Case Study KOLEO
The research that revealed a product was serving the wrong user.
What
Usability Study
Role
UX researcher
Participants
6 users, 3 personas
Sector
Transport
Strategic Impact
Research identified that Koleo's product strategy was optimised for casual travellers while systematically failing its highest-value segment — business users. This finding reframed the product problem from 'fix the usability issues' to 'decide which user you are building for.
About Koleo
Koleo is a Polish train ticket search and booking platform, bringing together multiple rail operators — PKP Intercity, Polregio, and regional carriers among them — into a single search and purchase flow. Founded in 2014 and based in Warsaw, it solves a structural problem specific to Poland's privatised rail system: no single operator sells tickets across the whole network, so Koleo exists as the aggregator layer that lets travellers compare and book across all of them in one place.
Research Setup
Persona workshop with client before recruiting — three distinct mental models defined (student Ania, business traveller Krzysztof, occasional traveller pani Bogusia). 6 participants, 60–70 minute sessions, face-to-face and remote. Six realistic tasks stress-testing the flow across all three personas simultaneously.
Key Findings
Business users would not recommend Koleo. Casual users would. The NPS split between user types was the headline finding — a product serving two segments but optimised for only one. This reframed the client's question from 'what's broken?' to 'who are you building for?' — a product strategy decision, not a UX fix.
Conclusion: Takeaways
The NPS split reframed the brief from a usability audit into a strategy decision — and that's the pattern I look for in every research engagement. The interesting finding is rarely the broken button. It's the moment the data forces a client to choose who they're actually building for. Koleo's fixes were straightforward once the real question was on the table; getting to that question was the work.
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