I have experience leading qualitative and quantitative research including usability studies, surveys, product usability benchmarks, end-to-end experience studies, heuristic evaluations, focus groups, and participatory design workshops.

Note: most the findings from these studies cannot be shown publicly. Identifying features have been scrubbed from the assets below which are intended to give a general feel for my experience.

LUMA

The LUMA Institute describes their approach as “a practical, easy-to-learn, flexible and scalable framework that people can apply in their daily work to tackle problems of all sizes.”

I am a LUMA certified practicioner and have completed the following training courses:

• LUMA Introduction to Innovation through Human-Centered Design (July 2015)
• LUMA Advancing Innovation through Human-Centered Design (July 2015)
• LUMA Advanced Facilitation (August 2016)

The LUMA approach consists of familiar research methods (in addition to synthesis & creation) that are strung together to collaboratively work towards desired outcomes. I have used these with in-person and remote teams, internally and with customers.

• Interviewing
• Think-Aloud Testing
• Stakeholder Mapping to understand the human side of a system
• Rose Thorn Bud, Visualize the Vote, and Affinity Clustering to solicit feedback
• What’s on Your Radar for prioritization
• Abstraction Laddering to reconsider problem statements

Usability Benchmarking

“If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it,” so the saying goes.

I have led efforts to quantify and track product usability ranging from customer satisfaction and system usability scores to full product usability benchmarking.

The benchmark study is conducted with 15-20 users. We measure completion rate, time on task, and satisfaction to establish a usability indices for the product as a whole and also by key functional area. The first time we conducted this study, I identified over 80 usability and bug fix opportunities in addition to the quantitative outcomes.

The benchmark was so successful in illustrating the importance of usability to the development team that we prioritized a “top usability” initiative for each release over three years, continually addressing the top 5-10 usability issues.

Usability factors by functional area

Total Experience Mapping

Framework

As Autodesk moved from perpetual desktop licenses to connected subscription services, the full end-to-end user experience became more important than ever for acquiring and retaining customers.

The total experience project was an undertaking to develop a company-wide framework that would allow us to map and measure the experience to improve it over time. The framework was synthesized from a series workshops in which I participated alongside many cross-divisional and cross-functional colleagues.

Total Experience Study

In this study, our team took a multifaceted approach to apply the Total Experience framework, starting by mobilizing internal stakeholders from all functional areas. This was a crucial step, instilling an early sense of ownership in the findings, opportunities, and actions.

With a user researcher I planned, facilitated, and analyzed the following:

• Stakeholder interviews with functional leads (support, sales, marketing, etc.)
• Heuristic evaluations with functional experts
• In-lab usability testing with users
• Customer satisfaction surveys
• Community analysis across forums and social

Outcomes

One of the most valuable outcomes was the alignment and collaboration that arose from bringing together the various stakeholders and empowering them to identify and own opportunities in their functional area. We identified about 100 of these opportunities for improvement. I presented our story and findings at the first Autodesk UX Summit in the fall of 2014.

Experience Map

A core deliverable was a consolidated experience map that provides a concise picture of what a user is doing, thinking, and feeling at each subphase in the customer journey. It combines quantitative data with real quotes and observations. This has been used to get buy-in from leadership, begin cross-functional collaborative conversations, and mobilize the development teams.