After a few career pivots and soul searching, I discovered that my niche/"sweet spot" is UX research and strategy.  

UX research and strategy combine: what I love, what I'm good at, what the world needs, and what I am paid for. UX research is my "Ikigai" - which is the Japanese word meaning "reason for being". (Ikigai is often explained visually, in a venn diagram, which makes it easier to understand and I think the visualization looks pretty cool.)

Research and strategy allow me to combine right and left-brained thinking that scratches my creative itch, in a way that is challenging, inspiring, and fulfilling. Yes, this profession does make it easier to jump out of bed each morning. I know I'll be working in a "flow state" while helping create new and improved experiences for others. This is my way of "making a dent in the universe".

Responsibilities

• Plan, manage, and conduct end-to-end research by writing plans, running studies, and then presenting results/recommendations to different audiences at various levels throughout an organization

• Work iteratively to support cross-functional product teams in creating, testing, and validating concepts for products/services

• Work flexibly to address constraints in approach, scope, timeframe, and budget through the versatile use of mixed-methods (qualitative and quantitative), generative, and/or evaluative research (testing)

• Collect, analyze, and report on key metrics (KPIs) to ensure clients accomplish their goals for users and the business, as well as assess the positive impact and return on investment (ROI) of UX work

• Document/share bugs and feature requests emerging from research to help inform product and engineering prioritization

• Manage relationships with contractors/freelance providers, third party vendors, and external recruiters

• Design cross-functional workshops and create new opportunities for non-UX team members to contribute, share their perspectives, and hear directly from users/customers about usability, efficacy, and desirability issues

• Develop ways to increase the frequency and consistency of research throughout my team, department, and company

• Proactively build deeper relationships with team members and other coworkers to understand their needs, help streamline decision-making, achieve alignment, and collaborate more effectively

• Mentor and coach less experienced team members

• Look for opportunities to improve operational processes (UX Ops) that increase the quality of work, then create templates, guides, and other resources that increase the adoption of new techniques and technologies

• Evangelizes user experience by building an inclusive and collaborative culture that democratizes research through socialization and education

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Services Offered

• UX Audit (expert review)

• Bespoke Research

• Prototype Validation

• Research Sprint

• Strategy Sprint

• Design Sprint

• Custom Workshop

• UX Training (upskill)

• Career Coaching

I don't have a one-size-fits-all, reusable process. 

Rather, my processes are contextual due to project demands and constraints, as well as the needs of my clients. My processes are ever-evolving as I gain more experience. So I don't have just one process to show you. 

My process is open, transparent, and collaborative:

I bring others into my process, I'm not a "black box" solo practitioner. Through co-working sessions, discussions, meetings, and workshops I share my work, show progress as I go, and check in for milestones to ensure everyone is aligned, on the same page, and has shared expectations to achieve success.

My general UX process is heavily influenced by: 

• design thinking and human-centered design (HCD) (popularized by IDEO and Stanford - which I first embraced in grad school)

• goal-directed design (developed by Cooper - where I was an intern)

• Bauhaus design (which I adopted in college) 

My work is also grounded in the theory and practice of skills which I have developed in continuing professional education:

• human-computer interaction (HCI)

• cognitive psychology

• behavioral psychology

• ethnography

• business design

• service design

• participatory design

• "lean startup" based entrepreneurship

• Design sprint (v1.0 - 4.0)

Mo is familiar with many types of research - including but not limited to: 

• survey/questionnaire writing

• interviewing/contextual inquiry

• usability testing

• competitive analysis/secondary research/meta-analysis

• workshop design and facilitation

• UX design/prototyping

• presenting/reporting

• user journey mapping/story mapping

• UX benchmarking

• heuristic evaluation

• ethnographic observation

• concept testing

• user personas/empathy mapping

• desirability testing

• card sorting

• content auditing

• and more!

Woo

I love the challenge of meeting new people and winning them over. I derive satisfaction from breaking the ice and making a connection with another person.

Strategic

I create alternative ways to proceed. Faced with any given scenario, I can quickly spot the relevant patterns and issues.

Futuristic

I am inspired by the future and what could be. I aim to inspire others with my visions of what is next.

Individualization

I am intrigued with the unique qualities of others. I have a gift for figuring out how people who are different can work together productively.

Overall

I’d describe myself as a collaborative, communicative, and optimistic person. My colleagues would describe me as determined, energetic, and proactive. I naturally search for better ways of doing things in all domains of my life and work. When I come up with new ideas, I prefer to build up a consensus, feeling that I’m supported by others before I commit myself. Coordinating and structuring the efforts of other people is where I excel.

