study Planner
A planning tool for researchers studying AI products. It acts like a senior researcher reviewing your plan, sharpening questions, re-prioritising methods, and flagging where a study will get harder than you expect.
Built on nine principles for how AI research diverges from classic product research.
Inclusive Design Lens
A practical checklist for building DEI into the player experience, one that a team can pick up at any real decision point to ask better questions early, before assumptions harden into something that gets shipped.
The practical companion to a principle I hold: ask who it works for and who it leaves out.
Get in touch
Let's talk research.
Happy to talk about research, inclusive and responsible practice, or how teams can make better use of insights. Whether you're hiring, collaborating, looking for a speaker, or just want to swap notes, please reach out.