My experience as a user research

My Work

 

User Research Academy

Founder & Instructor
February 2019 - Present

 

  • Created an Introduction to User Research Self-Paced Course and helped over 70 students through their first user research portfolio piece, which has led to students landing their first user research job 

  • Taught students from over 30 different countries and cultures 

  • Maintained 1x1 mentoring sessions with over 20 students, helping them excel in their current role, leading to multiple promotions 

  • Created over 25 pieces of free content (templates, guides) to help those on their user research journey 

  • Offer multiple methods of learning and services, such as regular webinars, job interview preparation, and company-wide workshops

Check it out

 

Zalando

User Research Lead
May 2020 - Present

 

  • Developed and managed four direct reports in both qualitative and quantitative research, leading to two promotions

  • Worked across over 15 teams as the research point of contact for many stakeholders, conducting several end-to-end research projects

  • Created over 10 templates to help facilitate stakeholders' research requests and prioritization, reducing meeting time by 25%

  • Created and led the bi-weekly advanced research training for stakeholders, empowering about 10 stakeholders a month to conduct evaluative research

  • Organized the user research mentorship and user research review program to facilitate continued learning on the team and encouraged peer feedback

  • Led over 15 interviews for user research candidates, from associate to senior level, increasing our team by 10%

  • Strategized and contributed to the operational plan, which determined how user research fit at scale in the wider context of Zalando

 

Dovetail

Contract Writer
February 2021 - Present

 

  • Plan and write two articles a month on user research to increase brand awareness for Dovetail

  • Work with the team to understand the trending topics in the space

Check out my Dovetail articles!

 

dscout

Contract Writer
February 2019 - Present

 

  • Plan and write four articles a month on user research to increase brand awareness for dscout

  • Work with the team to understand the trending topics in the space

  • Work with the team on research projects on a consultancy basis

Check out my dscout articles!

 

fromAtoB

Senior User Researcher & Tribe Lead
February 2019 - May 2020

 

  • Created a user research structure and framework, which placed user research within an agile environment and reduced wasted development time by 45%  

  • Reduced the number of bugs in new and existing features by 25% 

  • Developed user research templates and curriculum to teach 10+ colleagues how to conduct user research sessions 

  • Worked across 5 squads, through usability testing and generative research, to improve the experience, which increased customer retention by 45% and increased conversion rate by 16% 

  • Used creative sharing methodologies, such as usability bingo and opening night, which aided in executive buy-in and led to a 20% increase in the annual research budget 

 

Freelance

Senior User Research Consultant
January 2014 - January 2019

 

Selected Works

CLIENT: Wiley Publishing [1 month] 

  • Conducted several generative research sessions, allowing internal stakeholders to evangelize the user’s needs across the organization 

  • Synthesized findings into a simple and actionable research report, which drove the creation of a new feature to increase online readership by 20% 

CLIENT: HelloFresh [3 months] 

  • Scoped out client’s immediate research needs through a heuristic evaluation, which led to the fixing of over 35 bugs and small UX/UI improvements 

  • Led 18 generative sessions, which culminated in a new, innovative product offering, increasing revenue by 4%  

  • Conducted 19 evaluative research sessions, resulting in an improved overall usability, increasing retention by 15% and conversion rate by 6% 

 

Pratt Institute

User Research Instructor
January 2018 - January 2019

 

  • Created a user research syllabus that is now used widely throughout the Pratt UX research curriculum  

  • Supported students through their first UX research portfolio piece 

  • 100% graduation rate with all 75 students, with 47 students going into a UX-based career within 6 months 

 

Olapic

User Researcher
September 2016 - December 2017

 

  • Led over 150 generative research sessions, which evangelized a user research-focused strategy across the organization 

  • Conducted over 75 usability tests, which resulted in actionable insights, increasing customer satisfaction scores (SUS) from 46 (below average) to 71 (above average), and increased overall task completion by 23% 

  • Leveraged personas to prioritize the feature roadmap, and empowered product managers and developers to write customer-centric user stories 

  • Used customer journey maps to inform sales strategy, and reduce client implementation timeline of our product by 50%, from 6 months to 2-3 months 

  • Gathered, shared, and maintained research in a “homemade” repository with effective search and discovery capability 

 

ALICE

User Researcher
December 2015 - September 2016

 

  • Led the full, end-to-end user research process for 15 projects  

  • Conducted over 50 usability tests, with actionable results leading to an overall redesign, increasing customer retention rates by 20%  

  • Created an overall framework for user research processes, and workshop facilitation, which enabled the creation of 4 personas, and a customer journey map, used by product managers and engineers to prioritize the roadmap 

 

Education

 

MEd - MA in Education
University of Exeter
2018-2021

MA in Psychology
The New School for Social Research
2013-2015

BA in Psychology & Education
Smith College
2007-2011