The Challenge

PMI and its design agency Cheil work across a complex ecosystem of web experiences, app flows, and consumer journeys tied to brands like IQOS. They needed to validate a high volume of UX changes frequently and repeatedly, without the recruitment, scheduling, moderation, and reporting overhead that makes traditional usability testing a bottleneck.

Just as important, Cheil needed evidence to justify design decisions to internal stakeholders. Falling behind carried real cost: flows that confuse users, weaker conversion, and design debates settled by opinion rather than data.

“Uxia has significantly assisted our work with PMI. It gives us the data we need to justify UX design decisions to internal higher-ups.”

Stephanie Chang, Cheil Worldwide x PMI

The Solution

Uxia added a fast validation layer to the design process. Teams upload or connect a prototype (via Figma), define a mission, scenario, and audience, then launch a test with AI-powered synthetic testers, and get structured, actionable usability insights in under 15 minutes. Audience customization built on demographic, psychological, and client-persona enrichment keeps testers relevant to each product and market, and reusable product context keeps results consistent from one test to the next.

This let PMI and Cheil validate earlier and more often: catching friction in prototypes before development, comparing alternative design directions with A/B-style evidence, and embedding testing into day-to-day design work rather than reserving it for occasional research rounds.

The Results

Higher testing capacity: Uxia supported 117 usability tests for critical design validation in 3 months, covering a large share of PMI’s planned usability and A/B-style testing.

• Faster cycles: UX decisions validated in minutes instead of waiting on a full traditional testing process.

• Evidence-based decisions: Structured findings moved conversations from “we think this is better” to “users are struggling here, and this version performs more clearly.”

• Earlier risk reduction: Friction points caught before engineering, when changes are still cheap to make.

• Stronger stakeholder alignment: A fast, repeatable source of user evidence to support and defend design recommendations internally.

“We are very satisfied with the remarkable and continuous updates of Uxia.”

Kina Choi, Cheil Worldwide x PMI

Why it matters

For large organizations, UX teams are pulled in two directions: move fast, but justify every decision. The PMI and Cheil collaboration shows how synthetic user testing resolves that tension by combining speed, structure, repeatability, and stakeholder-ready evidence so teams can validate more often and iterate with confidence before experiences go live.