User Researcher

Name - Fola Ola

Phone - +1-346-***-****

Email - ***********@*****.*** Address - 13099 Westheimer Rd, Houston TX77077

Profile

A performance and result-oriented professional with 14 years in social statistic and user research experience delivering global and local projects within the public and private sectors (including Education, finance, retail, manufacturing and media industries). Experienced in qualitative and quantitative research, user experience design, and team leadership. Excellent knowledge and demonstrable capacity to apply deep understanding of user needs towards the creation of innovative and user centric solutions using exploratory field studies, surveys, ethnographic studies, longitudinal studies, and interviews.

Highlights of Expertise

Process and requirements analysis, workshop facilitation, process, data and user journey mapping.

User story writing and target operating model development.

Supporting management and stakeholders for field-based evaluation projects including participant recruitment, ethnographic interviews, report writing and presentation.

Data collection, data entry, dissemination, and utilization of information evaluation.

Demonstrable experience creating reliable deliverables with useful actionable information.

Presenting user research findings and data in various formats, including power point presentation, written reports, video highlights, Jira and Confluence applications, show & tell presentations.

Excellent Public Sector, GDS, WCAG experience, inclusiveness design and accessibility.

Excellent knowledge of user interface design principles and experimental research design and administration.

Project methodology experience across SDLC, Agile Scrum, Kanban, and Waterfall.

Excellent communicator (written and oral) with very strong stakeholder management skills with the ability to quickly gain the confidence of the business community and requirement owners.

Very thorough with a successful track record of delivering project specific requirements to meet user and business goals.

Professional Experience

Client – Paddy Power (Flutter Entertainment)

PaddyPower as a part of Flutter entertainment deals in user entertainment i.e sport betting. This Research help to look into how customers (Users) currently track slots and the action customer take when they want to buy a new product.

Senior User Researcher (July 2023 – Present)

•Conducted user research using a wide variety of qualitative and quantitative research methods, in-person and remote, including workshops.

•Designed survey forms, administered surveys to respondents, gathered and analysed results.

•Recruited and screened participants, scheduled sessions, and assisted with other research planning and preparations.

•Created Personas, user journey maps and worked with the Interaction Designer to create high Payload Viewer prototypes.

•Requirements gathering and documentation for the web portal project.

•Set up trialling environment and window with Payload Viewer.

•Transformed the requirements into functional specification documents.

•Liaising with fund managers, prime brokerage firms and counterparties.

•Gathered business requirements by one-on-one interviews of stakeholders.

•Workshop facilitation and documentation follow-up and created use cases with UML.

•Obtained sign off on requirements documents and Process documents.

•Management of straight through processing of new Demand and ad-hoc change initiative.

Client - Department for International Trade (Keystride Consulting)

This project was conducted to re-evaluate trade investigations processes and users’ views of the TRS and refresh our understanding of their needs for improvement and redevelopment of Trade remedies service.

Senior User Researcher (Jan 2022 – July 2023)

Provided summarized research results for discussion and report write-up.

Recruited participants through internal and external recruiting methods.

Captured customer feedback and insight efficiently and aligned them with company’s product goals and objectives in detailed reports.

Liaised between regular experienced design team and other functional teams maintaining regular communication and promoting synergy.

Coordinated study logistics, including participant and facility scheduling.

Took part in research activities by helping with set-up and wrap up, observing and taking notes.

Contributed to internal tools, processes for maintaining relationships with users over time.

Managed all research project-related communications to user research participants, team members, leaders and other stakeholders.

Delivered clear visual representation of findings throughout all stages of the user research process.

Conducted usability testing and Updated participant databases.

Highlighted areas of customer challenges and potential areas of customer value improvement

Worked closely with the product and analyst teams to integrate data and analytics insights into the research roadmaps and research findings.

Translated research questions into well thought-out research plans and work closely with product to align them with the product roadmap.

Client – Fidelity International (Camwood)

Fidelity is the leading provider of software solutions to the financial services market. Fidelity's software solutions are designed for lending, investments, mortgages, and general insurance. Fidelity software solutions are built upon extensive financial services expertise and are built to manage specific specialised financial products.

Senior User Researcher (April 2021 – Dec 2021)

Planned user research in collaboration with cross-functional teams to ensure efficient collection, documentation, storage, and access to user research artefacts.

•Planned and conducted research to ensure that user needs were fully understood for new concept and prototype developments (including user requirements gathering, usability testing, etc).

•Uncovered needs of customers across the UK public and private sectors, including Government departments, Insurance companies, Housing Associations, education, health & Social care, charities, and other public bodies, along with the needs of suppliers.

•Actively helped deliver different projects for Castle Trust Partnership Mortgage and Deutsche Bank Mortgage portfolio migration.

•Worked with team interaction designer to create UCD designs focusing on user needs throughout the design process.

•Analysed and document the current state and the future state (As-Is, To-Be) and Target Operating Model. Analysed functionality enhancements and fixed bugs.

•Worked with the Solution Architect and the development team to develop E2E UX for service development, detailing user journey maps for the project.

•Facilitated user research and process workshops eliciting requirements and engaging diverse stakeholders.

Buckinghamshire Council (Network IT) (Merger of 3 county council and NHS)

Project: Digital transformation and platform migration to create a unified system that is more customer centric, agile and data driven.

