About Me: Principal UX Researcher

I am a passionate principal UX researcher with fifteen years of experience. Diligently democratizing user research, ethically employing AI, and energetically empowering teams with user-centric practices is my modus operandi. My expertise spans a broad range of experiences. These include business analysis, founding a UX agency, and UX leadership at Tallwave, T-Mobile, Infosys, Ford, and Walmart. I have worked with clients in various industries, including gaming, finance, healthcare, and others. As part of my pursuit of self-improvement, I am currently exploring applied mathematics through R.As I learn new things, I share them with the team, leveraging my experience as a UX educator.
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Skills in Focus
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Quantitative and qualitative UX research, statistics, strategy, and team leadership
Proficient in research tools: R, Dscout, SurveyMonkey, Optimal Workshop, Usability Hub, UserInterviews, UserZoom, UserTesting, Condens, Hotjar, and Dovetail
Design tools: Figma‍

"Yan is a strong candidate for a UX Researcher role. He's very receptive to feedback and ensures that he incorporates it to become stronger. His dual research and design experience makes him ideal for bridging the gap between the two practices."

- Megan Falzone, UX Researcher, Mentor, IBM

Me, Outside of Work
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Podcast host of Human-Centered AI (a passion project) discussing new ways user researchers can utilize AI tools while considering AI ethics in the context of user research.
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Fluent in English and Russian; conversational in Hindi; currently learning Farsi.
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Mentors junior to senior user researchers.
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Loves to read books in the genres of user research, science fiction, and fantasy.
Passionate about computer games, modding open-world games, and revisiting classic titles.

Applying AI to The Process

In my ongoing commitment to improvement, I have been pushing the boundaries of my user research work by adding methodologies from other areas:

Applying an ethical AI approach to my process by understanding the applications and risks of AI, protecting confidential user and company data, and not training AI to eliminate user research jobs.
Working withfirst drafts or revision of study designs and scripts to analyze user data.
Using generative AI to anonymize user research data by creating dummy data.
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Using data science and statistics to analyze user insights.

Learn More

My Work Examples

The case studies reveal how my research drives business results through practical methods and strategic insights. See how I turn data into decisions that matter.
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See Case Studies

How I Research

My research process delivers impact by matching methods to business needs. I uncover insights that matter and translate them into actions teams can use.
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My Research Process