UX Researcher

The Laboratory for Analytic Sciences (LAS) is a cross-sector research lab at NC State that brings together government, industry, and academia to address complex challenges in national security and data analysis. Operating in a high-compliance, interdisciplinary environment, LAS develops new analytic tradecraft, technologies, and human-centered intelligence workflows.

During my contract work at LAS, I focused on improving the researcher experience (Rx), specifically, how projects move from early ideas to fully executed studies under strict compliance requirements. My role centered on applying UX research and ResearchOps methods to identify workflow pain points, co-design solutions with stakeholders, and embed usability and compliance into the research lifecycle.

I began by conducting contextual inquiries and collaborative sessions with LAS product owners, managers, and compliance staff to understand where projects typically stalled. From these insights, I co-created a Project Maturity Framework that helped teams quickly assess readiness across dimensions like study design, participant access, and data handling. The framework translated abstract requirements into tangible evaluation criteria, giving researchers a clear picture of their gaps and next steps.

Building on that, I designed modular planning templates that standardized documentation while remaining adaptable to different methods (e.g., interviews, rapid prototyping, longitudinal testing). To support adoption, I prototyped a lightweight intake flow and resource estimator, both grounded in user feedback, that gave teams a realistic view of staffing, scheduling, and scoping needs.

Because compliance was central at LAS, I worked closely with product managers and study leads to surface requirements early, including consent protocols, participant protections, and data storage constraints. These checkpoints became embedded in the experience, helping teams move forward with confidence that their plans aligned with both regulatory and ethical standards.

Altogether, this work experience gave me the opportunity to practice UX research in one of the most complex environments possible: a multi-stakeholder, compliance-heavy research ecosystem. By combining interviews, co-creation, framework design, and low-fidelity prototyping, I helped streamline study planning and create researcher-centered tools that made the process clearer, faster, and more reliable, without compromising rigor or compliance.