Who We Work With
Creating Confidence Through User Centered Research
User experience research is a critical element in the user-centered design process and should happen at various stages of development. Depending on where you are, our team will help you understand the most advantageous times to execute user-centered research, as well as the times when it’s less impactful. Our user-centered research focuses on two primary points of the process, revolution, and evolution.
Revolution: There are times when it makes sense to rethink the path or forge an entirely new one. Our team will utilize a combination of internal stakeholder research and generative research with customers to actionably define the ideal product or service that works within your goals and constraints.
Evolution: Products and services should continuously evolve to remain competitive. Methodically conducting concept evaluations, usability testing, and competitive audits are just a few ways to understand those small changes you can make to stay on top.
Here are a few of the UX research capabilities we offer:
- Cocreation
- Concept Evaluations
- Focus Groups
- In Context Observations
- One-on-one Interviews
- User Experience Audits
- Shop-Alongs
- Usability Testing
What We've Done
From early generative research, to final concept evaluation, our user experience research experts will shed light on your users’ experience and uncover user insights with timely, right-sized studies.
Generative Research/Co-creation
We enjoy supporting are clients with user research throughout the product development journey. Facilitating early stage generative research helps provide insight into a user’s current experience, pain points, and areas for opportunity for future product development.
Concept Evaluations/Testing
Our researchers are experts at designing appropriate studies to assess a variety of product concepts, understand and interpret user feedback, and ultimately provide recommendations to define and improve on a user’s experience with a product, whether physical, digital, or a combination of both.
Sound Research
Understanding how a user will perceive and respond to different sonic feedback can be a challenge, but our team has developed the tools to assess a user’s sonic experience whether we’re testing feedback on a branded sound, important alert, or product notification.
Meet Our UX Experts
Ariel Roy, MS
HUMAN FACTORS SPECIALIST
Ariel brings a mix of expertise in user experience research in the consumer and medical domains. She especially enjoys interviewing and working with the end-user to understand their wants and needs, and translating those into informed design decisions that enable her clients to provide the best experience possible.
Sara Bodde, MS
SR. HUMAN FACTORS SPECIALIST
Sara has more than a decade of experience in the field of human factors and design research applied to industries such as Medical, Automotive, Consumer Goods, Defense, Web and software applications. She has led the development and execution of research conducted in all parts of the design process from idea generation through final user validation testing. She specializes in front-end generative research and early concept evaluation. Her background in both psychology and user design helps her navigate the balance between the needs of the user and design innovation.
Andrew Miranda, PhD
SR. HUMAN FACTORS SPECIALIST
Insatiably curious about people, Andrew craves any opportunity to study the limitations, variations, and inclinations of human beings. A PhD in Human Factors Psychology along with over fifteen years of experience conducting research has helped make him a unique contributor to the UX research team. Andrew enthusiastically embraces the challenge of applying valid research methods in novel and nuanced situations throughout the product development lifecycle, from early attitudinal research to understand user’s beliefs and desires to late-stage benchmarking and product testing.
Kayla Nickley
SR. DESIGN RESEARCH SPECIALIST
Kayla has a background in industrial design and brings her knowledge of the product development process to the research team. She aims to equip designers and decision makers with a better understanding of users’ needs in order to deliver exceptional experiences.
Alicia Thompson
UX DESIGNER
Alicia’s background in UX brings a desire to deeply understand users and how they interact with the products around them. She supports the research team in both generative and evaluative studies and loves seeing the tangible impact user research has on the concepts and products we build at PD.
Vicki Breon
BRAND + CX STRATEGIST/DESIGNER
Vicki specializes in customer research to understand users’ perceptions, behaviors, barriers and motivators to help inform strategy. She brings a unique perspective to user experience research, helping teams think critically about how the experience fits in with a larger context and how learnings can unlock ideas beyond each scenario.
Ethan Leonow
SR. UX DESIGNER
With experience across a variety of consumer industries, Ethan brings a diligence to the team that allows him to gain a thoughtful understanding of each user’s needs regardless of industry. This understanding allows him to develop and ultimately implement strategic recommendations that improve a product’s usability and perception for it’s key users.
LET'S GET STARTED.
Get in touch to see how we can help you.