Experience

Crookedroads
Customer Development and UX Research Consultant – 2020 to Present

I work with zero-to-one, private capital ventures providing research mentorship and hands-on customer research, customer development, and design research to serve their unique needs. I also conduct strategic, foundational, and generative user research for established companies using qualitative, quantitative, and mixed-methods methodologies.

 

Mach49
Customer Development and UX Research Expert in Residence – 2019-2020

At Mach49, I worked side by side with intrapreneurial client teams over the course of 12-week incubations helping them to conduct research that uncovered acute customer pains, identified value propositions to address those pains, and fleshed out the value propositions into solid MVPs to present to their New Venture Boards for funding.
We conducted literally hundreds of one-on-one interviews over the course of an incubation to identify valuable and viable businesses for G1000 companies. I believe in the democratization of research—helping others develop empathy for their end-users affords the creation truly useful and viable businesses.

  • Led and co-hosted workshops for client teams of all sizes
  • Developed research and testing strategies and logistics for intrapreneurial teams
  • Facilitated the creation of testing stimuli in various degrees of fidelity throughout the 12-week incubation
  • Led research synthesis and translated observations into findings
  • Provided thought leadership on Mach49 research methodologies such as piloting new tactics for incorporation into the Mach49 user research toolkit

 

TripIt
Head of User Experience Research and Design – 2014 to 2019

TripIt is a little fish business unit of the big fish SAP Concur.

At TripIt, I started as the first research hire, building the practice. I soon moved into a broader UX leadership role to include developing the team of both researchers and designers. Working closely with our cross-functional partners we not only implemented key new functionality, we also completely transformed our iOS and Android apps to more effectively leverage native design patterns and affordances, meet AA accessibility standards, and overall create a more intuitive and usable IA and UI that was easily localizable. We were featured in the Apple App Store nearly two dozen times in 2018 and 2019 as a result of these efforts. I believe in hiring talented people, and giving them pastures, not leashes to bring out the best in them.

  • Crafted and communicated TripIt’s long-term design strategy
  • Developed/Defined and implemented research and design processes and tools across the development cycle for both TripIt and our sister company, Hipmunk
  • Hired, led, and developed a team of stellar user experience designers and researchers
  • Promoted human-centered design thinking mindset and methods across the organization
  • Fostered close collaboration with cross-functional partners (PM, Dev, Marketing, Business) to create experiences for travelers and travel planners that are useful, intuitive, and that delivered value to the business

 

TripIt
Founding Design Researcher – 2013 to Present

As TripIt’s first in-house Design Researcher, I was responsible for establishing and growing the practice from scratch. This included everything from evangelizing research and user-centered design with cross-functional partners, developing annual budgets, establishing a process for building and maintaining a research participant panel, recruiting, conducting and reporting out on myriad research studies and participatory design exercises. In addition to providing immediately actionable recommendations, I championed the development and ongoing “maintenance” of a single set of personas for use across the organization, led design thinking workshops, and overall created a more user-centered culture.

 

Oracle– 2013
Principal Design Researcher

  • Created and improved user experiences for Oracle’s health and life science products by leveraging human-centered research and design methodologies.
  • Led user research for development of a first-generation, consumer-facing mobile application and enterprise website for a strategic, new life sciences product.
  • Defined and nurtured implementation of long-term research plan to support the development of mobile app for chronic disease management and accompanying SaaS online portal. Plan emphasized leveraging early, formative research methodologies.
  • Mentored, and provided day-to-day direction to associate researchers
  • Guided stakeholder mapping and development of primary and secondary personas
  • Conducted field research to inform the design of a clinical decision support system

 

User-Centered Design Research Consultant – 2011 to 2013

In a consulting role, I worked with individuals and organizations who require user research on an ad hoc, or recurring basis.  I also offered day-long usability testing training workshops and on-going coaching to UX Professionals and Product Managers.

Clients included:
VolunteerMatch, JCPenney, Stubhub

 

Walmart Global eCommerce – 2009 to 2011
Manager, User Research

  • Worked closely with PMs, UX Team, and Business Owners on the development of Walmart’s U.S. website and mWeb features in a high-profile and fast-paced environment.
  • Provided guidance and research consulting to in-country global eCommerce teams, including evangelizing various research methodologies.
  • Managed and/or conducted exploratory, competitive, and feature user testing research, both in-person and remotely to inform the development of features from home-page through checkout.
  • Extensively leveraged RITE methodology to reduce both time-to-market and costs.
  • Managed and/or conducted competitive comparative and expert reviews.
  • Sourced, on-boarded, and trained user research consultants; mentored junior researchers.

 

Electronic Arts | Pogo.com – 2007 to 2009
User Experience Research Manager

  • Managed all aspects of qualitative research and usability testing of games and features for the web’s stickiest social-networking-based casual gaming site.
  • Championed the player perspective from concept to post-launch.
  • Developed discussion guides/qualitative surveys, recruited participants and conducted in situ and remote research studies.
  • Translated research findings into actionable design recommendations.
  • Compared system-reported analytic data against user self-reported behaviors to identify potential problem areas.
  • Managed external research consultants for strategic new Kids game site initiative.
  • Led redesign strategy of Pogo’s Beta Testing Program, working with game designers, producers, engineers, and QA to identify, prioritize and implement improvements.

 

eBay (toca client) – 2007
Research consultant: Desktop application that facilitates customer service and quality control activities across global contact centers

  • Developed workflow task maps based on contextual inquiry with Customer Service Agents (CSAs) and workshops with SMEs.
  • Conducted quantitative baseline study to measure CSA and system performance of existing tools. Identified a set of design opportunities for both system and UI based on observed patterns and task time measurements.
  • Collaborated on design and facilitation of qualitative prototype study with CSAs to evaluate effectiveness and adoption risks of UI approaches under consideration by product managers and design team.

 

Department of Defense (IA Collaborative client) – 2007
Research consultant: DoD website for government personnel and families, general public and media

  • Conducted contextual inquiries to decompose the types of and methods and tools with which constituents within a government sector access and exchange information.
  • Conducted camera study to understand how users shape their environments to support information exchange.
  • Insights were used to create user profiles, mental models and to identify information needs for each user profile.