About Me

A mixed-methods UX Researcher and Rapport Builder, with over 9 years of combined industry and academic experience conducting applied user research, using qualitative and evaluative research methods to uncover strategic insights about user experience of digital products, and collaborating with UX design teams and developers to translate insights into impacts and business values.

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Empathetic Researcher

I’m extremely fascinated by the process of creating new knowledge and understanding how the world works. In my academic research, I create knowledge to support how people learn from multimedia, instructional cases, and digital environments. Part of my research interest is understanding how people work in digital environments, factors that support their success, and promote inclusive work environments. I have collaborated with researchers across multiple institutions and continents on a number of projects addressing these interests.

As a UX Researcher, I’m Passionate about understanding human experience as a user, learner, and customer, studying attitudinal and behavioral processes that influence human decision making when interacting with a product or patronizing a service and uncovering strategic insights for developing digital products that elevate user experience, improve their lives, and generate business values and impacts.

I engage the ABCD Model of thinking about successful user research and product design:

Digital product design ⇄ digital experience ⇄ user ABCD (Affects, Behaviors, Cognition) ⇄ User Decision making

According to the ABCD Model, great design leads to great experience; great experience leads to positive feelings and emotions (Affect), good demeanor (Behaviors), and pleasant thoughts and perception of the product (Cognition), which in turn leads to product adoption and use (Decision-making).

My strength and passion are more focused on research, collaborating with cross-functional product design teams to cross out assumptions and collect evidence through interviews, ethnographic observations, qualitative usability studies, diary studies, experiments and efficacy studies, secondary data analysis, and surveys.

    Research Skills

  • Qualitative Usability Testing
  • User Interviews and Surveys
  • Contextual Inquiry and Diaries
  • Affinity Diagramming
  • Empathy Mapping
  • User Personas and Storyboarding
  • User Journey Mapping
  • Story Telling & Communication
  • Cross-functional Teams Collaboration

    Tools and Software

  • Miro, Mural, Slides, PowerPoint
  • Qualtrics, Google, MS Forms
  • User Interviews, UX Tweak
  • Zoom, Google Meet, Teams, Slack
  • SPSS, Excel, NVIVO, ATLAS.ti, JASP

Research Journey

In my previous jobs, I worked closely with cross-functional product design teams in testing educational mobile app designs with the end-users to get feedback and understand their needs, pain points, and how they feel about learning with the app, to improve the user experience.

I observed users as they interacted with the app, took note of their needs, behaviors, comments, pain points, exclamations, and facial expressions, seeking to know how they felt about the app. I communicated my findings to the design team and followed up to ensure everyone understood the users’ needs and the needed design changes, which led to a successful launch and the large-scale adoption of the app by public and private institutions.

I also leveraged data and feedback from support tickets in iterating our digital product design templates, layouts, functionalities, interactivity, and usability to improve user experience in terms of addressing their pain points, designing for low-internet connectivity, inclusive design, visual and auditory accessibility, visual enjoyment, and functionalities.

My strength and passion are more focused on research, collaborating with cross-functional product design teams to cross out assumptions and collect evidence through interviews, ethnographic observations, qualitative usability studies, diary studies, experiments and efficacy studies, secondary data analysis, and surveys.

In this case study, I showcase a moderated qualitative usability study with interviews and personas

MobiLearn App

This case study showcases an unmoderated usability study, with empathy maps and user journeys.

Web Usability Testing

UX Research and Design Skills

  • Qualitative Usability Testing
  • User Interviews and Surveys
  • Contextual Inquiry and Diaries
  • Affinity Diagramming
  • Empathy Mapping
  • User Personas and Storyboarding
  • User Journey Mapping
  • Story Telling & Communication
  • Cross-functional Teams Collaboration

 Tools and Software

  • Miro, Mural, Slides, PowerPoint
  • Qualtrics, Google, MS Forms
  • User Interviews, UX Tweak, Others
  • Zoom, Google Meet, Teams, Slack
  • SPSS, Excel, NVIVO, ATLAS.ti, JASP

Achievements

  • I was chosen for the Society of Multivariate Experimental Psychology (SMEP) Minority Workshop Award
  • I received the American Educational Research Association (AERA)-Spencer Meta-Analysis Fellowship
  • Our paper ‘Optimizing Case-based Instruction in Teacher Education: Generating versus Modeling Solutions for Improvement Over Time’, co-authored with Kira Carbonneau, Sarah Abercrombie, and Carolyn Hushman was accepted for presentation at the American Educational Research Association (AERA) Annual Meeting, San Diego, California USA (2022, April 21-26).
  • My co-authored paper Spirituality and prosocial behavior: The influence of Prosocial media and empathy, was accepted for presentation at the American Educational Research Association (AERA) Annual Meeting, San Diego, California USA (2022, April 21-26).
  • I won the College of Education Three-Minute Thesis Award, Washington State University

