My approach to user experience design and research focuses on a problem to solve.  It continually asks – what problem are we solving and are we meeting our measures of success? I am passionate about user research and believe in building experiences that are grounded in it.

I find that it’s easy to love a design solution and even dig into the details of how it should look and interact, but a great design understands the core problem and uses data to guide decision making.  I use research and analytics to understand current state. Learning about people’s current work practices and their challenges provides great insights into the problem.  Usability studies of wireframes and interactive prototypes validate design assumptions for an iterative design process.

I love to engage key stakeholders, designers, product managers, technical writers and engineers, and share my data-driven design process.  My approach follows the design thinking ideology and process documented by the Nielsen Norman group:

How I start a new project:

At the beginning of any new project, I seek out answers to these questions:

1. What problem are we solving?  Who experiences this problem?  Why is it important?
2. What business objective(s) are we trying to achieve?
3. Are there any existing designs or solutions?
4. What data and prior research do we have?
5. Who are the stakeholders?  Are they aligned?
6. Have we defined how we’ll measure impact? 

Collecting this information, I create a plan for moving the project forward, such as additional research or experimentation, a collaborative workshop, or creative design work.

My research methods:

My research artifacts:

My design artifacts: