🦚 About Me
For as long as I can remember, I’ve believed in a people-first mentality. This directed me to opportunities where I could provide a positive impact on people and support them further. Whether that was through tutoring math, or working at political advocacy and social impact organizations, to now focusing on UX Research and advocating for users needs by building better digital products.
In my past life, prior to transitioning and working as a UX Researcher, I was all consumed with product and business analytics. I love the details and issues that are uncovered through data and reconciling the behaviours of users found through data with qualitative insights. My analytics background is what eventually led me to explore the wider world of UX Research.
I’m currently based in Toronto, Canada, working as a Senior UX Researcher at Thomson Reuters. Over the past year specifically, on top of my projects, I’ve been establishing a UXR process that empowers others to delve into research, as well as ensuring that research and testing is integrated within our design and development processes.
I’ve had the opportunity to work with many companies in varying industries from my consulting and agency experience, giving me exposure to interesting and different kinds of problems. I’m socially committed and my mind is always on inclusion, equity and impact, especially when conducting research. I want to continue to grow in this field, learning and practicing methods that keep inclusivity and accessibility at top of mind.
Some principles I follow:
Ground in Empathy
I think it’s crucial to set aside our preconceived ideas of what people need or want. Instead, I want to learn about the difficulties that people face, as well as understand their needs and desires in order to contextualize their behaviours. Understanding people’s environments, and the roles they play in their environment is important when capturing users' emotional and physical needs, in order to learn the actual impact of the products and services we build.
I practice empathy in my research using qualitative methods such as ethnography and in-depth interviews, to gain a meaningful understanding of the realities of people’s lives.
Keep it Scrappy
Research can be expensive and time consuming and because of this, is often the first thing to be descoped from projects (to the detriment of the project, imho). By working at a design and development agency, where getting products to market as fast possible was our mandate, I’ve learned ways to be resourceful and still advocate for my research. I leverage existing tools, information gathered, and people from different departments when conducting research on a tight budget and timeline.
I’ve also developed templates and techniques that help in synthesizing information gathered within a short amount of time.
Simplify Complexities
Research is complicated. I’ve found that translating research knowledge that is actionable and digestible helps a wider audience resonate with it. Distilling complex information that goes in many different directions, down to its core parts has helped me simplify recommendations and gain buy-in from clients, moving research forward.
Simplifying complex ideas and information also helps me to grapple with everything I’ve learned in the research I conduct, visualizing and building connections that can otherwise easily be entangled in intricacies.
Currently:
Learning
How to play tennis and channel my inner Serena Williams. 🎾
Reading
Paper Girls and admiring Cliff Chiang’s beautiful illustrations. 🎨
Loving
Learning to cook old family recipes and collecting each dish’s story in my Family Legacy Recipe Book.👩🏽🍳