Summary

I was contracted as a UX researcher to be on the Chataible team, aiming to streamline the user flow and clarify the overall experience of their LLM to align with their Enterprise AI Analytics brand!

I was given the opportunity to take this role through Steve Fadden’s User Research class at UC Berkeley. After a quick introduction and review of the goals with Joe Veltkamp, the Head of Product at Aible, there was a lot of freedom to see what we could find with the research methods taught from the class.

With this project, I conducted comparative analyses with competitive companies, rounds of usability tests, and several user interviews with diverse backgrounds. With the discovery of multiple insights that would tackle user pain points and achieve our main goals, we presented our findings with Joe with a final deck and report.

Unfortunately, due to NDA restrictions, I am unable to share some of the progress or visuals of the project, so please contact me: contactmaanna@gmail.com if you want to find out more!

Reflections & Takeaways

Never be afraid to share or ask for help.

It was always encouraged to share your work regardless of its state to get feedback and update the team on what’s happening. Whether that just be quick emails or checking in with short meetings, it was important to provide transparency on your progress. In the beginning, I entered with a rigid mindset of what research meant which led me to getting stuck and confused on how to move forward. After feeling cornered, opening up to guidance and mentorship made me have a mindset breakthrough.

It was vulnerable to share my thoughts and work with senior researchers, but I realized it only works in my favor to do so. The valuable advice and ideas I gained from critique helped me grow in solidifying my understanding of research methodology, design thinking, and the flexibility and creativity to climb out of tough spots. This led to more confidence in my craft. I should never be afraid to share, others are willing to help.

Keep refining and questioning.

Having previous research experience in biology, psychology, and tech, I was able to practice research strategy and execution with multiple perspectives. However, research structure remains similar: problem, intention, proposed solution. As with this project, I constantly questioned if our solutions were actually addressing the pain points we discovered, and to go further, did they actually meet our goals? This process solidified our intent as with our final insights and actionable initiatives. In the end, my project was able to be rescoped into separate projects including other teams.

Many thanks to…

Celine Chen, Seungyeon (Kimmy) Kim, and Xhu (Zoe) Xi for being a great team to work with!

My mentor Steve for always encouraging questions and fostering a great learning environment!

And finally, Joe for the opportunity to grow with enterprise AI and user research!