Lori Birtley is a Principal User Researcher at Microsoft in Redmond, Washington. With a BA in English from Illinois Wesleyan University, she has an extensive background in technology and user research, having worked for companies such as Microsoft, Adobe Systems, Aldus Corporation, and Xerox. Lori's current role at Microsoft is in the Azure IoT team, where she delivers customer-based insights to answer complex engineering and business questions. She conducts both quantitative and qualitative research to help engineering stakeholders understand market trends, customer needs and pain points, and target customer user roles. Lori has led and delivered hundreds of international and U.S. market research projects and has presented recommendations to all levels of the Microsoft organization. Her expertise includes product planning, design research, product management, technical writing, and user experience.