AI INNOVATION, PRODUCT & STRATEGY · READING, UK

From AI research to roadmap to reality

What every role has taught me is that AI only creates real value when someone sits in the uncomfortable middle. Close enough to the engineering to build it properly. Close enough to the business to know if it's even worth building. That middle ground is where I've spent the last decade, across three very different companies, and the lesson holds every time. The technology is rarely the hard part. Judgement is. Asking what a business genuinely needs before reaching for what's technically exciting. Building the business case as carefully as the product itself. Pushing past the demo into something people actually adopt and rely on. That's what shapes the way I work now. Not just shipping AI features, but changing how a team or a business operates because the AI is there. If there's one thing I bring to any room, it's that pairing. Real technical depth. And the patience to make it mean something commercially.

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01 / Selected Work

AI products, shipped & in production

Built within the AI / Futures team at System1 Group — from GenAI pipelines to computer-vision R&D.

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02 / Experience

A decade across product & analytics

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03 / Research & Publications

Peer-reviewed AI research

PhD
University of Surrey | Part-Time PhD, In Progress

Explainable AI for Immersive Consumer Intelligence

The way people experience brands is changing.

Consumers are no longer interacting only through websites, stores, advertisements or mobile screens. Virtual Reality, spatial computing and immersive technologies are creating new environments where people can explore products, engage with brands and make decisions in entirely different ways.

My research asks a forward-looking question:

How can organisations understand consumer behaviour in these immersive environments with greater clarity, depth and confidence?

I am exploring how Virtual Reality, behavioural science and explainable Artificial Intelligence can work together to create a new generation of consumer intelligence.

The aim is to transform immersive interactions into meaningful business insight—helping organisations understand not only whether an experience performs well, but how people engage with it, where interest increases or declines, where uncertainty appears, and what may influence a final decision.

Research Vision

My long-term vision is to develop an AI-enabled immersive research capability that can help organisations test and improve products, advertising and customer experiences before making significant commercial investments.

The research is designed around a simple principle:

Immersive environments should not only be engaging; they should also be measurable, interpretable and commercially useful.

By bringing together immersive technology, human behaviour and explainable AI, the work aims to support stronger decisions across marketing, innovation, product development and customer experience.

Business Applications

The research is particularly relevant to consumer-facing organisations, where immersive environments can support product testing, packaging evaluation, advertising and virtual shopping experiences.

Its wider applications may extend to healthcare, automotive, travel, entertainment, real estate, education and digital commerce any sector where organisations need to understand how people engage, respond and make decisions within immersive environments.

Possible use cases include:

  • Virtual shelf and retail environment testing
  • Product and concept evaluation
  • Packaging and design assessment
  • Advertising and creative effectiveness
  • Brand experience testing
  • Consumer decision journey analysis
  • Customer experience innovation
  • Pre-launch concept validation

For FMCG organisations, this could create new ways to explore how consumers respond to products, packaging, displays, brand assets and retail environments in a controlled immersive setting.

Prototype Development

As part of the PhD, I am developing a research prototype to demonstrate how immersive consumer interactions can be captured, analysed and translated into clear, decision-relevant insights.

The public-facing prototype will focus on business outcomes and user experience, while the underlying research methodology remains protected during development and academic validation.

Industry Collaboration

A central ambition of the research is to connect academic innovation with real business challenges.

I am interested in collaborating with organisations that are exploring:

  • Consumer insight innovation
  • AI-enabled market research
  • Virtual and immersive commerce
  • Product and packaging development
  • Advertising effectiveness
  • Digital transformation
  • Human-centred AI

Current Focus

My current work brings together:

Explainable Artificial Intelligence Virtual Reality and immersive technologies Consumer behaviour Behavioural analytics Emotion and engagement Decision intelligence Advertising effectiveness Product innovation Human-centred AI

The Bigger Picture

The future of consumer intelligence will be shaped by more than data volume. It will depend on whether organisations can understand complex experiences in a way that is responsible, explainable and useful for decision-making. My research explores that opportunity: turning immersive experiences into actionable intelligence that helps organisations create better products, stronger brands and more meaningful consumer experiences.

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04 / Education

Academic credentials

Jan 2026 — Present

PhD in AI in Management & Business

University of Surrey, UK (Part-Time)

Research focus: Explainable AI for Immersive Consumer Intelligence, exploring how Virtual Reality, behavioural science, and explainable AI can work together to create a new generation of consumer intelligence.

Sep 2023 — Sep 2024

Master of Business Administration (MBA)

University of Surrey, UK

Consultancy project with System1 Group (AI adoption strategy, experimentation KPIs, predictive ML/GenAI model) and NHS AI Transformation project (Royal Surrey).

2009 — 2013

BEng in Computer Science Engineering

India

Built early technical depth across software engineering, algorithms, data structures, and database systems, underpinning technical credibility with dev teams.

05 / Capabilities

Skills & certifications

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Certifications
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Workshops & Conferences
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Professional Organisation Membership
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Get in touch

Let’s build something
worth measuring.

Happy to talk through GenAI, RAG, evaluation, or research collaboration.

Rashmi Bezalwar AI Product Manager · © 2026