Experienced people manager, leading multi-disciplinary and geographically distributed teams with a global focus, providing guidance in the development and practice of our craft. My primary focus is UX Research as a leader and practitioner and I have experience in managing UX Designers and Content Strategists in addition to Researchers. I’ve led impactful and high growth projects across multiple markets, and am an experienced coach, advisor and mentor.

Experience at Google:

Head of UX Payments Research and Content Design: 2017 – 2023

  • Grew Google Pay UX Research and Content Design team from 6 to 52 global team members throughout the US and in India, Singapore and China for Payments and Google Pay.
  • Led team in the development of and launches for Google Wallet, available in 60 countries.
  • Guided Research and Content Design contributions for our Google Pay India apps for consumers and merchants, and management console for developers.
  • Designed research on checkout flows for Google products such as YouTube and the Play Store, and global external merchants.
  • Expert in eCommerce and checkout best practices for Consumers and Businesses.
  • Led research to improve Google Pay Developer documentation.
  • Developed an initiative to understand Payments Global Youth and determining strategy.
  • Conducted international foundational research on advanced digital markets (India, Brazil, Japan, China etc) to provide insights and inspiration for payments product initiatives.

Head of Search Ads UX Research: 2011 – 2017

  • Created research strategy, vision and goals across Search Ads, that generates $30+ Billion annual revenue. Raised revenue and improved user experience.
  • Developed an eye-tracking research program to observe the use of the Search Engine Results Page (SERP) for idea creation for Ads.
  • Developed a satisfaction measure for Ads load. Co-created a program of work that increased satisfaction with ads experience while also increasing revenue.
  • Created Mobile Design principles used to audit and improve 1000’s of sites and apps, globally resulting in improved conversion and increased revenues for businesses and Google. Principles presented globally at UX and developer conferences, and at Google-wide company meeting.
  • Developed best practices for testing ad formats, which were adopted across the Ads organization at Google resulting in increased click-through-rate and revenue.
  • Improved user journeys and created better cross-org product awareness by organizing and running annual Consumer Ads & Service leadership summit, and providing regular mentoring and inter-team sharing for Consumer Ads Researchers across all ads teams.
  • Contributed to the development of Progressive Web Apps.
  • Represented UX Research at Google I/O, and at conferences in US, UK, EMEA, and APAC.

Head of Apps UX Research: 2008 – 2011

  • Grew and managed a team of 15 UX Researchers. 
  • Created Google’s first set of Privacy Principles, adopted across consumer-focused organizations.

Led Google Ads Search and Display research: 2006 – 2008

  • Manager and lead of team of 8 UX Researchers. 
  • By improving AdSense Payment history pages, email customer support volume decreased 58%.

UX Leadership and Management at Google:

  • Grown and managed UX Research teams at Google: Ads, Search Ads, GSuite.
  • Worked closely with cross-functional peers to ensure the integration of UX Research in product development, determined priorities and aligned resources.
  • Managed large research budgets.
  • High success rate for promotion for team members.

Contributions to the Google UX community:

  • Improved the Google UX community and quality of career development, through re-designing hiring processes, founding presentation series and annual summits, running design sprint programs, re-writing the job ladder, and serving on promotion committees.
  • Led management training sessions on topics such as managing managers, and leading Customer Journey programs in business partnership, leadership and management.
  • Founder of Google’s Sprint Master Academy. Hundreds of Googlers trained in Sprint methods.

Industry impact:

  • Developed UX Design principles, published externally for Mobile Web, Native Apps, Retail. Globally adopted: the Sales team, Marketing and Developer Relations, have used these for thousands of UX audits.
  • Uncovered consumer perceptions of the mobile web, and native apps, and the factors that determine whether people turn to apps or the web. Used by Google Developer Relations, Sales & Marketing to develop narrative, and prioritize feature development.
  • Compared tablet use to mobile web and desktop use: Understanding tablet use: a multi-method exploration. Received Best Paper award at UX Australia; paper cited over 130 times.
  • Uncovered consumer perceptions of the mobile web and native apps, and the factors that determine whether people turn to apps or the web. Used by Google Developer Relations, Sales & Marketing to develop narrative, and prioritize feature development.
  • Presented widely on topics such as payments, mobile design best practices, UX research approaches, and Progressive Web Apps. Recorded presentations can be found via LinkedIn.

Prior experience

  • UX Researcher for Sun Microsystems, Menlo Park, CA.
  • Zadu: Start-up. UX Architect, San Mateo, CA.
  • Lecturer in Psychology & Educational Technology, The Open University, UK.

Education

  • PhD: University of Southampton, UK: Educational Technology.
  • BA: University of Wales, UK: Psychology.