Yahoo!

Design Research, 2011 - 2013

I joined Yahoo during a summer internship as design strategist which evolved into a fulltime position as a design researcher.

Working as a design researcher at Yahoo allowed me to refine my skills in understanding people, bringing teams together, and evaluating ideas with prototyping and usability testing.

Developing User Empathy

At Yahoo! I had the space to practice ethnography with both users that reality tested our assumptions and inspired us to explore new areas.

While it was easy to walk away from field studies inspired, the more difficult job was building frameworks that could help teams make sense of it all. An understanding of user experience mapping and research analysis helped me do that.

Creating Shared Understanding

I still believe the most important factor for determing whether a team to deliver the best product they're capable of producing is the ability to develop a group mind. With each project and workshop I ran, I evolved my ability to balance the needs of creating a shared understanding for each team with the intent of generating concepts that had the potential for a strong product market fit.

Evaluating Concepts

I also was able to work with worldclass usability and HCI professionals that have helped me hone my own usability methodology.

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my approach to design research.