Design x Lauren Gonzales
Senior UX Researcher at Workstream
Interview conducted by Christine Chong on July 12, 2022
How has your upbringing influenced you to be the researcher you are today?
When I was reflecting on this question, I felt like I've always been a creative problem-solver in a very literal sense. When I was younger, I always had the opportunity to have accessible arts and crafts. Whether it was tying a knot that I had to undo, beaded animals that I would make, knitting or cross stitching latch hooking…These types of activities were things that I actually enjoy and what I like to focus my energy on. Troubleshooting in translation is like the activities I mentioned before and that is how I have been seeing them in retrospect.
With the internet, I was always exploring on MySpace. I was one of those folks that had a MySpace account in the seventh grade. I would spend my summers logged onto the computer as soon as my parents left for work. I would go through forums, and I would try and find these amazing MySpace pages, with dip overlays, and immerse myself in that while trying to understand what are these different components that people are building or making. In high school, I had friends that would reach out to me asking “Hey, can you customize like my top eight, or could you make me like a comment box and it says this, and I was like, ‘what's your password?’ Then I'd do it after school.
Those sort of moments where it wasn't about how that would translate into a career or what that would look like with technology and stuff was my exposure. I think in terms of research, determining the problem, figuring out how to solve it, and what is required from my friends’ requests to address their needs with building their website, that was the creative aspect of things I enjoyed.
When I looked at this question, I thought about the importance of code-switching, and how to make other people feel really comfortable based on how I learned to be comfortable. Whether that came from an experience of how to interact with friends, how to interact with your teachers, or when I started working at my first job in the food business, you still need to know how to interact with people that you dislike and don't know.
“…you still need to know how to interact with people that you dislike and don't know.”
For example, in the experience of working with a difficult customer, you can't pass judgment on them. On the inside, it was scary, but at the same time, I needed to come from a place of understanding. When the next time someone comes in, I know how to react to their needs and be able to make them feel comfortable and assure them they’re coming from a place of “Hey, I get it. I feel it”. Having empathy is really important because it taught me to interact with folks with different upbringings, and experiences from me.
Can you tell me more about how culture, society, and intersectionalities influence your approach as a UX researcher?
I've always had cultural awareness due to being a child of immigrants and also being a Filipino American. I grew up in the Bay Area in Vallejo, California. I was fortunate enough to be surrounded by others of different backgrounds and learned that folks can have different worldviews, attitudes, values, etc. A really crucial turning point in my experience was when I transferred schools during my eighth-grade year. I attended a private school in Dublin, California, so the population is predominantly White. I felt the otherness of being in that space, which put things in perspective where maybe even these folks haven't had as much exposure as maybe I have in terms of being surrounded by other people. You learn from their different cultures and wonder; “do I have to assimilate”, or “do I need to blend in”..things like that. From that experience, I kind of have that in the back of my head. However, fast forward to my undergraduate experience, I went to San Francisco State University, and my coursework was focused on communication studies and ethnic studies. That really helped me to understand the context of others. I think it gave me the words, the concepts, and a framework for understanding. It was also the coursework such as interpersonal communication, intercultural communication, and classes about women and race. It was an introduction to black families, and understanding the dynamics and history of Asian Americans which led me to pursue linguistics because I want to understand how language affects people and how to understand one another. This cultivated my understanding of empathy within an academic lens. This was also a way for me to learn what I love and prioritize understanding people. There are many different facets and layers when it comes to talking about intersectionality. For instance, a person is not just their gender, race, ethnicity, or their socioeconomic status. I get excited thinking about these topics since I'm not the type of person to be shallow. I love to get to know people. In terms of just being a researcher, being non-judgmental is letting other people lead the conversation. I enjoy talking like a conversationalist. In my role, my job is to listen and I think that's a skill that a lot of folks don’t see its value. I think that it's being able to let people fully express themselves and for you to actively listen and use that empathy or practice empathy. You might have heard this before, but you understand it within the context of this person and their experiences. That sort of place or that sort of understanding as a researcher then gives you the ability to craft a story around someone else's story, and be strategic about it.
