User Research & Usability Testing (Boston Area + Remote)

UX Research, Usability Testing, and Expert Reviews

I help teams unearth the nuggets of wisdom they need to help drive critical decision-making and plan redesigns that move critical metrics like adoption, churn, and NPS.

Long before I started designing, I was conducting usability testing on the dozen new tools we were building at HubSpot – and I moved on to join the team with whom Google Ventures prototyped their now-ubiquitous Design Sprints.

I’ve had experience conducting competitive research and usability testing on numerous ecommerce websites while working through a major redesign of CustomMade, designing and testing consumer privacy apps for Abine, conducting exploratory and ethnographic research for dating app MyTrue, interviewing all sorts of CISOs and Risk officers for cybersecurity startup BitSight Technologies, and even helping to conduct focus-group-driven menu taste-testing for a local restaurant startup. Research is a powerful, scalable way to make your product the very best it can be.

Deliverables

Key takeaways & Research findings inform your team of top priorities and offer actionable suggestions for improvement to your product based on observation of usage and user feedback

Mockups of UX fixes and suggested improvements – transforming research learnings into directly actionable changes to your product or platform

Personas & User Journeys to help articulate user needs, customer concerns, business goals, and inform product design decisions

UX Roadmap Reports offer guidance on prioritization for major redesigns and pointers to resources to help you achieve success

Expert Review Reports (AKA UX Teardowns) are an informative heuristics-driven screen-by-screen review of your product based on best practices that highlights missed opportunities and points of friction, and offers quick mockups to tackle low-hanging fruit

A/B (or Omnivariate) Test Plans offer guidance for UI & UX tests to run on your site to help optimize your conversion rates

Raw footage and highlight reels of interviews and usability testing help build empathy for your users and can also offer valuable insights and soundbytes for presentations

Design sprint workshops to help your team digest and respond to the research findings, form a product gameplan, and get started making changes

Tools

Keynote

Google Docs

Google Analytics

Surveymonkey

Zoom, Skype

Lookback.io

usertesting.com

Caspian

Methods

Informational Interviews

Ethnographic Research

Focus Groups

Field Studies

Moderated & Unmoderated

Usability Testing

Competitive Research

Accessibility Reviews

Heuristic Reviews

Surveys

A/B Testing

Omnivariate Testing

Persona Generation

Customer Journey Maps

Storyboards

Card Sorting

Affinity Diagramming

Service Offerings

Expert Heuristic Usability Reviews

Trying to make some major improvements on a budget? Can’t get enough of your users to talk to you?

UX Teardowns are fast, educational, and actionable reports that review your application screen-by-screen and offer comprehensive feedback on places of friction, missed opportunities, and quick mockups of ideas to improve your product. Finally: these are done quickly and remotely – all I need is a briefing from you about your business goals and access to your platform or app.

My clients have used these to help inform major redesigns or help address unexpected KPI performance.

Custom Research & Usability Testing Gameplans

Have lots of questions, but no idea where to even to start getting answers?

I work with your team to figure out what questions you need answered, what your business goals are, your timeline and budget, and then outline a research plan that meets your needs.

Depending on your needs, I can figure out a (painless!) recruiting plan that maximizes responses and gets you the audience you need, write your research script or surveys, train members of your team to conduct interviewing on your own (or conduct interviewing myself), and – most importantly – help you transform findings into actionable roadmaps.

User Research On-Demand

Need some affordable, ongoing help to test your ideas while you work through an iterative redesign?

I’m currently too booked up to offer longer-term ongoing research studies unless they are part of an existing engagement – but I am delighted to point you in the direction of some folks who can help you!

Want to Learn More?

I’m delighted to offer you advice on where to start on your usability testing, user research, or exploratory research prohect (whether you’re looking to DIY or hire someone)!