top of page
blueBackground_centerRightCredit.png

​Alesha Arp, User Experience Research Leader:

 

  • "Distills user feedback into actions" 

  • "Leads teams to meaningful insights"

  • "Synthesizes insights tied to customer success and business goals"

  • "Uses research to drive great business outcomes" and "mitigate risk"

  • "Identifies the right things for the team, department and company to do"

  • "Helps cross-departmental teams communicate more clearly and align to create better experience outcomes"

  • "Connects with and cares for people -- whether her team, cross-functional collaborators, or customers"

​

These are colleagues' comments from recommendations they've shared on LinkedIn. I've worked with them to solve complex business problems and turn challenges into opportunities and can do so with your team too.

Photo credit Luke Chesser on Unsplash

PORTFOLIO
Grow Research Team and Level-Up Research Quality

Project: Grow user experience research team in terms of team member skill and caliber of product design insights.

​

Problem: Small team of junior researchers working with limited methodologies. Had been without research guidance for nearly a year. Stuck in their comfort zone, without growth path or support.

​

Solution: Assessed skill levels, identified areas for and provided means to that improvement. Worked with team members toward goals they set for themselves, that we aligned together to company and departmental goals.

Progressively moved team from delivering study-specific findings to synthesizing actionable, durable research insights

​

Methods: Coaching, modeling, co-working sessions, created tutorial videos, process optimization and mapping, skills workshops, weekly 1:1s, open 2-way communication

 

Impact: Team members added multiple methodologies to their tool box, gained confidence in trying new things, improved written, verbal, and presentation skills. Higher quality research insights, triangulated with prior studies and usage data, fed directly into project teams within a tight turn around for immediate actionability, and added to newly created research knowledge base for reusability.

Scale UX Research Practice

Project: Scale UX research practice by increasing output and impact, and aligning to high-priority initiatives.

 

Problems: Junior researchers had been running a rolling research program on auto-pilot for 8 months. Participant engagement was falling off sharply. Past discovery was scattered in Google-Drive folders throughout the organization. Foundational discovery was outsourced, expensive and slow. Research was siloed by feature/function.

 

Solution: Assessed program achievements, defined “as-is” and mapped desired “to-be” through research. Revamped the program accordingly. This included logistics, participant recruitment, cross-functional team member engagement, and researcher tools and methodologies. Pulled foundational discovery into program and eliminated $.5M annual retained fees. Resulted in higher research velocity and greater impact from insights. 

 

Methods: In-depth-interviews, usage data analysis, leveling-up team (described above), research operations, cross-functional team alignment, creation of knowledge base, automated research intake process, asynchronous collaboration across global time zones, project prioritization aligned to product roadmap and organizational initiatives.

​

Impact: Decreased time to insights, eliminated costly all-project-team meetings, streamlined logistics and research operations, increased stakeholder engagement, increased participant engagement and value, established cross-functional process and collaboration channels, eliminated $.5M retained agency fees.

Foundational Discovery to Drive Revenue

Project: Discover what drives clients to select a service provider for a new service vertical

 

Problem: Newly acquired company was unaccustomed to serving the luxury market. Clients were entrenched with their preferred service providers 

​

Solution: Identified service "attach" drivers, collaborated with product, sales, and service delivery teams to determine how best to execute. Redesigned feedback instruments to drive actionable data into these teams.

 

Methods: In-depth interviews, multi-variate workflow mapping, service gap analysis, design and content collaboration, data analysis and survey instrumentation

​

Impact: Increased revenue in the short-term with acquired provider, eventually resulted in a shift away from M&A to deliver via a digital service partner exchange, enabling luxury providers to opt-in to platform.

How Might We Save Time, Effort, and Expense?

Project: Foundational discovery into saving time, effort and expense in service delivery through digital platform development.

 

Problem: Integrate existing technological process into an existing digital platform to incorporate a multi-variate service, engaging many parties, into a complex workflow. Digital product team needed to understand how to create platform efficiencies to drive improved service delivery and increased revenue.

​

Solution: Identified breakdowns in time, effort, and expense. Collaborated on potential solutions to each. Discovery also exposed potential risk to company and its clients. Insights revealed challenges in integration efficiency, information architecture, and usage maturity. Proposed solutions for information transfer across multi-variate workflow. Identified disjointedness in integrated digital ecosystem.

 

Methods: Roundtable discussions, contextual observation & inquiry, workflow and information mapping

​

Impact: Created digital service tracking functionality, integrated into existing platform. Identified possible expansion of fledgling revenue stream - now in high growth mode. Built awareness around risk potential.  

