Hi, I’m Carey!

Research nerd. User ambassador. Writer. Facilitator extraordinaire. Scrum Master. Coffee snob. Adventurer. Illustrator. Bookworm. Perpetual student.

INFJ – “The Advocate”

  • Creative – I like to find new ways to present research to my teams that are fun and engaging. Workshop facilitation is my jam and I use it to breathe life into UX research.
  • Insightful – As someone with an uncanny ability to read micro-expressions and body language, I use this skill to dig deep into user motivations.
  • Principled – One of the reasons I became certified as a SCRUM master was to better communicate UX principles with established dev teams and project managers. Too often I’ve worked in siloed environments where the importance of good UX practices (especially research) were not clearly understood or valued.
  • Passionate – As a human with ADHD, I like to apply my energy to things that really matter to me.
  • Altruistic – My biggest goal with UX research is to create an environment of empathy within product teams. Knowledge is great, but understanding is even better.

Testimonials

Loren Johnson, Director of Product Design @ MyCarrier

Carey is an excellent addition to any team. She is curious, intuitive, an active listener, and she goes out of her way to make other team members feel included. She genuinely has a heart for others and shows it daily in how she treats those around her.

During my time working with Carey, I could always rely on her sharing her knowledge in UX writing and UX research. Carey would serve an active role for new hires and current team members as a knowledge sharer, and would guide them through training in card sorting, usability testing, and user interviews. For example, Carey lead the entire company in a lunch and learn focused on accessibility so we could all gain a better understanding of how our users with audio and visual impairments interact with our digital products. The company loved it and immediately started to standardize some accessibility practices.

Carey is a great UX Researcher with a heart to help others grow. She would be an asset to any UX team looking to grow in UX Research and UX Writing.

Jason Luna, Director of Product & Design @ Indy

During her time with Indy/Tispr – Carey made a long-lasting impact to our understanding and approach to our customers. She provided much needed perspective into the qualitative insights that drive our product development and her ability to synthesize and communicate those insights were extraordinary. She possesses all the great qualities that make a successful user researcher; she is curious – and will often search for answers to fill in the gaps between customer thought and behavior. She is highly empathic with the crucial ability to put herself into the shoes of the customer. She understands the needs and benefits of open and collaborative communication. She went above and beyond when presenting her findings to the team and stakeholders. I give Carey my highest recommendation and feel that she would make a brilliant addition to any UX team. I hope I have the chance to work with her again in the near future.

Zemira Lalic, FinTech Director of Program Management @ Bushel

Carey and I worked together on several feature builds in the FinTech payments space. Carey is great at organizing the research plan and engaging all the people and putting the resources together to get the results that inform the designs and ultimately lead to more user-friendly application feature.

Mia Kozitka, Product Strategy Senior Advisor @ Evernorth

Carey is an amazing UX Researcher with great attention to detail and is extremely organized. She has a vast toolbox of knowledge that she pulls from to adjust to many situations depending on what is needed. She is a very empathetic and personable individual, and a natural leader who makes everyone in the room feel welcome and heard. Carey understands the importance of listening to others to better understand their point of view before making a decision. This curiosity, in combination with her knowledge and experience in design thinking and UX makes her a rock star to have on your team.

Carey and I worked together in the past as colleagues, and I highly value her insight and perspective. She is always giving her all, and cares deeply about creating the best experience for her users. A+ talent that any product team would be very lucky to have.

Teri Winkleman, Talent Acquisition Manager @ DSG

Carey does a great job of bringing the user experience into all of her projects! With deep understanding of what customers are requiring, she is able to help develop strategy and understanding. I’ve also had the privilege of working with Carey on various DE&I efforts, and her deep empathy is a true asset to any organization.

Andy Muhs, Senior Associate @ Allegro Group Inc.

Carey has an eye for inclusion and accessibility. She is driven to help all people and puts in effort to further one’s understanding. Having worked with Carey, I can recommend she is a valuable member of a design team and cares deeply for people and process.

Andrew Perry, UX Researcher @ Bushel

I had the pleasure of working alongside Carey for a year and a half on Bushel’s research team. Carey is particularly skilled in qualitative methods and helped me grow immensely in this area of research. On top of her qualitative skillset, Carey often utilized a mixed-methods approach with her studies by implementing quantitative measures of the user experience to give clear benchmarks of progress and/or areas of improvement for our products.

Carey also spearheaded bottlenecks in our recruitment process by helping establish a pool of participants for us to run studies with. Recruitment is arguably the most difficult and most important part of executing effective research, and during Carey’s time at Bushel we grew our participant pool from 0 to over 200 people.

Carey is a great teammate, user advocate, and research evangelist. She would be a valuable addition to any research team.

Let’s chat!

Carey Petersen
careypetersendesign@gmail.com
(469) 536-2860