Ux Research Researcher

Katia Farage **** **st Avenue, Seattle WA ***** ***********@*****.*** 469-***-****

SUMMARY

Experienced Qualitative UX Research Lead with exceptional problem-solving abilities and a proven track record of leveraging standard research methodologies while innovating creative solutions for complex challenges. Multilingual and highly skilled at fostering cross-functional collaboration and building strong relationships with teams and diverse audiences worldwide.

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

Experience Design Researcher Seattle Children’s Hospital – Seattle, WA (04/2023 - 11/2024) Cultivated integrity and inclusivity in patient-family research by fostering curiosity, maintaining rigorous standards, and ensuring all voices were heard, creating a reliable and collaborative environment aligned with core values.

• Ensured ethical qualitative research and promoted equity by accurately representing diverse patient populations, addressing data inaccuracies, eliminating biases, fostering transparency, and prioritizing family-driven needs, resulting in more inclusive and effective research outcomes

• Streamlined collaboration and enhanced data-driven decision-making by implementing a research repository that addressed teamwork gaps, improved knowledge sharing, and enabled efficient data collection, tagging, and cross- referencing, reducing redundant studies.

• Demonstrated strong research acumen by integrating innovative approaches, tailoring presentations for diverse audiences, and balancing technical rigor with human-centered engagement to build trust and reliability in sensitive patient interviews.

UX Research Manager Advata, merged with Lumedic – Seattle, WA (05/2022 - 11/2022) Senior UX Researcher Lumedic – Seattle, WA (02/2021 – 05/2022) Successfully supported the merger of 6 healthcare startups by developing and directing a coaching research program providing UX research assistance for cross-disciplinary teams with varying levels of knowledge and experience.

• Developed a UX research intake system to address the growing demand for research in an ambiguous and changing environment. This process enabled us to prioritize requests and guarantee that my team had the necessary resources available to take care of them

• Established our ResearchOps process, which includes research logistics and tool selection, participant panel formation, recruiting, budgeting, incentive allocation, and sustaining an easily accessible research archive

• Successfully tackled research study recruitment obstacles by experimenting with different methods to recruit participants

• Developed self-help learning resources to coach, support, and mentor UX Researchers, UX Designers, Product Managers, and other key stakeholders in the best research practices UX Researcher Amazon – Seattle, WA (05/ 2016 – 10/2020) Improved the end-to-end user experience for over 1 million Amazon Business customers worldwide by conducting research across multiple verticals (Commercial, Healthcare, Education, Non-profit, and Government) and gaining insights into customer needs and preferences allowing us to create more tailored solutions for our clients.

• Supported and empowered cross-functional teams across 4 global design studios to run their own UX research by developing and implementing a UX research coaching program

• Developed a step-by-step self-serve research mechanism that allowed cross-functional team members to conduct more frequent remote usability tests with the help of tools like UserTesting.com, thereby raising the number of asynchronous UX studies

• Identified gaps, opportunity areas, and informed customer journey by running foundational persona interviews with a mix of global small, medium, large, and enterprise business customers

• Derived critical customer insights and directly informed business requirements by planning, conducting, and delivering 500+ research activities across multiple releases

• Structured research projects across multiple verticals by utilizing a methodical and organized approach to translating business problems and breaking down complex products/areas into smaller, more manageable components

• Maintained trust and collaboration with cross-discipline team members by continuously promoting customer focus in different projects and initiatives, such as the "get out of the office and get to know your customer" program, which encouraged business stakeholders to interact with their users in their natural environment UX Researcher Microsoft – Seattle, WA (07/ 2013 – 01/2016) Successfully shipped Microsoft products over 12 releases, while supporting a $60+ Billion revenue stream. Planned, conducted, and delivered end-to-end research with worldwide business partners and customers in collaboration with program managers, product managers, UX designers, and developers.

• Identified key bottleneck user scenarios and pain points by engaging with cross-discipline teams and subject matter experts through storyboard workshops, contextual interviews, and wall reviews

• Improved shipped product by averting more than 500 usability issues related to cloud services, onboarding processes, account configuration, permissions, and role management, as well as cross-persona collaboration and support; suggested actionable design solutions that were implemented in various releases

• Delivered 350+ research activities such as design critiques, RITE studies, in-person, and remote usability studies; improved end-to-end user experience, visual design, and content on Microsoft's Next Generation Volume Licensing platform over multiple releases

• Developed a root cause-based system to report usability findings, which generated specific solutions for design, engineering, business, and training teams to enhance the user experience over multiple releases

• Developed a scenario-based system for monitoring usage with telemetry and analytics insights to help track and support usability issues and design decisions; the system will be part of the technical platform for future releases

• Doubled remote usability testing opportunities by improving the recruitment process and reducing the recruitment lead times. Innovation was adopted across multiple research teams in the company

• Improved team communication by facilitating discussions between business, design, and engineering; working collaboratively and diplomatically with various stakeholders SKILLS

Core competencies: fluent in a wide range of qualitative research methodologies

• remote and in-person interviews site visits contextual inquiries focus groups cognitive walkthroughs

• heuristic evaluations persona development usability studies paper-prototyping card sorting design reviews

• concept testing usability testing generative research survey research user research coaching Multi-lingual: French (Native), English (Fluent), Spanish (Conversational) EDUCATION

2012 - MA, Communication in Digital Media University of Washington – Seattle 2001 - BA, Graphic Design & Advertising Holy Spirit University of Kaslik – Lebanon

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