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Research and Soft Skills

A nuanced view on my research skills

Researching users in a user-centred design process involves various skills. I have successfully applied and grown my skill set during my career in industrial and academic research working with agile teams.

I support product stakeholders with discovery or exploratory research in the early project stages. In the later project stages, I focus on conducting optimization (e.g. usability) or measurement research. My research relies on a multitude of methods and approaches (see below) - and, if appropriate, being creative to try out new ways of eliciting data. Flexibility to adjust to a project's timeframe or constraints is key to conducting successful research.

In my work experience, I focused on using qualitative methods. Nevertheless, I highly value mixed-method approaches and triangulation in order to paint a colourful and holistic picture of user needs.

I have actively applied my skills in the following domains and sectors (cf. my portfolio of projects).

  • Sectors: B2B, B2G, G2C, B2C
  • Cloud-based systems (SaaS)
  • Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems
  • Financial domain (accounting, cash management, accounts receivable, accounts payable, reporting)
  • Personal information management
  • Insurance (e-business)
  • Public service delivery (e-government)
  • Service encounter (re-)design (e-government and financial domain)
  • Information management and information retrieval (repositories and long-term archiving of digital assets)
Approaches for data collection
  • Interviews (semi-structured)
  • Surveys
  • Usability testing
  • Concept testing
  • Using lo-fi or hi-fi prototypes as stimuli
  • Triangulation of methods
  • Think-aloud testing
  • Design thinking activities to:
    • gain understanding/learnings in the problem space
    • iterate and validate in the solution space
    • A list of design thinking tools that I have applied (in no particular order):
      problem statements, explorative interviews, 5W questions, jobs to be done, stakeholder maps, empathy maps, persona, customer journeys, "How might we" questions, storytelling, dot voting, brainwriting/Round Robin, crazy eights, analogies, I like/I wish/I wonder, lean canvas
  • Remote research sessions
  • Unmoderated user studies
  • Journey mapping
  • Field research
  • Ethnographic methods
  • Job shadowing
  • Focus groups
  • Context of use analysis
  • Personas
  • Card sorting
  • Literature analysis
  • UX audits / heuristic evaluations
  • Workshops
Methods for analyzing data
  • Collaborative analysis
  • Statistical analysis (and using tools like "R" or Excel)
  • Thematic analysis
  • Grounded theory
  • Affinity diagrams
  • User journeys
  • Whiteboarding
  • Competitor analysis
  • Document analysis
Communicating results and findings
  • Identifying and bringing together the right audience(s)
  • Developing actionable insights
  • Readouts (synchronous & asynchronous)
  • Written reports (adapted to the stakeholder's needs)
  • Presentations
  • Sharing "quick findings", for example, over Slack
  • "Now what" meetings
Technical or programming skills
  • R
  • Java
  • C++
  • HTML
  • CSS
  • PHP
  • XML
  • Markdown
  • Python
  • UML
  • BPMN
Software tools
  • Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook)
  • Confluence
  • Prototyping tools (Figma, Axure)
  • Collaborative whiteboarding tools (Mural, FigJam)
  • Slack
  • Zoom
  • UserZoom (surveys and unmoderated user testing)
  • Survey tools (UserZoom, 2Ask)
  • GIMP
  • R
  • SPSS
  • Microsoft Visio
  • Microsoft Project
  • LaTeX
  • CMS (Typo3, Drupal)
My superpowers helping to evolve UXR practice
  • Programming software tools that leverage existing (internal) tools to make life for UX researchers easier and to be more efficient
  • Investigating opportunities to elevate UXR practice and delivery with adequate tools (e.g., for transcription or coding) - or suggesting creative workarounds
  • Applying machine learning techniques ("Data Science") to user experience research data (e.g. performing text mining by using topic modelling to automatically discover topics from unstructured text)
  • Information retrieval (IR)
  • Natural Language Processing (NLP)
  • Semantic Web technologies / Linked (open) data technologies (OWL, RDF)
  • Information and data management (institutional repositories, digital long-term archiving)
Languages (spoken and written)
  • English
  • French
  • German (native)

Soft skills that I bring to the table

As a UX researcher having the right soft skills is a must to successfully empathize with research participants and stakeholders.

My soft skills

UX researcher qualities

  • Analytical thinking
  • Problem-solving
  • Communication skills
  • Collaboration
    • with the cross-functional product team (core team + partner teams)
    • other UX researchers
    • research and design OPS
  • Curiosity (about people and problems)
  • Empathy
  • Patience
  • Flexibility and adaptability
  • Attention to details
  • Time management skills
  • Ability to learn quickly
  • Intercultural competence
    (me, a German, who studied and lived in Germany, France, and Switzerland and who is now living in Canada)