Hello, I’m Sarah, a User Researcher / Product Researcher with experience driving complex technology and service experiences in diverse industries, including healthcare, FinTech, finance, biotech industries, and retail industries. 

I have over 10 years of experience navigating change and growth within some of America’s largest Fortune 500 companies and, with my roots in startups and entrepreneurship, I’m inventive, resilient, and ready to experiment.

People fascinate me and I never grow tired of studying the human experience and how wants, needs, and expectations shift within the continuously evolving technological landscape.

Hello, I’m Sarah, a User Researcher / Product Researcher with experience driving complex technology and service experiences in diverse industries, including healthcare, FinTech, finance, biotech industries, and retail industries. 

I have over 10 years of experience navigating change and growth in some of America’s largest Fortune 500 companies and, with my roots in startups and entrepreneurship, I’m inventive, resilient, and ready to experiment.

People fascinate me and I never grow tired of studying the human experience and how wants and needs shift within the continuously evolving technological landscape.

New and updated case studies.

Human behavior fascinates me

Curiosity about human behavior has been a driving force throughout my career. Observation and listening are my two greatest strengths as a human. My enchantment with the idiosyncrasies of human nature comes from a place of authenticity. The wide variety of qualitative and quantitative research methods and frameworks makes the art of how to best observe and listen to diverse individuals challenging and exciting.

My path to research was via my work as a Content Strategist and I still love creating content as a writer and a researcher — with words, images, graphs, charts, audio, and video. 

I own a part-time business, Possible by Design, where I help solopreneurs, such as musicians, artists, designers, and coaches, establish business goals, create their brand, and develop an online presence.

I’m a first-generation college graduate and a lifelong learner, continuously enhancing my skills and expanding my knowledge professionally and personally.

I'm skilled in a variety of methods, tools, metrics, & analysis

(… and always learning, exploring, experimenting.)

Qualitative Methods & Frameworks

Skilled in moderated and unmoderated studies

Interviews 

Field studies

Contextual inquiry

Workshops 

Codesign

Participatory design

RITE (Rapid, Iterative, Testing, & Evaluation)

Usability testing (remote and moderated)

Five-second test

MPACT Agile behavior-based personas

Desirability assessment

Opportunity assessment

Jobs to Be Done

Jakob Nielsen’s 10 usability heuristics

Weinschenk and Barker classification (20 heuristic types)

 

Quantitative Methods

Surveys

Concept testing

Clickstream/analytics

Heuristic analysis

Card sort

Tree test

Click test

Heat mapping

Kano model

Voice of customer analysis

Tools

UserZoom

UserTesting

MUIQ (quant UX testing tool)

Survey Monkey

Qualtrics

Optimal Workshop

Indeemo (diary study software)

Loop11

Dovetail

Miro

Camtasia

Microsoft Office Suite 

Microsoft Teams

Google Workspace

Airtable

Canva

 

Metrics and measures

Single Ease Question (SEQ)

Task success rate

Time on task (TOT)

Use error rate

SUS (System Usability Score)

UX-Lite

BERT (Bipolar Emotional Response Technique)

NPS

Professional Development

Data Analysis with R, Duke University, 2025 (expected)

Prompt Engineering for ChatGPT, Vanderbilt University, 2025 (expected)

Accelerating Jobs To Be Done Research with Ai, Jim Kalbach, JTBD Toolkit, 2024

Using Ai in Research Projects, Linkedin, 2024

Creating a Business Plan, Linkedin, 2024

Content Marketing, Hubspot, 2024

Human-Centered Systems Thinking, IDEO, 2024

Human-Centered Strategy, IDEO, 2023

Market Research and Consumer Behavior, IE Business School, 2022

Enterprise Design Thinking Co-Creator, IBM, 2022

Data Science Ethics, University of Michigan, 2022

Leadership and Influence, Dale Carnegie, 2021

Quantitative User Experience Research, University of Colorado (Jeff Sauro’s Bootcamp), 2020

Human-centered Service Design, IDEO U, 2020

Design Thinking for the Greater Good: Innovation in the Social Sector, University of Virginia Darden School of Business, 2018

Leadership

My leadership education, training, and experience has focused on servant leadership, transformational leadership, and quantum leadership. I have led teams in startups, Fortune 500 companies, and medium-sized companies. 

  • I led a team of seven researchers at a MedTech company for two years.
  • I led a team of seven researchers at a Fortune 5 healthcare company for two years and oversaw the work of multiple researchers for five years.
  • I established the first UX Research program at a small biotech company in Silicon Valley.
  • I led a team of writers, music programmers, designers, and front-end developers at a media startup for seven years.  I started with three direct reports which grew to 30  employees reporting up into me as the company grew from six employees to over 250 employees.
 

Education

Graduate Certificate, Health Care Service Design and Innovation, University of Minnesota – Twin Cities

M.A. Liberal Studies, University of North Carolina

B. A. Psychology and English – Double Major, University of North Carolina