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Obituary: Rob Stevens, Co-founder of Bunnyfoot

August 13 2020

Rob Stevens, co-founder of user experience and behavioural research consultancy Bunnyfoot, and later Ipsos MORI's Group Head of UX, died suddenly on 25th July 2020 as a result of coronary heart disease. He was 49 years old.

Rob StevensAfter graduating in Business Studies from Kingston upon Hull Business School, Stevens (pictured) was recruited by KPMG, where he worked as a management/systems accountant and consultant, before taking management accountant roles at Associated Co Operative Food Primary Logistics in Newcastle upon Tyne, and PepsiCo in Warrington. Then in 1998 Stevens moved to a Manchester-based dotcom start-up, which grew from five to 455 people, giving him the opportunity to live and work in Cannes and Phoenix, AZ.

A year later, he returned to the UK to set up user experience consultancy Bunnyfoot with neuroscientist Jon Dodd; specialising in conducting user testing, market analysis and customer-focused research programmes, to help clients develop products and services. During the next eighteen years, the pair established offices in Edinburgh, Hong Kong, London, Oxford, Reading and Sheffield, and Stevens also pioneered 'Cued Retrospective Verbal Reporting' for usability testing, a method which entails playback of dynamic eye-tracking data to cue the elicitation of retrospective verbal reports. In 2008, he moved the firm's established eye-tracking expertise into a new, separate consultancy, called Think Eyetracking based in Reading, then set up Acuity ETS, the largest reseller of Tobii Pro's eye tracking equipment, which was acquired by Tobii a decade later.

By 2013, Stevens had teamed up with advertising strategist Mike Follet to launch London-based Lumen Research, using eyetracking techniques to understand what captures consumer attention and drives consumer behaviour; and in 2018 the firm was named winner of the Mobile World Congress 'Innovation of the Year' award. More recently, Stevens had spent the past two years at Ipsos MORI as Group Head of UX - a complex role managing multiple projects with teams across four continents.

Among the homages posted on LinkedIn, Simon Jones, Ipsos MORI UX Research Director, said: 'I'd like to pay tribute to my dear friend, colleague, former boss and mentor, Rob Stevens. I've learnt so much from the way he thought. In most conversations we'd get excited about a new idea, a new way of working, of getting insights and of world domination. He was always thinking differently and challenging us to do the same. I'm so grateful to have known him the last two years, but so deeply wish I'd known him longer'.

Warren Lister, UX Lead Principal at Ipsos, added: 'He was always a great boss and I owe him a lot. Always encouraging and supportive, funny, patient and always kind. I still have an image of him drinking cocktails in a pair of snakeskin boots. He will be missed by a lot of people and always remembered as a true gentleman'.

Stevens' funeral was held on Tuesday in Cumbria. He is survived by his wife and two children, who have set up a memorial page through which donations can be made to the Great North Air Ambulance Services: www.justgiving.com/fundraising/robertkstevens .

All articles 2006-23 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas, 2024- by Nick Thomas, unless otherwise stated.

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