Resume
EXPERIENCE
User Experience Researcher (Jun 2022 – Present)
Amazon Web Services (AWS), Arlington, VA. As a UX Researcher on the Commerce Platform team in AWS, I lead user research for our business partners to help customer understand and optimize costs. I educate teams of UX Design, Product Management, Engineering, Business Development, and Marketing to better understand customer needs, wants and motivations. I lead end-to-end user research initiatives, using appropriate qualitative and quantitative methodologies to help identify and solve wider customer challenges.
Key job responsibilities
Scaling and shaping the UX research function
Prioritizing and conducting independent research to understand and advocate for customer needs and pain-points
Conduct end-to-end user research studies; planning, recruitment, execution, analysis and delivery
Make decisions to evaluate which user research methodology approaches work, and which don’t with an expertise in a wide variety of methodologies
Advise and educate partner teams and help determine appropriate research methodologies to implement into their product roadmap
Translate user insights into strategic recommendations to help product partners make informed decisions
Structure, organize and advocate research and the impact on product design, go-to-market, and future user research with partner teams through written reports and presentations
User Experience Researcher (Aug 2019 – Jun 2022)
Capital One, McLean, VA. Manage and conduct user research and concept development to connect users in the Capital One Enterprise as a researcher on the PowerUp Experience Delivery team. Responsibilities include:
Scoping projects and recommending methodologies to use to achieve business goals.
Working with multi-disciplinary teams (researchers, design, development, data, and change management) to solve problems.
Leading study planning activities from recruiting, scheduling, and session setup.
Synthesizing research findings and effectively communicating research insights in ways that make them easily accessible and actionable by various stakeholders, such as through visual information design.
Facilitating studies in person and remotely.
Optimizing and communicating methodologies, tools, standards, and best practices for user research.
User Experience Researcher (Jan 2018 – Jul 2019)
Fors Marsh Group, Arlington, VA. Design and oversee research projects to address client needs. Manage operations and logistics for projects, including data collection, analysis, interpretation, and the final creation of deliverables. Enforce quality control procedures to ensure accuracy and alignment with project needs. Serve as organizational eye-tracking expert to guide project integration of eye-tracking and analysis of the resulting data. Project highlights include:
National Cancer Institute (NCI) – Served as Project Lead and Primary Analyst for several studies through the NCI Open Call Program, which serves to provide internal project teams at NCI with a Federal grant-supported means of evaluating websites, prototypes, online tools, cancer image databases and other NCI-related web content.
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) – Designed and executed several projects across different teams within CFPB. Delivered recommendations for products including email templates, website features, and organizational workflows.
Facebook – Joint Project lead on an initiative to provide guidance on features designed to improve consumers’ experience with and perception of social media platforms. Delivered actionable findings based on in-depth interviews and usability testing with eye-tracking.
National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) – Conducted a heuristic evaluation, in-depth interviews, competitive trends analysis, and design thinking workshop to provide recommendations for the NIMH website design.
Cotton Council International (CCI) – Constructed an accessibility heuristic based on Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0. Administered a Heuristic Evaluation evaluating the website prototypes and combined the findings from two evaluators.
Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) – Project Lead for a study testing prototypes of a few CMS webpages. Delivered detailed qualitative and eye-tracking findings to the design team for implementation.
Fors Marsh Group (FMG) – Joint Research Lead for iterative design of a new company website. Moderated several rounds of interviews with FMG employees and provided design recommendations for internal design teams.
User Experience Research Intern (May 2017 – Dec 2017)
Fors Marsh Group, LLC, Arlington, VA.
Graduate Research Assistant (Sep 2016 - Dec 2017)
Social Robotics and Embodied Cognition Lab (Dr. Eva Wiese)
Perform duties associated with running participants and managing the eye-tracking technology for study associating ascription of humanness with congruency of gaze reactions
SKILLS
Software
Microsoft Office, SPSS, Stata, R, Photoshop
Methodology
Eye-tracking, Task-Analysis, Personas, Use Cases, Usability Testing Process Design, A/B Testing, In-Depth Interviews, Heuristic Evaluation, Survey Design, Design Thinking, Wireframing, Prototyping
EDUCATION
Masters in Human Factors and Applied Cognition
George Mason University
Graduated Dec 2017
Bachelors in Neuroscience
Minor in Psychology and Chemistry
George Mason University
Graduated May 2015
RELATED COURSEWORK
Usability Testing, Research Methods in Human Factors, Cognitive Engineering, Advanced Statistics I & II, Social Robotics, Individual Differences in Cognition, Psychometrics
INDEPENDENT PROJECTS AND COMPETITIONS
Conducted a full usability and user experience study by identifying opportunities for innovation with current video streaming apps and designing a prototype of an alternative app to integrate current positives with innovative approaches to improve user experience.
Identified and explored opportunities for innovation in how general aviation pilots (GAP) prepare for and conduct their flights while interacting with key FAA systems. Proposed the design of a “Smart Maps” system that integrates AI and existing systems to reduce cognitive workload on GAPs.
Over one day, worked with a group of participants to design, iterate, develop and present a solution to a problem presented by Facebook on its Instagram app.
Using the human factors and ergonomics approach, designed a prototype of a mobile app to track progress of patients in rehab while keeping them task-motivated.
Analyzed the usability and compliance to human factors design principles of a food-ordering app.
PROFESSIONAL GROUPS
Human Factors and Ergonomics Society
Treasurer in George Mason University Student Chapter
National Society of Collegiate Scholars