Amber Dean
Ask me about
- Why technology needs people
- What I did when I was unsure about my career after school
- The field of user experience design and research
About me
- International Experience
After leaving school with a vague ambition to work with people, I began a Bachelor of Arts but found it too broad. Transitioning to a more specialised Bachelor of Behavioural Science, I found my passion in organizational psychology and social science research. While at uni, I saw a casual “Research Assistant” role advertised in market research, knowing nothing about market research but knowing I had research skills, I applied, and got the job. After uni, despite aiming for organizational psychology roles, my research skills were in high demand in market research so stayed in this industry, working my way up to Account Director.
In my late-20s, I wanted to travel and work overseas, and landed a role in a Global Market research company in Brussels, Belgium. Managing information across Europe sparked my interest in Information Science, leading me to pursue a Graduate Diploma in this area. Learning concepts like “User Experience”, “Information Architecture”, and “Usability”, I returned to Australia eager to apply my newfound knowledge. Transitioning into the tech industry, I connected with a company specializing in this field, embarking on a journey to ensure websites and software solutions deliver optimal experiences for users. Since then, I’ve worked in a range of user experience research roles within agency, in-house and product companies.
About my role
- Analytical
- Creative
- Flexible
- Focused
- Passionate
A User Experience Researcher is responsible for ensuring end users of a software are represented in the product design and development process in order to provide an optimal solution for them. They work alongside Product, Design and Technology roles to ensure customer-centric, evidence-based decisions are made throughout the process.
The following duties are common:
- Conducting interviews with users to understand their needs and pain points;
- Conducting surveys to assess customer satisfaction and gather customer feedback at scale;
- Usability testing of design prototypes or early stage product builds to ensure the software is usable;
- Interpreting analytics data and other types of data to inform product design and development decisions;
- Producing visual artefacts for Product & Design to help inform the overall Product strategy, such as user personas, journey maps, customer workflows.
Education
- Bachelor of Psychology (Honours in Organisational Psychology)
- Graduate Certificate in Marketing
- Graduate Diploma of Applied Science (Library and Information Management)
Subjects
- Art
- Biology
- Chemistry
- English
- General Mathematics (Maths A)
- History
- Legal Studies
- Music
- Performing Arts
- Science
Hobbies
- Camping
- Gardening
- Reading
- Seeing family and friends
- Travel
Pets
- 1 Dog
15 year old me!!
My career journey
-
Didn't know what I wanted to do
-
Pivoted my study to Bachelor of Behavioural Science
-
First job in Market Research
-
Worked overseas and studied Information Science
-
Transitioned career to User Experience Researcher
My typical day
My employer
