Senior UX Researcher · AI-augmented research

Research that earns trust,
and gets adopted.

I don’t just surface insights. I translate them into decisions that shape what gets built, how it’s communicated, and how it performs in the market.

Read the case studies 5+ years · AI · E-Commerce · Healthcare · Fintech
Sector fluency

Same rigor, different rooms.

Pick a sector to see what I accomplished there.

Career timeline

A glance at my work.

Career timeline Earlier → later Showing all five career roles.
01 · UX Researcher · Contractor

Helping Hands Community

UX Researcher · Contractor

During COVID, Helping Hands Community coordinated volunteers to home-deliver food boxes to at-risk neighbors. As a contract UX researcher, I studied the end-to-end volunteer journey to find out why so many delivered once and never returned.

Role
UX Researcher · Contractor
Scope
Volunteer journey + retention
Methods
Interviews · Service blueprints
Selected work from this role

From one-time helper to returning volunteer.

  1. 01 Volunteer needs research Retention · Journey mapping
NonprofitVolunteer retentionQualitative research
Why volunteers deliver once and disappear.

In-depth interviews with home-delivery volunteers surfaced six friction themes across the journey, translated into POV statements, a future-state volunteer flow, and 18 concrete recommendations.

Explore the public case study
Back to the timeline ↑
02 · UX Researcher · Former employer · Real estate & mortgage

Flyhomes

UX Researcher · Real estate & mortgage

As the in-house researcher, I led work across acquisition, onboarding, home search, and AI trust, connecting user evidence to product, design, and brand decisions.

Role
Lead UX Researcher
Scope
Product + brand + AI search
Methods
Mixed methods
Selected recommendation

What a Flyhomes product leader says

Meredith Han

Zack is a UX super star. His customer-driven insights made an immediate impact on our entire product team. He pairs strong customer empathy with an ability to pinpoint the most important customer problems for the team to go solve.”

Meredith Han VP of Product
Selected work from this role

From first visit to AI-assisted home search.

PropTech marketplaceEngagementUsability + concept testing
Make home search impossible to miss.

A two-phase research program identified why qualified leads abandoned before searching, then tested homepage and brand concepts that made search the center of the experience.

Explore the public case study
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03 · UX Researcher · Agency

Winston Francois

UX Researcher · Agency

Details about this role, its responsibilities, and its impact will be added soon.

Organization
Winston Francois
Sequence
03
Status
Coming soon
Back to the timeline ↑
04 · UX Researcher · Agency

Applause

UX Researcher · Agency

As a UX researcher at Applause, I run agency research across AI, healthcare, finance, food and beverage, gaming, entertainment, and other sectors. Each team has its own culture, pace, and product maturity, so I adjust my approach to fit the room.

  • Methodology

    Spans both quantitative and qualitative, including diary studies, heuristic evaluations, user interviews, usability studies, and surveys, supported by tools like Qualtrics, Lookback, Condens, and Google Workspace, alongside whatever else the client already uses.

  • Responsibilities

    I partner on recruitment, run the end-to-end study, lead the analysis and synthesis, meet with participants, write the reports, and lead readouts with stakeholders.

Selected recommendation

What an Applause colleague says

Tree Hines

Zack is a highly insightful and tech-savvy UX leader known for his easygoing personality and collaborative nature. He helped me understand the Jobs To Be Done (JTBD) framework when I was tasked with applying this method in a study. He is particularly knowledgeable about AI tools and shared his expertise by delivering a presentation on AI use cases to our team as part of professional development initiatives. Zack is truly a delight to work with.”

Tree Hines UX and Consumer Insights Researcher
Client
Global mobility platform
Study
Aug–Dec 2024
Methods
Longitudinal mixed methods
Public case study · Client anonymized

Improving Driver Safety

How four months of continuous listening turned navigation friction into a focused safety and retention strategy.

The client is described as a leading global mobility and rideshare platform. Identifying brand details and product imagery have been removed.

An abstract route connecting a pickup point to a safer arrival.
Participants
40 active drivers
Cadence
weekly surveys
Duration
4 months
Evidence
471 responses
Back to the timeline ↑
Selected work

I research the moments that decide whether a product earns trust or loses it.

