Imani Sowande — Senior UX Researcher
Chicago, IL
UX researcher with nine years in enterprise and healthcare software, five of them building the research function for teams that had none. Ran the discovery that stopped a .1M scheduling rebuild and sent the budget to the intake queue instead. Now leads research for a clinical workflow group of sixty.
Experience
Senior UX Researcher, Harrowgate Software · September 2022 – present
Research lead for the clinical workflow group; two researchers and a research operations contractor report in.
- Ran the discovery that stopped a .1M scheduling rebuild: 19 site visits showed clinics were working around the old tool on purpose, and the budget moved to the intake queue.
- Cut median time to complete a nurse handoff from 6.4 minutes to 2.8 by pairing contextual inquiry with a one-page task analysis the design team could act on directly.
- Built a standing panel of 340 clinicians, taking recruitment for a study from three weeks to four days and ending $96k a year of panel-vendor spend.
- Runs a monthly readout that product, support and sales all attend; 21 of last year’s roadmap items cite a study by name in their brief.
UX Researcher, Larkspur Systems · April 2019 – August 2022
- Established the company’s first research repository; 140 tagged studies replaced a shared drive nobody could search, and reuse of past findings tripled within a year.
- Ran a 900-response survey and 24 follow-up interviews that reordered the top three roadmap requests and retired a feature used by 0.3% of accounts.
- Trained 30 designers and product managers to moderate their own usability sessions, taking the company from 8 sessions a quarter to 55.
Research Consultant, Verity Field Research · June 2017 – March 2019
- Delivered 14 studies for clients in insurance, logistics and higher education, each inside a four-week engagement.
- Designed the diary-study protocol the firm still sells as a fixed-price package.
Research Associate, Northshore Analytics · July 2016 – May 2017
- Coded and analyzed 1,200 open-ended responses for a statewide transit study, producing the rider segmentation the client used for the next two years.
- Moved the team from paper consent to a digital flow, cutting session setup from 12 minutes to three.
Education
- M.S. Human-Computer Interaction · DePaul University · September 2014 – June 2016
- B.A. Psychology · University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign · August 2010 – May 2014
Skills
- Qualitative: Contextual inquiry, Moderated usability testing, Diary studies, Interview protocol design, Thematic analysis
- Quantitative: Survey design, MaxDiff and conjoint, Benchmark and SUS studies, Log and funnel analysis, Sample sizing
- Research operations: Participant panels, Consent and privacy review, Research repositories, Study intake and triage
- Tools: Dovetail, Qualtrics, UserTesting, R, Figma
Certifications
- Human Subjects Research, Social and Behavioral — CITI Program