role: sole UX researcher in a team of 32
methods: Generative, Evaluative, Quantitative, Qualitative
software: Feedback Loop, UserTesting, Figma, Microsoft Office, SharePoint
timeline: September 2021 to Present (Promoted April 2022)
I first joined the Enterprise Innovation team in September 2021 as a UX Researcher co-op. Throughout my term, I made it my mission to be as involved in as many activities as I could.
In teams of 4 to 5, co-op students across CIBC participate in the triannual Student Leadership Academy (SLA) Innovation Challenge, an ideathon that is sponsored by a specific line of business (e.g., client strategy, capital markets, AML, etc.) For my team, I created the persona to communicate our understanding of the target audience, presented how our solution would impact clients, and edited the video presentation. Overall, we placed first out of 8 other teams. After the innovation challenge, I’ve also been routinely engaged with by the program leads to come back and share my experience and expertise with other co-op students. In total, I’ve helped mentor two Innovation Challenges, with one of those teams placing in the top 3!
At the end of my first 4 months with the team, I was selected for the Fall 2021 Exceptional Student Award based on my team’s nomination! The award recognizes positive attitude, team spirit, and all the ways one demonstrates CIBC’s values of Trust, Teamwork, and Accountability.
Shortly after, I was also recognized in the SLA Student Spotlight, a campaign that recognizes and appreciates co-op students that make a positive impact at CIBC. It’s amazing to look back on what I wrote at the time and see just how far I’ve come!
From January to April 2022, I was a part of the SLA Exec Squad, a group of students dedicated to improving the co-op experience for future students! I wanted to keep my UI and visual design skills practiced and polished, so I co-led the Graphic Design team in charge of creating marketing material for our internal social media and email campaigns. In total, I designed 4 graphics and consulted on 4 others.
In March 2022, I had the opportunity to take over the role of full-time UX researcher after my mentor and predecessor, Semire Akinola, transitioned to a different team within CIBC. Thus, in late April 2022 I was promoted from co-op to full time UXR, and thus began my journey into doing more than just user research.
During my time at Enterprise Innovation I was also a contributing member of the Innovation Design Guild, a group of design advocates who:
On average, I hosted at least 1 workshop every 4 months, and totalled over 200 workshop attendees.
In March 2023, I hosted Innovation Design Guild’s “Design Heuristics: Gotta Catch Them All” event, a Pokémon themed learning session about the 10 Design Heuristics, how to identify them, and how to conduct an heuristic evaluation.
The session made use of interactive examples and knowledge checks to keep participants engaged and present. In this example, I showed screenshots of error messages from the original Pokemon games that failed to support heuristic #9 “help users recognize, diagnose, and recover from errors.”
This was one of my most successful workshops at CIBC, with 102 total attendees and a Net Promoter Score of 95.
I also did routine “Intro to UXR” sessions for new co-ops, rotationals or other team members every 4 months. These sessions involved interactive FigJam activities where I give an overview of what UXR is, when to do it, and how it can be helpful for their day to day. The goal of these sessions was to provide a high-level overview of UX research and to democratize the UXR landscape by making it more accessible, inclusive, and easier to understand for those unfamiliar with the practice. These sessions were typically smaller audiences, so it provided a really great opportunity for more personal conversations and getting participants to explain their rationale.
In this example, I asked each participant to vote on how they would categorize various types of research, and then took turns asking them to explain their rationale.
As the sole UX Researcher on the team, it was also important that I planned for a rainy day, in case I got sick or needed to take time off, that the team would have the appropriate resources, access, and confidence to do user research without me.
As more projects started coming my way, I needed to create a system that could document and store research asks asynchronously while I was busy facilitating other research projects. Presenting the UXR Scoping Canvas, a dynamic PowerPoint toolkit shared with team members to guide them in assessing the potential need for UXR in their ongoing projects.
Learn about the stakeholder
Learn about the project
Learn about expectations
This canvas has been instrumental in getting more research done faster and efficiently, and has saved over 100 hours of unnecessary intake meetings (okay maybe not 100 hours, but definitely a lot of time saved).
I was also in charge of managing the usage of our vendors, namely UserTesting and Feedback Loop. I developed Excel trackers to meticulously monitor the monthly usage of these tools, ensuring optimal utilization and avoiding any over- or underutilization when the contract expires. This also involved working closely with my Director to accurately forecast our future requirements and projections, supported by well-founded justifications.
In true Enterprise Innovation fashion, I’d be remiss to not include a snapshot of my most memorable moments during my time at CIBC. I hope this shines a light into who I am and what I can bring to your team!