Build a Better Roadmap

Project: Rapid growth, and accelerated timelines resulted in product divisions vying for resources, and project prioritization

 

Problem: In the "all-hands-on-deck" rush to deliver an end-to-end digital platform with supporting service-side functions, leadership needs to prioritize clients' most pressing needs first - but every need is pressing for the client

​

Solution: With a cross-functional team, map the client's journey, based on a Jobs to be Done framework. Build out that journey map, and then create a data model to inform  product and service roadmap prioritization and planning 

 

Methods: Audit existing organizational knowledge. Iterate on journey map and JTBD list. Conduct validation studies with internal experts and clients between iterations. Conduct research and work with cross-functional SMEs to build out data model.

​

Impact: (Research and collaboration underway to build out data model. Early indicators are pointing to sections of the client workflow that could warrant priority attention.) 

Bridge gaps across divisions through UXR and product design

Project: Design a platform that equally serves users in all segments of customer hierarchy and bring cross-functional teams to the design effort. Included product specific goals and organizational goals.

 

Problem: Flash-based product facing expiration. Serves only one segment of user population well. Some segments of user population not-at-all. Organization in a state of siloed-mistrust following restructuring.

​

Solution: In conjunction with product UX research, conducted internal discovery. By bridging gaps and bringing cross-functional teams into the discovery and design efforts, "Changed the way the company works" according to executive leaders. Designed a platform that serves all users well, and that teammates throughout organization can see their hand in creating and are excited to deliver and support.

 

Methods: Contextual interviews and observations, CX gap analysis, leadership workshops, surveys, quantitative analysis, qualitative discovery, insights analysis, experience design, process mapping, information architecture studies and design, product ecosystem discovery, stakeholder interviews

​

Publication: A Union of Xs: Uniting User Experience and Customer Experience

Align Program Information Architecture to Data Structure and User Segment Hierarchy 

Project: Determine Information Architecture (IA) that aligns to data structure so that data is actionable across entire user segment hierarchy. 

 

Problem: Through UX research discovery we learned that legacy metrics were not actionable in the users' hierarchical model. When action was taken based on those metrics, it was often counterproductive for program efficacy. Additionally the IA needed to work across the structured hierarchy of user roles, but these did not roll up in a straight line. 

​

Solution: Using qualitative and quantitative insights we structured the IA to progressively disclose data to users in accordance to their relational hierarchy and according to their usage maturity. We thought we were on the right path when users started to speak about prototype data in their own individual context.  We then tested that against the data structure and it broke. We had just two weeks to pivot, test, and submit the IA. Went back to paper-prototyping and through 5 iterations in 10 days in 2 cities we revised and met our deadline.

 

Methods: Information Architecture sorts (moderated and un-), prototype usability and data studies (paper and digital), collaboration with data science team, contextual usability studies across the country

Gaming Environment with Wide Appeal

Project: Design a gaming environment to appeal to pre-kindergarten through middle-school students without deviating from rigorous educational focus and program efficacy.

 

Problem: Content across grade levels must have consistent environment to allow for learning differentiation. (Differentiation example: sixth grade student might play third grade game to fill a learning gap.)

​

Solution: Working in rapid design iterations with artists and animators we tested 56 environment designs and 21 character designs inside of a few weeks. Field test Wednesday, insights Thursday, iterate by Tuesday morning, design the test, repeat.

 

Methods: User interviews, surveys, quantitative scoring, insights analysis, design charrettes, stakeholder interviews, constructive critique

​

Publication: How User Feedback Helps Shape ST Math Updates

Redesign of Digital Platform

Project: Redesign platform for automotive technology leader. Begin with flagship product and create user-centered foundation for entire platform.

 

Problem: Current system was functionally very rich, but the out-of-date style met with push back as users’ expectations of user interfaces kept pace with responsive technologies.

 

Solution: Conducted extensive UX Research to discover users’ needs, expectations and preferences. Aligned these to development timelines and business goals.

 

Methods: User observation, information architecture (IA) evaluation and redesign, user interviews, workflow and process mapping and streamlining, empathic persona development, prototype usability testing, rapid design validation testing

​

Publication: UXmatters.com article July 2016

User Journey Study

Project: Research to open opportunities into a new specialty area for the firm.

 

Problem: The firm was presented with an RFP for a new project in a closely related discipline, but one they had not yet serviced. The goals were to answer the RFP, to be invited to interview and to win the project.

 

Solution: Reviewed prior related project work, drew parallels with relevant detail and made it to the next round. Demonstrated significant knowledge of this specialty discipline, common user needs and concerns, and how the firm’s prior project work could be applied to win the project. Project stakeholders connected to our user-centered focus and we won the project.

 

Methods: Competitive analysis, secondary user-research, process mapping, on-site observation, design charrettes, presentation to project stakeholders

bottom of page