A Closer Look At Personas (2-part Series) - In Smashing Magazine

• • How to develop and utilize personas to create a nuanced and empathetic mindset from which to generate more user-centric concepts.

  • These articles were later utilized or referenced in books, textbooks, and university course packs including: Design Is Storytelling by Ellen Lupton, Interaction Design: Beyond Human-Computer Interaction (4th Edition), A Field Guide To User Research, and Harvard Business Review “Entrepreneurship Laboratory" MBA course

Creating Wireframes And Prototypes With InDesign in Smashing Magazine

• • Learn how to use Indesign as a powerful supplement to traditional UX tools that can produce interactive and responsive websites.

  • This article as alter utilized and referenced in the online video training course “UX Design Tools: InDesign” on Lynda.com 

iOS Prototyping With TAP And Adobe Fireworks (3-part series) in Smashing Magazine

• • Augment existing wireframing tools with this unique plugin to create animated ios prototypes that respond to gestures in minutes.

Evolution of the Protest

• • Educational materials designed for and utilized by Howard Rheingold to teach courses at the UC Berkeley School of Information and Stanford University School of Communication

Referenced in the following books: Design is Storytelling, Interaction Design: Beyond Human-Computer Interaction, 101 Design Methods: A Structured Approach for Driving Innovation in Your Organization

Referenced in course materials at the following universities: Stanford, UC Berkeley, and Harvard

Curriculum and learning design content created for: Flatiron School, Designation, and Curiosity Tank, and IDEOU

Design and Sustainability at CreativeMornings Chicago

• • Spoke with three other creative professionals on a panel to explore how creativity and technology work in harmony to cultivate sustainable solutions in Chicago.

Imposter Syndrome at Flatiron School (Designation)

• • Produced and facilitated a multimodal event that helped bootcamp students learn to identify feelings of fear and self-doubt while practicing skills to manage feeling like a fraud as new professionals in tech.

Constraints and Adaptations at Flatiron School (Designation)

• • Lectured about how embracing constraints leads to great design

User-Centered Design and Code-Free Prototyping at Barah Tikun Olam Hackathon

• • Introduced non-designers to the fundamentals of UCD, design thinking, and prototyping without code.

User Story Mapping for Agile Teams at the SF Lean Startup Circle

• • Spoke about how product teams can enhance collaboration by adopting a methodology that defines a shared vision that is always in sync, while liberating each discipline to work with different views of the same map using their own preferred tools.

Intrapreneurialism is in my DNA. I strive to maximize my impact by developing improved processes that empower those I work with to be more efficient, effective, and collaborative at a team, department, and company-wide scale.

Flatiron School

• Co-developed improved project management processes used by instructors globally to automate routine tasks, and reduce the amount of time instructors need to spend on administrative work while also increasing transparency among teams, making collaboration easier

Accenture

• Led feedback and ideation sessions with multiple internal studios to increase the quality and flexibility of materials consultants use to successfully apply design thinking and workshop methodology across Accenture

Allstate

• Developed the foundations of a video repository that would allow researchers to easily discover relevant moments tagged in footage gathered by other teams

UserTesting

• Established a new process and format for designing user journeys that enabled product management, engineering, and design get on the same page while viewing and manipulating parts of the journey in different ways beneficial to each discipline and trained key employees in this new process to support adoption

• Established a communication process and meeting format to unite the previously siloed departments of Customer Success, Technical Support, Client Research Services, and Product so they could regularly to share perspectives on users and develop a shared understanding of their customers

Hearsay Systems

• Initiated the regular use of remote usability testing tools and among the product team and created documentation and templates to support adoption

• Led an initiative to update client contracts with the legal team to gain access to users for research purposes

Salesforce

• Established a new methodology for prototyping and trained key employees in this new process to support adoption - this methodology was later published online on a professional UX blog and as part of a lynda.com video series

• Initiated collaboration with internal training teams to Identify areas of the product that were difficult for users to learn to improve future product development, and enhance training / onboarding materials

Cooper

• Established a new methodology for rapid prototyping for the iPad that retained current tools and processes while streamlining and increasing flexibility of production. Trained key employees in this new prototyping process to support adoption - this methodology was later published online in a professional UX blog

• Wrote a series of blog posts about personas as a research methodology, which were later published in books, textbooks, and university course packs