Ph.D.
Hi! My name is pronounced, "Evan."
I'm an established UX Researcher and Learning Experience Designer with a diverse portfolio spanning video games, interactive EdTech platforms, people ops/employee experience, and websites. As you can tell, I enjoy applying my skills for a good challenge! In this site, you can learn about me, what I've been up to, what I want to do next, and how to get in touch.
I have over 15 years of experience applying cutting-edge HCI research to a variety of digital contexts, including video games, websites, apps, and internal company processes. I've never been one to do the bare minimum.
The culmination of my formal training has resulted in a diverse, robust skillset in both designing and assessing how people think when interacting with products and services.
Ph.D. in Experimental Psychology: Cognition & Cognitive Neuroscience (Texas Tech University)
M.A. in Experimental Psychology: Applied Cognition (Texas Tech University)
B.S. in Psychology: Counseling Emphasis (East Central University)
I have successfully hired, onboarded, trained, and managed multiple teams ranging from 2 to 30 individuals.
I have lived and worked in vastly different parts of the USA and worked on a multicultural, international, distributed team, which has afforded me the opportunity to experience a multitude of cultures and viewpoints.
I advocate for and train teams to include the roles of language, culture, and neurodiversity in all stages of the user experience, from interacting with one another to prioritizing which research questions to tackle. To the first point, this is also my standard in stakeholder management.
As the sole researcher for my most recent company, I created gold-standard research documents, roadmaps, UX strategy, research-in-product pipelines, information hierarchy, templates, guidelines, protocols, data and concept visualizations, workshops, and high-impact presentations for a variety of circumstances. I'm also flexible enough to delegate when possible, identify highest-priority items, and work in a fast-paced, agile environment focused on iteration.
I know how critical it is to have a valuable mentor in one's career. I develop educational materials, outreach, and mentorship opportunities for those new to the UX Research field, especially women/female-identifying, racial and ethnic minority, and neurodiverse individuals.
I treat my coworkers, stakeholders, and research participants with the same level of respect and consideration. For example, I've communicated study results in ways that meet stakeholders where they are: in Figma, Confluence, Miro, Word documents, and PowerPoint. I view my stakeholders as end-users for my research products, and thus implement a service design approach to my process. I learn what my stakeholders need so that I my processes and outputs reduce their cognitive workload.
As a mixed-methods researcher, I triangulate methods to communicate user needs, behaviors, perceptions, and attitudes. Sometimes, my users are product consumers; other times, they're my coworkers or stakeholders.
As a games UX researcher, I optimize player experiences with usability tests, playtests, heuristic analyses by collaborating with developers to implement data-guided improvements that enhance usability and "fun." I have additional expertise in the strategic layer of product development in working with Product and Project Managers to design research-informed product roadmaps.
From discovery phase to evaluation, I implement usability tests, A/B tests, surveys, interviews, card sorts, tree tests, site analytics, information architecture, UX writing (one of my side gigs with designers), workshops, and a variety of other methods to boost engagement, retention, conversion, and satisfaction.
As a direct report to the Chief of Staff, I enthusiastically conduct a variety of organizational/intra-company studies to discover and evaluate employees' experiences. I consult with the CEO, CCO, HR, management, and other leadership to unearth next steps based on bespoke internal research projects. All of these initiatives are tied to our company values, risk management, and ROI.
Examples of some recent accomplishments:
Initiated a company-wide quarterly "pulse" survey through HR to track subjective (but longitudinal) employee KPIs alongside other changes (see below).
Co-lead and facilitated company-wide post-mortems (project-level retros) with our PMO Director to gather and transform explicit and implicit employee needs into action items.
Developed and led five transformative initiatives:
(1) Intra-company Communication Guidelines (there were none) emphasizing accessibility, inclusivity, and remote-first approaches
(2) Best Practices for Meetings to improve efficiency and employee productivity
(3) Company Transparency Guidelines to improve employee growth and retention
(4) Internal Tools & Systems Optimization to reduce channel redundancy/inaccuracy
(5) a new "Buddy of the Month" Program to increase belonging and connectedness
I am a skilled workshop designer and moderator. I conduct in-person classical "sticky note" workshops and remote FigJam & Miro sessions. I usually implement these workshops for generative research projects to empower designers, but I also conduct them with C-suite and leadership to facilitate brainstorming and action item generation for internal projects.
Exploratory/Concept Phase: UX Competitor Analysis, Concept Testing, Card Sorting, Gap/Needs Analysis, Interviews
Generative/Workshops: Design Workshops/Participatory Design, Experience Prototyping, Post-Mortems, "How Might We," Prioritization Workshops
Prototype/Evaluative: A/B Tests, Analytics, Benchmark Tests, Expert Evaluations, Heuristic Analysis, Playtesting, RITE, Surveys, Tree Tests, Usability Tests (remote & in-person, moderated & unmoderated), WCAG/Web Accessibility Testing
Other: Empirical Research, Experimental Design, Statistical Analysis, Data Visualization
Research: Parsec, Qualtrics, SPSS, Optimal Workshop, User Interviews/Dovetail (etc.), Learning Management Systems (LMS)
Design: Adobe Creative Cloud, Canva, Figma, Miro, Lucidspark
Organizational: Airtable, Asana, Atlassian, Calendly, Confluence, Discord, Dropbox, Github, Google Suite, Jira, Notion, Microsoft Office & 365, Zoom/Teams/Slack
Design: Design Systems, Game Design & Development, HTML5, SEO principles, WCAG/Web Accessibility Standards
Organizational: Agile Development, Compelling Presentations, Leadership, Project Management, Storytelling, Team Management, Training, Coaching, & Mentorship, Stakeholder Engagement, Value-Added Propositions
User-Centered Communications: Copywriting, Intercultural Communication Best Practices, Technical Writing, UX Design, UX Writing
I am in the process of migrating all of my academic stuff and blog to this site so that everything is in one place. Click the button below to see what's available. You can also visit https://www.dreevin.com/ for a more complete experience.
I was a creative writer, artist, musician, photographer, actor, video producer, and poet long before I began my career in UX. Today, I enjoy a bit of everything, but mostly apply my creativity to making diagrams or infographics to convey information.
