About Me
I’m a user experience research lead who provides actionable insights into how to design products that make people’s lives more enriching. Looking for a summary of how I help design teams integrate insights to deliver successful product launches? Skim my resume.
I’ve been fascinated by technology and how people use it ever since high school, where I hand-coded HTML, PHP and Flash on sites for school projects and for the first all-girls LEGO robotics league team that made it to the national FIRST Robotics competition. First and foremost, however, I was interested in learning more about the lived experiences of the people around me. I was raised by an immigrant parent and an American born parent while spending early childhood split between Hong Kong and the US, so I enjoy learning more about the complexities of intercultural and cross-cultural psychology.
I won a full-tuition merit Trustee Scholarship to attend the University of Southern California, where I received a B.A. in psychology and M.S. in gerontology. While in college and graduate school, I worked as a research assistant at Stanford Law School, Stanford University, and the University of Southern California on a variety of cognitive psychology and empirical social science studies, with a particular focus on the intersection of lifespan developmental psychology and behavioral economics. Some of these research projects include neuroimaging studies of how people of different ages make decisions, policy solutions for fall prevention among older adults, and grade inflation of health grades at New York City restaurants. My past experience with longitudinal cohort-based research, as well as in natural experiments, helps me craft studies that observe, measure, and evaluate changes in behaviors and beliefs across different groups of people over time.
To further develop my user experience and design skills, I received a M.S. in Human Centered Design Engineering, with a specialization in user-centered design, from the University of Washington. Since then, I’ve worked with companies ranging from seed stage startups to Fortune 100 companies to ship category-defining software and hardware experiences.
The University of Washington’s Human Centered Design Engineering department interviewed me about what it’s like to be a UX researcher. I share some tips about working with product and engineering teams as well as integrating accessibility from the start into the design process.
Other fun stuff
On the weekends, you can find me matchmaking people with kitties as an adoption counselor at MEOW Cat Rescue or volunteering for other community projects. That, or I’m making candles or playing Dungeons & Dragons.
I nerd out over improving my interviewing and research skills in areas unrelated to UX. I’ve freelanced as a researcher for well-reviewed non-fiction books and have ghostwritten portions of two critically acclaimed books about film music and soundtracks: the Music of James Bond and Torn Music: Rejected Film Scores. Alas, I receive no royalties, but my friends do! You can still see my name in the acknowledgments section for both books.
