Ux Researcher Quantitative Research

Vidya Vaidyanathan 732-***-**** *****.**@*****.***

linkedin.com/in/vidya-vaidyanathan

Portfolio

Lead Mixed methods UX Researcher with 9 years of experience involved in Strategic and International Research and 3 years of UXR management.

SKILLS

Domains: Growth, AI/ML, Virtual Reality, Natural User Interfaces, mobile and tablet, Enterprise, Web, E- commerce, Healthcare, Emerging markets, 0-1 Space research, Privacy & trust. Research Methodologies: Advanced Survey design (descriptive and inferential stats), Journey mapping, Personas, JTBD, Usability lab interviews (300 +), Participatory design, Focus groups, Benchmark studies, Ethnographic studies, Surveys, Phone interviews, Remote testing, Contextual Inquiry, Card sorting, Low-fi wire framing, Heuristic evaluations, Rapid Research, Concept testing, Storytelling techniques. Softwares familiar with: Video messaging software - Camtasia, Zoom, Usertesting.com, Userinterviews, dScout Coding software : SPSS, C, C++, Python (beginner), Dovetail, Qualtrics. WORK EXPERIENCE

In the role of a UX Researcher with a Growth Mindset.

● Collaborate with key stakeholders such as Product, Product Marketing & Brand, Design, Data Science, Content to define and prioritise research goals (strategic, foundational and evaluative). Actively involved in roadmap planning, prioritisation and execution.

● Work autonomously to create Qualitative and Quantitative research studies (primary & secondary), gather data and synthesise them into product recommendations and actionable insights and share them across teams through reports and presentations.

● Evangelise research by contributing to building a UXR repository and best practices to share research insights through the company.

● Work as a thought leader and strategic business partner, influencing product strategy and vision.

● Identify opportunities for process improvements, providing design feedback, and sharing insights. Chronology of Work experience

May. ‘22 – Feb ‘24. – Hinge Health Inc, SF Bay Area - Sr. Lead Mixed Methods Researcher

● Led UXR for Growth & Member Journey within churn & retention in behavioural health, helping with discovery.

● Contributed to understanding the User Journey, JTBD, Enrollment, Onboarding, Habit formation and early member Retention, involving UXR in complex spaces such as consumer behaviour and habit formation. Key Impact

● Strongly influenced the product roadmap for 2023 based on growth (understanding user journey and adoption), resulting in the organisation doubling the investment in SEO marketing. This also helped increase traffic significantly (from close to 0) onto the home page. Worked closely with the care team.

● Closely worked with the early experience (top of the funnel) team to conduct mixed methods research

(Survey + 5 Whys in depth open ended interviews) that uncovered basic flaws and gaps in the onboarding process that helped overhaul the onboarding process to make it user friendly. The survey involved surveying more than 3000 users of the product followed by 12 in depth interviews. Jan. ‘21 – Apr.’22 WhatsApp (A Facebook company), Menlo Park – Senior Mixed Methods Researcher

● Focused on Growth (churn & retention) and Privacy UX Research (privacy, trust and safety) across international markets - Generative and evaluative

● Worked with external vendors to plan and execute cross cultural and 0-1 space UX Research across the globe. Key Impact

● Worked across emerging markets in India, Mexico, Indonesia, Brazil, and UK to research churn and retention across geographics (International UXR at WhatsApp)

● Worked with human rights and research teams across Meta to understand nuances of new privacy, trust and safety aspects of features being ideated on. Worked with potential users on concept tests. Dec. ’18- May. ‘20 ThoughtSpot Inc, Sunnyvale. – Senior Design Researcher - AI based SaaS startup.

● Spearheaded the UXR team at ThoughtSpot to support Design and Product on all UXR in the company. Focussed on Growth and onboarding.

Key Impact

● Established the UXR team at TS: recruited, hired, managed, mentored, and supervised two entry and mid-level UX researchers. Established best UX research practices for teams working with Agile methodologies.

● Helped completely redesign and personalise the onboarding process through a design sprint and iterative testing. Busted the myth of, "one size fits all" leading to. the design team customising the onboarding process depending on the persona type the user fits into making it a more enriching experience for the new user and thereby impacted retention.

● Developed Personas and User flows/work flows.

Jan. ’17- Dec. ‘18 WalmartLabs Inc, Sunnyvale – Senior Design Researcher (Search & Cart/Checkout Teams)

● Headed UX Research with the Cart & Checkout and Search teams. Key Impact

● Strongly influenced the re-design of the Post Add-to Cart experience (it is still the existing design) o Multi-stage research involved participatory design sessions to uncover user mental models followed by design research to effectively test design alternatives.

● Spearheaded research in search UX and user behaviour at Walmart, resulting in “eye-opening” research into user behaviour that resulted in complete redesign Jan. ’13- Jan. ‘16 Worked across Google Daydream, Meta Oculus, zSpace, SF Bay Area - Contractor

● Research involved User behaviour and usability issues in a Virtual Environment Key Impact

● Investigated user fit and behaviour of headset fitment across different ethnicities and cultures.

● Planned and executed large scale surveys (over 100 people using Qualtrics).

● Conducted Benchmark Ethnographic field studies and 1:1 lab studies; Benchmark studies and Focus groups for the Google Daydream. Google Daydream was reported (by the press) as the most ergonomic headset in 2016.

EDUCATION

MS Human Factors San Jose State University 2013 GPA 3.88/ BE CS Bangalore University 1999 GPA 78% PUBLICATIONS

● “Will use it, because I want to look cool”. A Comparative Study of simple computer interactions using touchscreen and in-air gestures : Accepted and presented at HCI International, 2014 & AHFE, 2014

● "Yours is Better!" Participant Response Bias in HCI: presented at the ACM SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2012)

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