I've spent 14 years finding the thing that wasn't working — and figuring out why nobody had found it yet.
I'm Matt Barham, founder of Onyx Studios. I'm a UX researcher and innovation strategist, and I've spent the better part of my career at the intersection of what users actually do and what product teams assume they do. That gap is almost always where the real problem lives.
Most of my experience was built at Mastercard Digital Labs — a specialized team inside one of the world's largest payment networks, focused on bringing structured innovation to enterprise clients. Over 14 years, I ran qualitative research programs, facilitated design thinking workshops across industries, and helped teams move from stuck to shipping. The scale ranged from federal government to regional banks to healthcare startups.
Onyx Studios is what I built when I decided the most useful version of that work was the independent version — faster, more direct, and without the organizational overhead that slows down the insight that matters.
The work that defined my approach was a study I ran on a product that had been relaunched three times. Every usability test passed. Every task completion rate looked fine. By every standard metric, the product worked.
I asked the question nobody had thought to ask: "Would you actually use this?"
The answer surfaced a value proposition problem that had persisted across all three launches. Not a design problem. Not a usability problem. The product was solving a problem users didn't have — because the issuing partners they already worked with had already solved it automatically.
That's the kind of thing that only emerges when you ask differently. It's what I'm here to find.
The interface was never the problem. The question nobody asked was the problem.
The decision to go independent wasn't impulsive. It came from watching, over 14 years, how much the quality of insight depends on the independence of the person gathering it. Inside a large organization, research gets shaped by what stakeholders are willing to hear, what timelines allow, and what's politically safe to surface.
I wanted to be the version of this work that didn't have those constraints. That could walk into a team, ask the uncomfortable question, and hand them something they could actually use — without the layers that slow it down.
San Francisco is where the clients are. Seed through Series B startups moving fast, making consequential product decisions without the research infrastructure to pressure-test them. That's exactly the gap I'm here to fill.
Onyx Studios is new. The work behind it isn't.
You don't need to have it figured out before you reach out.
The best engagements I've had started with someone saying: "I'm not even sure how to explain what we need, but something is missing."
That's enough. Let's start there.
I work primarily through referrals.
If someone sent you here, you're already in the right place.