Thick Research is a qualitative research consultancy for data-rich teams. We pair ethnographic depth with your analytics to explain the behavior behind the numbers, and turn it into decisions your team will actually make.
“Thick data,” a term coined by the anthropologist Tricia Wang, is the qualitative evidence that gives big data meaning. Analytics show you the pattern at scale; thick data shows you the person inside it: the motivation, the workaround, the half-second of hesitation a funnel can't see. Most teams are rich in one and starving for the other. We work in the gap between them.
Ethnographic and in-depth qualitative research designed to explain the signals already sitting in your dashboards.
Triangulating quantitative and qualitative evidence so a finding is something your team can defend, not just believe.
Repositories, synthesis, and research operations so insight compounds across projects instead of evaporating after the readout.
We evaluate, assemble, and operate the modern research toolchain on your behalf, so your team gets the method without the maintenance.
We embed with product, growth, and insights teams across fintech, marketplaces, developer tools, digital health, and consumer subscription, usually somewhere between Series B and the public markets, where the dashboards are already good and the questions have gotten harder.
“They found the reason behind a churn number our data team had been staring at for a quarter.” VP Product, Series C marketplace
Thick Research was founded in 2023 by researchers and data scientists who were tired of watching good analytics stall for lack of context. We're not a panel or a platform. We embed with your team, do the work alongside you, and hand back method you can keep.
Founded by Dana Whitlock, Principal. She previously led research and data-science teams in fintech and marketplaces.