🕵️♀️ Role/Contribution: Co-Manager, Research Lead
🗓️ Timeline: 10 weeks
🛠️ Relevant Tools: UserTesting, FigJam
In the Summer of 2023, I co-managed the UX Intern with our team’s Staff UX Designer. This involved writing the job req, reviewing candidates, and interviewing candidates. As a researcher, I managed and led our intern through the first half of his internship, which included project planning, problem-scoping, generative research, and ideation. I also provided planning and coordination for the internship, such as:
Internship Planning Document: A FigJam file I created to provide an outline of the 10-week internship, with a targeted timeline for different stages of the UX cycle. This document included:
Onboarding/offboarding
Suggested coffee chats
Different stages of the UX cycle and related activities such as writing a screener, desk research, user interviews, etc.
Stakeholder meetings
1:1s
And more!
Ideation/Brainstorm Session: We gathered cross-functional partners (product manager, UX team, and engineering) and I coached our intern to lead an ideation and brainstorming session. We reviewed the research insights and, using those insights, we had everyone ideate on how to move forward with the project. This included clustering and dot voting with time for discussion.
Intern Reflection Activity: At the end of the internship, we wanted our intern to reflect on the parts of the UX cycle he enjoyed the most. I designed a reflection activity where we plotted all of his activities and deliverables on a double diamond diagram. From there, we used a matrix to plot his favorite activities such as usability testing, presenting to PM, sketching, iteration, and wireframing. Using a key, we looked at which types of roles most aligned with his interests.
As the only UX Researcher on a lean UX team, I provided research mentorship to various colleagues throughout the organization. This includes:
Staff UX Designer
Senior UX Designer
UX Engineer
Technical Product Managers
Customer Success/Support
Engineering
Some of the topics I consulted them on include:
Problem-scoping
Interview scripts
Screeners
Usability test scripts
Methodologies
Best practices
Using UserTesting
And more!
In my free time, I provide 1:1 mentorship through:
MICA (Ambassadorship Program)
Ideate Labs: Service Design Mentorship
User/Customer Interviewing 101: This is a workshop created by myself and the Director of UX Tarryn Lambert to teach UX, Product, Customer Success, Customer Support, Sales, and HR how to ask better questions. This interactive workshop covered:
Building rapport
Understanding Human Behavior
Activity: Thought exercise on recalling past New Year’s resolutions and what really happened
Avoiding biases
Activity: “A customer said they’d buy it but now they don’t want it” stories
Writing good questions
Activity: Notice the difference in asking questions 3 different ways (partner)
Making space for silence
Activity: Practice silent pauses (partner)
Introduction to Service Design: I created this presentation to introduce service design to UX-ers. I talk about what service design is, the history of service design, frontstage and backstage frameworks, service design methodologies, and more.
Understanding FigJam through HMW: During a 2022 employee hackathon event, I prepared a workshop to help get the company more familiarized with using FigJam. We had just switched to Figma from Invision/Sketch and FigJam was still relatively new then, so we started with an intro to help everyone learn how to use FigJam. We had ~70 people in one FigJam file, each with their own section so they could try out the different tools and shortcuts. After they got the hang of the various FigJam tools, we broke everyone into breakout rooms for a group brainstorming session. We gave them a “How might we…” statement and let them brainstorm together on stickie notes. Afterward, we walked the teams through grouping those ideas into themes or “clusters” and dot-voting on them. Many teams said they went back to use FigJam to do a similar activity once they started their hackathon project.
Empathy Mapping: For a 2022 employee hackathon event, I provided support to our Senior UX Designer, who wanted to teach an empathy mapping workshop. By this point, hackathon groups had been finalized and we wanted to teach the participants about empathy maps. We walked them through the exercise and then a storyboard after. Due to time contraints, the empathy maps weren’t research-based. However, it still allowed participants to put themselves into someone else’s shoes prior to jumping into design/code.
Makesensemess (November 2023 2024 — I was planning to speak during 2023 but had to defer to 2024 due to scheduling issues)
MICA Industry Immersive: Alumni Q&A Panel (April 2023, August 2023, October 2023)
Ideate Labs Women in Design Conference (November 2023)
Ladies That UX DC Q&A Panel: Transitioning Into a Career in UX (October 2023)
I created over 15 research, synthesis, ideation/brainstorming, and planning templates for company-wide use, used not only by the UX team but also Product, Engineering, Marketing, etc. These templates increased efficiency since they were ready to be used. This includes reusable templates for:
Problem-scoping
Affinity mapping
Segmentation analysis
Roadmapping
Ideation
Prioritization Matrix
I have created templates for public/community use on: