The Ohio State University

Staff User Researcher at Grand Rounds

San Francisco, California

Grand Rounds' mission is to raise the standard of healthcare for everyone, everywhere. I work with my team to elevate the virtual primary health care experience.

Grand Rounds

Staff User Researcher

It's my job to get to know our wonderful buyers deeply to maximize their eBay experiences.Research questions I've tackled lately include:What's the relationship between native app and desktop use?What does the totality of eBay communication feel like?What would an ideal onboarding experience be?The sharpest research tools in my kit are interviews, focus groups, and co-creation sessions - imbued with a design research perspective and my sociological lens. I strive to make every presentation informative and entertaining; workshop facilitation is my jam.

eBay

Design Research Lead at eBay

As the dedicated researcher for the GluPlay team/studio, I’ve guided Diner DASH Adventures from the fuzziest front end (prior to greenlight) through beta release and successful worldwide launch. We began with exploratory research: deep-dive interviews - including design research activities - to get to know our players; and focus groups with the earliest concepts and prototypes. We then repeatedly iterated the game through onsite playtests, Playtest Cloud remote studies, and diary studies.Parallel to working directly on the game I also worked very closely with marketing - crafting personas, testing earliest creatives with focus groups, and helping to define the brand.Diner DASH Adventures was selected as a Google Play Best Casual Game of 2019.

Glu Mobile

Lead User Researcher

According to the Pew Research Center, about half of American adults play games - but only 10% consider themselves "gamers." I strive to help my teams make games that appeal to everyone and offer an opportunity for leisure, "me-time," and creativity within players' busy lives.

Senior UX Researcher

I conduct user, design, and exploratory research for pharmaceutical, automotive, financial, and tech companies - among others. Deliverables include process maps, direction on branding and messaging, improved app screen flow, and crafting the creation of medical apps and digital medicine systems.My favorite parts of the job include:• Getting to know all the lovely people who generously invite us into their homes for boots-on-the-ground ethnographic interviews• Wordsmith-ing a report until it would pass the inspection of a professional copywriter • Making readouts as informative and engaging as possible: No phones! No laptops!• Conducting dynamic workshops that maximize the insights and applicability of research data

Lead UX Specialist

I guide the entire life cycle of a project:• Designing tools and exercises to be used in participants’ homes during ethnographic interviews• Facilitating co-creation workshops with participants and clients/stakeholders• Delivering engaging presentations in which clients see both the immediate and moonshot value of our researchThe fuzzy front end is where I live.

SonicRim

Senior Design Researcher

At General Assembly I helped to foster an environment and experience in which bootcamp students reached their full potential as user experience designers. I drew on my strengths in education, public speaking, storytelling and qualitative/ user research to amplify the course curriculum and help students hone strengths and conquer fears.

General Assembly

Designer in Residence

Analyzing and evaluating Circle discussion (focus group) qualitative data for the purpose of product development. Co-organizer and Event Host for "Wearables for Seniors" Meetup, on behalf of San-Francisco Senior-Focused Design.

Tech-Enhanced Life

Consultant

Being Senior Editor at VegNews Magazine allowed me to merge my professional life with my personal passions: writing, editing, environmental consciousness and social justice. I strived to make VegNews a thought leader for a social movement, nurturing articles on the efficacy of activist films, cognitive dissonance about straying from veganism and composing original work on women who run farm sanctuaries. Through serious journalism on animal rights and food features that illustrate how satisfying and decadent “vegan” can be, I made a positive impact on people’s health, animals’ lives and our environment. I was a veritable Renaissance woman at VegNews, executing every duty imaginable on the editorial side of things: composing feature articles, heds, deks and front of book content; editing guest and regular columnists’ contributions; facilitating the editorial calendar, guiding writers to craft their strongest work and bringing well-known talent on board — all during a time of radical internal restructuring. My tenure saw the some of the most substantive and challenging journalism VegNews has published, along with consistent dedication to excellent food writing and innovative recipes.Publication of VegNews was suspended indefinitely with the Sept+Oct issue.

VegNews

Senior Editor

I facilitated student learning in an online, asynchronous format utilizing the Ashford University curriculum. Students were mainly non-traditional, often active military or veterans – a population I am honored to have helped realize their personal and professional goals.Courses taught include Cultural Anthropology, Philosophy of Human Conduct, Social Gerontology, Social Problems, Sociology 101 and Psychology 202: Adult Development and Life Assessment.

Ashford University

Associate Instructor

As with Ohio State, I created the curricula for and facilitated many sociology courses, both traditional and online. Community college classrooms are quite diverse, ranging from ambitious high school students to working single parents to retirees pursuing lifelong education at their leisure — not to mention socioeconomic and ethnoracial differences. At Columbus State I honed my ability to facilitate seminars on potentially incendiary topics such as race, ethnicity, sexual orientation and religious differences in a challenging yet civil manner.

Columbus State Community College

Adjunct Instructor

From ramen-eating graduate student to Senior Lecturer, I taught sociology classes for many years as a Buckeye. Sociology 101 and Honors 101 were favorite and perennial courses, while my areas of specialization in teaching and research include Social Problems, Marriage and Society, Sex and Love in Modern Society, Marriage and Family, Social Gerontology and Sociology of Sexuality. I am trained in qualitative research methods — ethnography, interviews and focus groups — and employed both when conducting my own research. I was an early adopter of e-learning, pursuing every professional opportunity possible on the pedagogy of online education. I’ve earned Quality Matters approval for my web-based courses, and I’ve facilitated seminars and brown bags on best practices in discussion board forums, with attendees ranging from English graduate students to physics professors.

Marie Mika

Marie Mika