Examples of other research and design work
Competitive Analysis: Newspaper Homepages
The research was a part of a long-term, continuous research initiative on the Los Angeles Times’s homepage. After meeting with the product manager, I designed an unmoderated usability test to gauge our homepage’s strengths and weakness relative to our two main competitors.
I ran fifteen five-task tests for each of the three homepages. As newspaper homepages are subject to frequent layout changes, tests were run in two bunches a few weeks apart to moderate the impact of any one particular layout on the research.
By focusing on product elements and not news content, the study was able to provide the PM with actionable insights regarding both fixed and mutable elements of our homepage.
Role: User researcher
Skills: Unmoderated usability testing, research design, qualitative data analysis, heuristic analysis, competitive analysis, remote research
Tools: Userzoom, Excel, Miro
NYC Department of Social Services: 421a Program Management Application
The 421a Program was a mayoral initiative to counter act rising homelessness in New York City by quickly moving homeless families from the shelter system into earmarked affordable housing units.
At the time I stepped in, the program was being managed by hand using only Excel spreadsheets. I took the lead in managing the design and development of a database management application that would allow a single point of contact for the four sets of users involved in program administration. I gathered requirements from stakeholders, mapped user flows, and worked in tandem with the development team to bring the application online in approximately twelve weeks.
Role: Project manager, UX designer
Skills: User research, UX design, stakeholder interviews
American Dreamer: An ethnographic study of home buying purchase journeys
This ethnographic project involved immersion into the everyday experience of first-time home buying in New York City and Oakland, California. My primary research methods were longitudinal in-depth interviews, contextual inquiry, and expert interviews. I also conducted a multi-disciplinary literature review, and GIS analysis.
I have presented this research at national and international academic conferences and published in academic journals.
Role: Principal investigator
Skills: Ethnographic research, participant observation, in-depth interviews, subject matter expert interviews, longitudinal research, qualitative data analysis, project management, research design
Tools: Scrivener, Social Explorer, Dedoose
Mapping Illegal Rent Increases
Our research team joined up with Make the Road New York, a community building non-profit that works with lower income, minority-majority neighborhoods, to conduct a study for their project on illegal landlord practices. We were curious to see if there was spatial correlation between neighborhoods that had lost rent stabilized units and those with high rates of linguistic isolation. The primary methodology used was GIS, but we also conducted historical research and interfaced with a range of government and non-government groups to access data.
We were able to show correlation in Brooklyn neighborhoods between loss of stabilized units and linguistic isolation, a result that Make the Road could use to further its work on illegal rent increases.
Roles: Researcher, GIS analyst
Skills: GIS, spatial analysis, quantitative data analysis
Tools: ArcGIS