Built a Full-Service Research Practice
Senior UX Researcher at Amazon
Summary
The gap: When I joined Amazon, the team had no dedicated researchers. Research activity was limited to usability studies, useful for validating designs, but not equipped to answer the bigger questions about who we were building for, what they actually needed, or why it mattered to the business.
What I built: A full qualitative and quantitative research practice spanning surveys, 1:1 interviews, focus groups, diary studies, contextual inquiries, competitive analyses, tree tests, card sorts, and heuristic evaluations, expanding to a toolkit matched to the question being asked.
Why the design mattered: I built stakeholder engagement into the research process from study design through readout, so insights landed with the people who could act on them.
Scale: Grew the function, eventually shifting into a UX Research role full-time as the work outgrew a hybrid position.
Where it shows up today: Research now informs strategic decisions across the product organization. I've been a top presenter at the annual global strategic planning conference four years running, sharing voice of the customer findings to anchor the summit's brainstorming sessions, and the channels I built (newsletters, brainstorms, read-outs) have made customer insights a shared input across product, design, and engineering.
The Full Story
The Problem
When I joined Amazon Subscribe & Save and Replenishment Services, the team had no dedicated researchers. Research activity was limited to usability studies, useful for validating designs, but not equipped to answer the bigger questions: who are we building for, what do they actually need, and why does this matter to the business?
I was recruited specifically for my hybrid UX design and research background, and it became clear quickly that the bigger opportunity was building out the research practice itself. Without it, product, design, and engineering partners were making decisions about features and strategy without a consistent customer evidence base.
The Approach
I built the practice methodology by methodology, partner by partner. About two years in, the work had outgrown a hybrid role and I moved into UX Research full-time.
Methodology expansion. I introduced a full toolkit beyond usability testing, customer surveys (designed at 99% confidence with a 2-3% margin of error), competitive analyses, 1:1 interviews, focus groups, diary studies, contextual inquiries, tree tests, card sorts, heuristic evaluations, and more. The mix gave partners the right method for the right question, rather than forcing every problem through usability testing.
Stakeholder engagement built into the process. I brought partners in from study design through readout, not just at the end. That changed the dynamic from "researcher hands over a deck" to "team makes a decision together," and it's one of the biggest reason findings translated into action.
Internal channels to scale findings. Insights are only valuable if they reach the people who can act on them. I established monthly research newsletters, Lunch & Learn share-outs, town hall presentations, and Worldwide Summit presentations to make research a shared input across the organization rather than a siloed function.
The Impact
The team transformed from a usability-only function into a full qualitative and quantitative practice that now informs decisions across the product organization. Three concrete outcomes:
Top presenter at the annual global strategic planning conference, four years running. I share the year's voice of the customer findings to anchor the summit's strategic brainstorming sessions, presenting in New York, Seattle, London, and Tokyo.
Reduced engineering and design rework. Surfacing customer evidence earlier in the development cycle means projects get redirected before significant build investment, not after.
Direct influence on the product roadmap. Research findings shape projects that get developed into features contributing to revenue growth, and drive 3-year planning documents.
The research practice is now embedded in how the team operates, newsletters, share-outs, and town halls have made customer insights a shared input across product, design, and engineering rather than something teams have to go looking for.
What I Took Away
Building this practice reinforced a few things I bring to every role:
Methodology serves the question, not the other way around. A team that only does usability studies will only answer usability questions. Expanding the toolkit expanded what the business could ask.
Distribution is half the work. Insights that don't reach decision-makers don't change decisions. Building the channels to share findings was as important as conducting the research itself.
Partner early, not at the end. Stakeholders involved in study design own the findings; stakeholders handed a final deck don't.