Asking why and saying no…
At the risk of sounding insubordinate, these are my specialties. I am currently a user experience researcher and design strategist at IBM, working within our market insights function. I regularly push my team to work on (and measure!) what matters for our users, and encourage us to iterate towards the best solution. I’m always willing to be proved wrong by never missing an opportunity to test, try, or fail. I regularly work in qualitative user research, but also have a great enthusiasm for design operations, and the health and wellbeing of designers and design practices wherever they reside.
Hi! This is me!
Sarah Elix
sarahelix@hotmail.com
646-491-1540
https://sarahelix.squarespace.com/
Skills
Generative user research
I’m comfortable turning confusing problems into organized research plans. I currently identify sponsor users, schedule interviews, conduct interviews, synthesize and cluster verbatims into themes, and present findings and recommendations with a variety of stakeholders. I’ve used mural and airtable to collate and share insights, and continue to explore the best ways for team members to engage with user research.
Project management
Seeing the big and little picture simultaneously is a challenge, but essential for the PM role. I’ve lead a diverse range of projects and work streams including a custom design education series, a multi-faceted racial justice initiative, and a migration to a new design system. Using zenhub, trello, and agile best practices I can confidently handle lots of moving pieces while retaining a cohesive user experience.
survey benchmarking
I coordinate a biannual NPS (net promoter score) survey with a quantitative researcher. These scores and the qualitative open ended responses are our barometer for our product and are the consistent benchmark for our product’s overall progress. I also recently undertook the University of Michigan’s, UX Research at Scale: Surveys, Analytics, Online Testing course to further my knowledge.
Scrum master
I’ve managed several inter-disciplinary squads comprised of front and back end developers, marketers, designers, QA, and analytics professionals to deliver new features. I keep user stories at the forefront in order to prioritize development tickets and keep teams focused.
Design operations
In 2019 I oversaw the design team roadmap, and helped coordinate design team availability with our product owner and manager. I enjoy finding that ‘perfect balance’ of teams, even if just small working group, and am interested in creating efficient UX teams as well as robust ones. I recently attended Nielsen Norman’s, DesignOps: Scaling UX and User Research to further my interest in a field that is established, yet still in its infancy.
Usability studies
During our 2017-2018 product redesign, I conducted 15 usability studies with other researchers, as we turned a dated legacy application into a modern user experience.
“A brilliant solution to the wrong problem can be worse than no solution at all: solve the correct problem.”