My approach and values

I think the measure of someone is not how they perform under ideal circumstances but how they cope when it all goes wrong. And even with the best will in the world, things go wrong in research. At times like that, my colleagues have described me as unflappable - "you're so patient, how do you do it?"

Well, that is because I hold two things as inherent in being a user researcher:

• participants are doing us a favour by sharing their time and experiences

• my role is to assist my team in discovering the information we need to (a) understand our users and (b) make the next big decision

From these comes the responsibility to make things run as smoothly and as easily for both participants and teams.

This approach has helped me work in a wide range of settings and demands on the role. But let's be honest, not every team or every project is a good fit. I don't work well in places where I'm needed just to tick a box or where management want to be a part of everything. There are some sectors I won't work in no matter what the pay. And I've also realised that life is too short to spend hours commuting everyday, so unless it absolutely 100% needs to be in-person (and some things do) I prefer to work remotely.

My work experience

My CV with all my work experience and qualifications is all available on Linked In, but in summary:

• I've worked across several public sector bodies including Defra, DfE, CQC and DESNZ, and across many private sectors including finance, retail, holiday and third sector

• I've designed and delivered discovery and alpha phase research projects

• I've supported teams who just need to refine designs before tight delivery deadlines and those who still need feedback to develop policy

• I've developed recruitment processes and research process templates to support the community

• I've designed and delivered training programmes to develop early stage researchers

• And in that time I've run semi-structured interviews, questionnaires, diary studies, surveys, card-sorting, tree-testing, ethnography, guerilla research, pop-up research, contextual inquiry and good old fashioned usability testing.

If you think I can help your team with some user research then please do get in touch - details below.