Papper
Papper: I built a team and shipped an app to the App Store
I conceived and designed an app for paper lists, then shipped it with a team in 2023. Distribution, running costs and a failed bet on App Clip came next.
Head of Product Research · Yandex Search & AI / Paris
Aleksei
Shipulin.
I lead research for Search & AI at Yandex. I build products, put ideas to the test and write about what I find.
Research & projects
All work ↗FlowTwin
FlowTwin: we won the Google DeepMind track
Our team, Low Cortisol, took first place in the Google DeepMind track at RAISE Summit 2026. I helped shape the project, designed with agents and operated the demo.
Grounded
Grounded: I built a bot for open-ended answers
I built an AI tool that proposes categories, codes responses and explains its choices, so the cost of analysis need not decide which questions researchers ask.
Bot Voyage
Bot Voyage: I built a tour guide I walk with
I made a Telegram bot for a workshop in 2025, then went home from a walk to fix it. Location, facts too good to trust, and an interface that can afford to wait.
Fly Poetry
Fly Poetry: I adapted a fly-brain demo for Chukovsky
I replaced the video in badapple-fly with a poem to understand what it means to “run” something on a fly brain. An adaptation of others’ open work; the fly is not reading.
Research copilot
A research copilot, from brief to final deck
Built a modular AI workflow for UX and market research, with a shared study lifecycle and different branches for different methods.
Research repository + MCP
A research archive you can ask a question
Built an interview archive with metadata, vector search and MCP access. How storing evidence, finding it and reaching it through an agent fit together.
Trust in AI answers
Trust in an AI answer: what happens after reading
Studied trust in AI answers, source attribution, image enrichments and the transition from a search query to a follow-up conversation.
Tone-of-Voice evaluation
Tone of Voice: how to compare AI answers
Designed task-specific scoring rubrics and ran blind, side-by-side AI answer studies involving 200 paired answers and 64 users.
Search ad load
Search ad load as a research question
Studied ad density, satisfaction and perceived search quality alongside the product team.
Alice and smart speakers
Alice and smart speakers: the research contribution to launch
Contributed to launching the Alice voice assistant and smart speaker line through full-cycle UX research at Yandex’s UX Lab.
From the blog · a personal experiment
64 shoelace observations, then someone explained the knot
In July 2023 I published a personal experiment comparing four ways to tie my laces. Statistics found a difference; a reader’s comment helped explain the mechanism.
Read the essay ↗Beyond work
A notebook
with side quests.
A tap on a phone that calls Claude, a button missing from NPS, Nabokov in the margins. Notes on things I cannot quite leave alone.
Open the blog ↗Or try the ꙮ in the header. The notebook has a strange entrance.