“There are many different facets and layers when it comes to talking about intersectionality. For instance, a person is not just their gender, race, ethnicity, or their socioeconomic status.”
With all that being said, this was a very interesting journey for me to understand myself, my own identity, and how I use what I've learned throughout life, throughout school, throughout all of these things to be able to be an advocate on behalf of the user or the group of people, customers, etc, that I'm representing. That's how I think about culture or society.
Describe to me the moment you discovered you wanted to be in the UX space.
The story began when I freshly graduated from undergrad. I actually switched my major a couple of times, and it was more focused on me just being able to get a job after college.
In my first job after graduating, I didn't know how to articulate what my skills were so I just rolled with it. I ended up working at a startup where I was doing customer support, and I really hated this job. But learning from the experience of understanding the tech space, there was a graphic designer who approached me for feedback. “What do you think of this?” This design essentially was like an interface. I was surprised they asked me. Either way, it was an important question. There's a certain way for people to understand an interface and understand the intuitiveness such as “where do you think you're gonna go navigation-wise?”
I later left that startup because I didn't really see a lot for me in terms of getting a full-time role. So that was fine. I was still very young. Then I took an internship at a publishing company. The publishing company was Cengage Learning at the time and I was a product intern. What I didn't realize when I came into that organization was that they just came out of bankruptcy. And because they were a company that created textbooks primarily for college students, like Pearson and McGraw Hill, There are considerations to think of when moving from prints to the digital space.
Essentially, their problem or the space that they needed to explore was, “how do you translate the content from books to a digital format?” You don't just copy and paste the text. There are different ways of learning or interacting. I came at a very pivotal time. As an intern, some of the projects that I was working on were in relation to some of the science courses I have taken, and at one point majored in biology. They were working on prototypes of photosynthesis. I was asked by the product manager to work with the UX team, and at the time, I wondered: “What is a UX team?” This is the first time being exposed to all this. I had no idea and so there was this woman who eventually became my mentor.
Her name was Harry and she was a contractor at the time. She basically showed me the ropes on what exactly they were doing and what the intention was. We were trying to test this prototype, to determine whether this helps teach students what the process of photosynthesis is.
To come in with a fresh college student perspective while being in that space, I think was really an opportunity for me to learn what UX is and feel included. I really took a lot from that experience and I think I was successful in doing that because they extended my internship, and then they ultimately created an associate researcher role for me that day. It took a lot of meandering to get to this place, but there's a reason why. The critical thinking brain that I have allowed me to do it in a creative space. I had to go through some stuff, but eventually, it was just very serendipitous how I had that and I also had people along the way that were so supportive, mentoring me, and being able to go to conferences. I just immersed myself after I realized that this was something that I was interested in and that I can definitely hone my skills just by deciding to stay. I'm going to leave this full-time job that I wasn't happy with. Start over as an intern and just see where it goes.
What is your ultimate mission in the UX space and why?
In terms of a mission, I think for me, it's something for young Lauren to like be proud of. Within that it’s the opportunity to show others, especially from this place of, oh, model minority myth has always been a prevailing thing in my head. The trajectory is really outdated and to be able to show others this example of manifesting a career while also encouraging others to look forward to it and explore it. I know there are a lot of questions such as, “what do you do like, you're not a developer like you're not a designer?” – I'm happy to always answer those questions, especially for those that are looking for like a career transition, or they need someone to help them find their niche. I still think this is a very interesting space to be in and I want to give them the opportunity I have and be someone people are able to lean on and be able to answer: “how does this UX thing work?” I've had a couple of people throughout my career, reach out to me and allowed me to mentor them or give them resources. I had one friend who I met in during undergrad. She eventually, pursued her Master's, reach out to me during COVID, and reached out: “hey, I'm interested in exploring UX.” The other day she reached out to inform me that she got a job at Google. It made me realize, that if I can help one person, then it's a very wholesome experience to be able to just say, my feedback or my contribution helped. I'm sure they did a lot of other things along the way, but having people that you know, and be able to invest in someone else's career or overall help with their personal growth... I think, for me, I love the idea of mentoring in a very informal kind of “homey sense.”