Senior User Researcher (May 2019 – Mar 2021)

•Used quantitative and qualitative data about users and turned user focus into outcomes.

•Responsible for ensuring highbred sustainable design with ethical, circular, and inclusive design principles to give users good user experience.

•Led the user research process from developing user recruitment briefs through to test moderation, analysis and report writing.

•Worked closely with designers, developers and product owners to turn user data into actionable product/service requirements that feed into and influence product direction.

•Effectively prioritized requirements, managed stakeholder needs and expectations.

•Ensured that service design followed GDS and WCAG design principles.

•Advocated and facilitated development team’s adoption of a wide range of user research methods.

•Worked in the Discovery, Alpha, Beta, Delivery and Live phases of the project.

•Designed, scripted and analysed qualitative and quantitative data through a variety of research methods such as surveys, analytics, in-depth interviews etc.

Client - Merkle\DBG (International fund transaction Data Company)

User Researcher (Oct 2018 – March 2019)

•Repos: Changes required conformation to SPMG requirements when processing messages in and out for Charles River Repo trades.

•Enhance Client Reporting on Payment Advice: Clients with a previous direct Euroclear or Clear stream relationship expressed dissatisfaction with the equivalent DB reporting.

•Spain Pre-Advice & MT578: Enhancement of the Secore system to be able to cater to the pre-advice and allegement processing introduced at Iberclear.

•SFE Finland XHEL: Currently in Securities Front End when a client includes 94B: TRAD//EXCH/XHEL within their instruction they must also include a reference number in field 20C::PROC.

•SFE TASE Swift changes: SFE version 16.1 has been enhanced to change certain existing functions and features to participate and benefit from the TASE-CH SWIFT facilities.

Client - Lloyds TSB

User Researcher (Sept 2016 – Sept 2018)

Project

CREST Integration project between LTSB and HBOS, which was business-focused delivery. This project was initiated to bring both heritages (LTSB and HBOS) together to have a common integrated CREST solution called Xanite by Peter Evans replacing legacy (Axim) which removes reliance on MS-Access database and create a single Lloyds Banking Group Crest User-ID and participant hierarchy with common CREST Gateway infrastructure across both heritages.

Client - CITIGROUP (Securities and fund services)

User Researcher (July 2014 – Aug 2016)

Project:

UK MOTO is a Web Based system providing Middle Office functionality to the Asset managers. The solution was deployed using TLM product (SmartStream) developed by External Vendor; the background process are executables written in Java and runs on Sun Solaris with Oracle Database. It uses weblogic as the Web Server layer. The Engine performs all System functions and Adaptor process provides the necessary interface to file Systems and MQ. The Development Team use the Thick GUI to develop all the new workflows.

Client - CAPITA BUSINESS SERVICES

User Researcher (Jan2014 -June 2014)

Project: Worked with 4 analysts on the biggest eHR project in Europe for Northern Ireland Civil Service and Northern Ireland Office, which was deployed on Oracle E – Business suite. The project was for NICS/ NIO to have a central repository for all their HR needs as opposed to the conventional HR system. It is called Shared Service Centre. HRMS/ iRecruit and CRM are major Oracle applications used for this project.

Education and Certification

Bachelor of Science in Computer Science University of Surrey. U.K.

Bachelor of Science in Management and Accounting.

Diploma in Management of Information System

National Diploma in Maths and Statistics

Data base management (Oracle DBA) - Oracle academy UK

Microsoft access, PowerPoint, excel-spreadsheet – Nescot college UK

Project Risk Management University of Oxford 2016.

Effective Project Management University of Oxford 2008.

PRINCE 2 Foundation Project Management Qualification

GDPR Compliance trained

CCNSP certified. (Cyberoam) UK

User Researcher Best Contribution Award 2006.

ISEB/ ISTQB Intermediate Certificate in Software Testing.

Professional and Technical Skills

Analytical Proficiencies: SWOT, MOST, 5 Forces, PESTLE, GAP, SMART, RACI, MoSCoW, RAG, CATWOE, McKinsey 7S, SIPOC, GANTT & NWD.

Business Process: Process Mapping/Modelling, Customer Touch Point Mapping/ Customer Journey Design, Use case diagrams.

Jira & Confluence Application Documentation: Business case documents, End to End Project control and monitoring documents, Business Plan documents, Use case documents, Progress/Milestone Report, Functional & Non-Functional Specification documents, Budgeting documents, Implementation Manual, Mind Map, Test Strategies and Reports, Business Requirement Specification (BRS), Service Design Specification (SDS), Service Support Model (SSM), Conceptual Service Brief.

Modelling Tools: MS Visio, Adobe XD, Use Case Diagrams, Unified Modelling Language (UML), Swim Lane Diagrams, Business Process Flows, Wireframes, Mock-Ups, FIGMA, Business Activity Models (BAM), BPMN, User Stories, EPICS, Gherkin Syntax, Lumzy Business Designer, Glify (Confluence), Miro, Trello.

Project Governance: Management and resolution of risks, issues, and dependencies.

Requirements: Business, Functional and Non-functional.

User Research Expertise: Interviews, questionnaires, observations, workshop, design, document review, focus group facilitation, shadowing and ethnography.

References available on request.

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