Company Leadership

Being in a UX Research role naturally requires leadership, with or without direct reports, as Researchers often must facilitate a conversation and process of collaboration within cross-functional groups. In this effort, I’ve learned some tricks, like the importance of setting an agenda ahead of time and providing the group some “reading time” to go through a report (let’s be honest, sometimes those reports don’t get read otherwise).

Below you’ll find examples of the ways in which I manage research in collaboration with an agile team. This starts with stakeholder interviews, from which I derive research initiatives that could be pursued. I mapped these initiatives into a Jira Roadmap, which I reviewed with Design and Product leaders for approval and prioritization, then tied tickets on our team’s board to tickets in the scrum team’s boards.

I also show a few examples of how I work to standardize process, which is revolves around documentation. Each research method I utilize gets a written description, which is meant to be a reference for anyone at the company to use in understanding what’s being done. I also write up templates, with instructions, for designing and reporting out a study. Feel free to download and utilize these in your own company’s work!

My position at LegalShield also gave me opportunity to work as a Lead mentoring and managing a direct report and a small team. The opportunity to support younger researchers develop an understanding of how to run projects and manage corporate culture is one of my favorite aspects of where I’ve come in my career.

Below are documents illustrating how I set up and managed our team of two, including weekly team meetings (“The Most Dangerous”) with our manager, one-on-ones, vendor relationships, and our annual budget. This is meant to give a good idea of how I organize group work in general, as well. I extend the same type of support to any of my younger peers who seek it..

Community Leadership

Since early 2019, I’ve been part of a team of Design Leaders building community around Design in Oklahoma City. Together we run a monthly meetup group called Oklahoma City Design + Tech, which is sponsored by the non-profit group Techlahoma.

We strive to cover a diversity of topics in diverse formats. One of our primary purposes is giving community members the opportunity to practice public speaking and presentation skills. In service of that intention, I try to focus my public presence as a support role. I facilitate meetups, panels and interviews. Like a guiding principal in working with teammates, my aim is to keep the spotlight on what’s being offered by our brave presenters.