What are some of the challenges UX researchers are facing today?
I think the top thing I’ve always thought about or I've observed is how you distinguish UX research from other research at an organization, while understanding that there are different levels of maturity that an organization might have in terms of whether UX has a seat at the table like engineering running the show or who's running the show at the organization.
How can I distinguish myself with my work, especially coming from this place of actually being situated under marketing now? I have primarily been in the product.In my current organization, where marketing is to focus on some larger strategic initiatives, and for it to just be more product-facing. But from that angle, it's kind of like marketing. I'm starting to learn this as marketing works very closely with sales. More generally, it's kind of just understanding if UX or research, for example, is learning to work with other teams that they usually don't work with. What does that relationship look like? Or how do you partner with that? How do you ensure that you know the deliverables that you're providing to the product? Is it different from marketing? What does the deliverable look like for marketing?
In my case, if I'm doing sales enablement, how do I support that? I think being able to explain to teams UX research, does this versus marketing research. How is it different from data and analytics? Or what is it that can help deliver for you to make you better understand our users? Personally, for me, it's a challenge, but democratizing UX research and being able to teach by empowering others, giving them the toolset to conduct their own research.
”Researchers are like a therapist, and it's also like zoo guides when trying to listen to them as they are like trying to unpack what they're talking about. You're kind of like pushing answers throughout the interview.”
I've had the opportunity at Digital Ocean to actually teach engineers how to do their own research. Researchers are like a therapist, and it's also like zoo guides when trying to listen to them as they are like trying to unpack what they're talking about. You're kind of like pushing answers throughout the interview. Being able to explain that or one of the strategies I teach these folks in my workshop is if a user asks you ask the facilitator “what is this like or what does this button do? And then you flip it back and you kind of defer to them. Well, what do you think? This button does, right? Where do you think it's gonna go? And I had someone respond, “isn't that condescending?” I responded, “it could be but it's about tone” and nonverbal aspects in terms of how you speak to someone and the ability to feel. They're the one that is driving the conversation and you are the facilitator. You are letting the user tell you as an expert, what that experience looks like so it can be at times a challenge. But I think it's an exciting challenge to articulate that to other people because it's a very soft skill in terms of explaining these things. So, that was another thing that I thought about.
What and who inspires you or who inspires you?
In terms of being an artist, being able to channel her experiences with trauma and dealing with mental health into like therapy into art therapy, I think is a beautiful way of dealing with any sort of trials, and tribulations and making something beautiful out of that. That's just very inspiring to me.
Iris Advil is an older woman who used to be a decorator for the White House. She is a fashion icon in New York. She always wears really Gaudi-like outfits I love, such as fashion or just dressing up like I love those kinds of things. I aspire to be fashionable and hip. When I'm older.
And then I think of the last one and I thought about it because I was. Okay, let's just say what is the third one that comes to mind? Is Ali lon like, I love how unapologetically like, you know, real and raw. She is like, I know, it's raunchy, but like, it's to be able to hear that struggle and then also come out and, you know, just a third special. She's nominated for an Emmy, again, which is an inspiration just for me, I know, like, I'm a researcher, like, I'm in tech and all this stuff, but just to continue to, like meandering is okay.
Meandering is always okay. You never know where you're gonna end up, but as long as you are authentic to who you are and what you do, and you are honest about your weaknesses and your strengths, I think that will go a long way and that will speak volumes for who you are. I think that's what’s important, just to be real.
