'Usability' is a measure of how well users can achieve their goal using a product or service. The insights are primarily based on the observed behaviors. The main goal of usability testing is to identify areas of confusion or frustration related to the usability of the product. Using data, I explain the issues and make recommendations so that a project team can make strategic, informed decisions based on real usage.
Food Ethnography
From mystery dining and secret shopping, to observing people cook, we help organizations learn what people buy, how they make purchasing decisions, and make strategic recommendations for how customer experience could be improved. There is nothing more fun than professional people watching!
"Megan has an unmistakable passion for food-related ethnography. She surpassed expectations, truly immersing herself in her research project and producing thoughtful, insightful, and cogent findings. Her presentation style is confident and clear, and her intellectual curiosity shines through."
Carole Counihan, PhD Food Anthropologist, and author focused on food, culture, gender, and identity.
People love to talk about themselves! By gathering input from individuals and groups we can understand current points of confusion or frustration, attitudes and behaviors, and guide strategic planning for new product and service offerings. Participatory design workshops, card sorting, 1-1 interviews, and usability testing are some of our favorite methods for uncovering latent opportunities to improve customer experience.
"A true leader, Megan was the face of customer experience research at a 5,000 person organization, and served as a coach and mentor to improve the skills of other customer facing teams who wanted to conduct research. She’s also a tremendous bridge builder, as she successfully negotiated with the executives across the sales, customer success, and support & service organizations to create the first customer insights and advisory council of Nasdaq clients."
Based on observed and recorded customer behavior, personas represent an aggregate of customer types and help keep teams focused on the reason they exist; paying customers.
Journey maps don't need to be digitized to create clarity on how a customer persona interacts with a brand over time and across channels. Sometimes they start and end as a sticky note session. Most organizations are dedicated to improving the experience of their customers as they navigate their relationship with a brand, product, or service over time. Inspired by foundational research we visualize the channels and touch points, along with the emotional correlations, identifying innovative enhancement opportunities and net-new ideas that could be explored and implemented in the future.
Visualizing a customer journey helps build empathy for various customer segments, and allows stakeholders to walk a mile in the customers' shoes.
“Megan has a gift for seeing the big picture. As good as Megan was at creating detailed and actionable customer journeys backed by data and user research, she was equally as good at teaching others how to create their own journey maps for their own customers and specific purposes.”
When you are immersed in the world of food, you want to document it, describe it, and shout from the rooftops about the best experiences. Stay tuned for more work in this area of interest!
In 2010, Megan went all the way to Munich to gave her first talk at the UPA (now UXPA) International Conference. Despite the dry mouth and unshakable butterflies, she made it through and has thankfully relaxed on stage. She has lead workshops and spoken about topics including customer journey mapping, scaling a user research team, food and health, and much more.
"Megan gave a fantastic presentation today, delivering a very specific "Research Practice 101" that gave entrepreneurs a significant leg up in building and scaling their organization's practice."
Steve Portigal Principal, Portigal Consulting Author, Interviewing Users: How to Uncover Compelling Insights, and Doorbells, Danger, and Dead Batteries: User Research War Stories