ACADEMIC beginnings
Skills gained: survey development, quantitative research methods & analysis, interviewing, recruitment
My research career began in academia, where I worked in clinical psychology, microbiology, and psychoneuroendocrinology research concurrent to my own sociocultural research.
I found myself, however, yearning for more impactful means to apply research towards improving peoples’ everyday lives.
A note, written between college classes, capturing my first guesses on what kind of research career I wanted
THE UX Transition
Skills gained: qualitative research methods & analysis, interviewing, moderating, stakeholder relations, storytelling.
On this intuition, I took my first UX position as a UX Research Assistant at Oculus (now Meta Reality Labs).
Since then, I’ve spent the past 5 years learning, then leading UX Research end-to-end, tackling generative and evaluative questions for emergent technologies like augmented reality, virtual reality, telehealth apps, and generative AI.
The Design Education
Skills gained: refined, theory-driven qualitative methods & analysis, ideation, prototyping low > mid > high fidelity.
As I gained experience as a researcher, I got my Master’s at the University of Washington’s Human-Computer Interaction and Design program to refine my existing research knowledge and gain experience with design & design thinking.
The ‘In between’
Skills Gained: Shenanigans, hijinks, occasional mischief.
Outside of work, you can usually find me becoming deeply engrossed in a new hobby. Recent ones include: mushroom identification, foraging, cooking, gardening, and hiking the coastal midlands of California.