My Current Role

I am currently a Ph.D. candidate in educational psychology, with a focus on multimedia learning. In my current role as a graduate assistant, I am conducting a usability testing and remote focused-group norming session for our Global Campus Course Rubrics (GCCR) to gather insight for improvement from end-users. I work with multiple teams, from IT to Accessibility, Emerging Tech, and Multimedia, to provide the best experience for our online students and faculty. Some of the exciting projects I have worked on across multiple teams include:

  • Campus-wide migration of online courses from our former LMS to the Canvas LMS
  • Planning, design, and launch of the ‘Faculty’s Weekly Tips’ Website
  • Design and deployment of new Faculty Packet for online course facilitation and design.
  • Project lead for the redesign of the ‘Excellence in Online Teaching Certificate’ Course
  • Reviewer for the Online Teaching Orientation (OTO) for Faculty teaching online courses
  • The campus-wide transition of WSU Faculty and students to Online instruction during the COVID-19 Pandemic lockdown
  • Cohort-based summer training for faculty on online course facilitation during the pandemic.
  • Cleaning, organizing, and analysis of faculty’s training data for the continuous improvement of our professional development programs
  • Supporting faculty as subject-matter experts in developing open education resources for their online courses
  • Supporting faculty to develop their online course environment (LMS) to reflect best practices and foster student learning experience and success.

I observed users as they interacted with the app, took note of their needs, behaviors, comments, pain points, exclamations, and facial expressions, seeking to know how they felt about the app. I communicated my findings to the design team and followed up to ensure everyone understood the users’ needs and the needed design changes.

As I do now, I did not yet know about creating a persona, empathy map, user stories, user journey maps, problem statements, competitor audit, user flow, storyboards, wireframes, prototype, or information architecture. I did more observations, interviews, note-taking, and sense-making of the data we collected in the process, in collaboration with the design team, which led to a successful launch and the large-scale adoption of the app by public and private institutions.

I also leveraged data and feedback from support tickets in iterating our digital product design templates, layouts, functionalities, interactivity, and usability to improve user experience in terms of addressing their pain points, designing for low-internet connectivity, inclusive design, visual and auditory accessibility, visual enjoyment, and functionalities.

Research Journey

In my previous jobs, I worked closely with cross-functional product design teams in testing educational mobile app designs with the end-users to get feedback and understand their needs, pain points, and how they feel about learning with the app, to improve the user experience.

I observed users as they interacted with the app, took note of their needs, behaviors, comments, pain points, exclamations, and facial expressions, seeking to know how they felt about the app. I communicated my findings to the design team and followed up to ensure everyone understood the users’ needs and the needed design changes, which led to a successful launch and the large-scale adoption of the app by public and private institutions.

I also leveraged data and feedback from support tickets in iterating our digital product design templates, layouts, functionalities, interactivity, and usability to improve user experience in terms of addressing their pain points, designing for low-internet connectivity, inclusive design, visual and auditory accessibility, visual enjoyment, and functionalities.

My strength and passion are more focused on research, collaborating with cross-functional product design teams to cross out assumptions and collect evidence through interviews, ethnographic observations, qualitative usability studies, diary studies, experiments and efficacy studies, secondary data analysis, and surveys.

My Top 5 Gallup Strength

Here are my Top 5 Strengths and their Gallup StrengthQuest descriptions, which perfectly describe me.

Strategic

According to Gallup, people exceptionally talented in the Strategic theme create alternative ways to proceed. faced with any given scenario, they can quickly spot the relevant patterns and issues.

Learner

People exceptionally talented in the Learner theme have a great desire to learn and want to continuously improve. The process of learning, rather than the outcome, excites them.

Maximizer

People exceptionally talented in the Maximizer theme focus on strengths as a way to stimulate personal and group excellence. They seek to transform something strong into something superb.

Achiever

People exceptionally talented in the Achiever theme work hard and possess a great deal of stamina. They take immense satisfaction in being busy and productive.

Ideation

People exceptionally talented in the Ideation theme are fascinated by ideas. They are able to find connections between seemingly disparate phenomena.

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