Mixed-methods research · Research operations · AI in research
Adaptive research to support a consistently shifting landscape.
Philosophy
S-01Start from the decision on the table and choose the method that can answer it: qualitative, quantitative, or both.
Build the operations, standards, and AI that carry findings past the readout and into the room where decisions get made.
Practice
S-02A study starts with the questions that the current open decisions depend on. Everything else branches from there.
Strategy, discovery, launch, iteration, and the long maintenance tail after. Research belongs at every stage, and the methods adjust as needed.
Models help with execution, like screening, tagging, and first-pass synthesis. Direction and the important decisions stay with a person in the loop.
Researchers do the research. Stakeholders get flexible, unrestricted access to what we've found, and can ask about it in their own words, in the context of the problem they're trying to solve.
Selected work
S-03Stakeholders don't chase down findings any more than users read instructions. Three systems later, a knowledge base lets them ask research their own questions, in their own words.
Multi-round research, generative through evaluative, landed on one finding that reshaped where help shows up in the product: people don't go looking for it. It has to find them.
A diary study on an unreleased build found self-managed security asked too much of the average user, and reshaped the product around built-in IT support instead.
Impact
S-04Experience
S-05Sr. User Experience Researcher
2021 — PresentI research across the full consumer product portfolio, and across the full life of each product too, from strategic groundwork through launch, iteration, and long-term maintenance. The method changes depending on the stage.
UX Researcher, Contract · Personal Systems Software
May — Nov 2021At HP I ran launch-aligned studies across Wolf Security, including VPN and antivirus protection, plus webcam utilities and HP Dev One. I also facilitated design thinking workshops with a cross-functional team spanning several business units.
Principal User Experience Researcher
2018 — 2021I scoped and ran full research programs for clients in travel, health and wellness, and personal organization, across various platforms.
Methods
S-06One-on-one conversations that surface the reasoning behind what people do.
Immersive observation of people in their natural setting to understand behavior in context.
Observing people in their own environment as they work through a real task.
Structured sessions where teams and users produce early concepts together.
Participants group and label content to reveal the mental model behind an information architecture.
Consolidating research into a small set of user models teams can design against.
Charting the full path a person takes across touchpoints to locate friction and gaps.
Watching people attempt real tasks to find where a design breaks down.
Testing, fixing, and retesting in short cycles so each change is validated as it's made.
Putting an early idea in front of users to check the premise before anything gets built.
Expert review of an interface against established usability principles.
Running identical tasks across competing designs to see which performs better.
Participants log experiences over days or weeks to capture behavior across time.
Structuring questions so the resulting data answers the question actually being asked.
Testing whether observed differences in the data are real or noise.
Structuring A/B and multivariate tests so results are attributable to the change.
A single-question loyalty benchmark, tracked over time and read alongside qualitative signal.
Measuring the same population repeatedly to see how attitudes and behavior shift.
Measuring whether a released feature is found, used, and kept.
Models handle transcription, tagging, and first-pass analysis under defined review standards.
A searchable store of findings so prior work is reused rather than rediscovered.
Tooling and templates that let stakeholders answer routine questions without a full study.
Documented expectations for method, sample, and rigor at each stage of the life cycle.
Onboarding and coaching researchers through study design review and craft feedback.
Aligning partners on the question, the method, and what the findings can and can't decide.
Tools
S-07Your session
S-08Every visit here is a small usability session. I observe it the way I'd observe any study, with the same respect for the participant. Everything above was measured in this tab alone, is stored nowhere, and disappears when you leave.