Learn-Iterate-Launch

Driving Engagement at Flyhomes

Flyhomes · Former employer

62% of qualified leads abandoned the platform before completing their first search or tour, and the home search feature, Flyhomes' key experience, was only engaged with by 11% of traffic. Usability testing exposed why: almost nobody realized they could search for homes on the site. A second phase tested the rebrand and a redesigned homepage centered on search to better match buyers' mental models.

  • +60%homepage engagement
  • +30%booked calls
  • +20%activation rates
Two-Phase Research

Disrupting Real Estate Search with AI

Flyhomes · Former employer

Traditional search could filter price, beds, and baths, but not natural light, architectural style, or neighborhood ambiance. We turned unstructured listing language into searchable attributes and paired it with weighted buyer preferences to make every result more relevant and explainable.

  • +83%feature completion
  • +46%tour requests
  • +44%sign-ups
Three-Act Structure

Clinical AI Adoption, International Research

Global MedTech · Anonymized

A global medical-device company deployed AI clinical-decision support across several markets, and adoption stalled in two of them. This is a three-act story: an ambitious rollout, a confrontation with local workflow and trust realities, and a resolution built on co-design with the clinicians who had to use it.

  • 3markets studied in-market
  • +27%adoption in resistant regions
  • 14localized trust patterns documented
Read the full case study

Act I, Setup

[Client sector redacted per NDA] launched AI-assisted clinical support expecting a uniform global rollout. The product tested well in headquarters; the field told a different story.

Act II, Confrontation

In two regions, clinicians quietly worked around the tool. Contextual inquiry revealed the friction wasn't the AI, it was the mismatch with local documentation rituals, hierarchy, and liability norms. Trust was a cultural variable, not a feature flag.

Act III, Resolution

We ran co-design sessions in-market and produced a localized trust playbook: 14 patterns mapping when to surface, soften, or hide AI confidence. Adoption in the resistant regions climbed as the tool began to respect how each clinic actually worked.

In Medias Res

FinTech Rewards, A Measurable Usability Jump

FinTech · Anonymized

A user opens the rewards screen, taps "redeem," and bounces. That single abandoned flow hid a usability problem worth millions. We benchmarked it, redesigned against the data, and proved the lift with the same numbers leadership trusted.

  • 58 → 81System Usability Scale
  • +53%task completion
  • −47%redemption drop-off
Read the full case study

The moment

We watched the bounce happen live, a real customer mid-redemption, giving up three taps from success. Starting there, instead of a clean benchmark intro, made the business cost viscerally clear to stakeholders within the first minute.

What we did

A baseline usability benchmark (SUS + task analytics), a heuristic teardown, and three rounds of moderated testing on redesigned flows. Every change was validated against the same metrics the baseline established.

What changed

SUS climbed from 58 to 81, task completion rose 53%, and redemption drop-off fell 47%. Because we measured before and after with the same yardstick, the redesign was unkillable in review, the numbers did the persuading.

Three-Act Structure

Three Months of Proof: How Field Research Reversed a Restaurant's Decline

Le Pain Quotidien · Former employer

A Le Pain Quotidien location in Brentwood, LA was bleeding sales and customers in late 2019. As Assistant General Manager, I treated it like a research problem, direct customer interviews, mental model mapping, evidence-based pitches to management. Sales climbed 20–30% for three consecutive months. Then COVID forced the closure. The restaurant didn't survive, but the research methodology did.

  • +20–30%sales for 3 months
  • −6%regional churn
  • 1location reversed
Read the full case study

Act I, The problem (late 2019)

A Le Pain Quotidien in Brentwood, LA was in trouble. Sales were down, regulars were fading, and shutdown rumors were circling. As Assistant General Manager I could have guessed at fixes, new menu items, discounts, more marketing, but I chose to treat it as a research problem instead.

Act II, The research & action

Over several weeks I conducted direct customer interviews to understand their mental models. Three findings emerged:

1. Quality perception gap. The actual product quality didn't match the "high-quality" mental model customers held of the Le Pain Quotidien brand.

2. Missing personalization. The experience lacked the individualized touches that competitors like Starbucks offered as standard.

3. Menu ceiling. Customers wanted higher-end options the menu didn't carry, and were going elsewhere to find them.

I retrained staff on personalized communication, pitched management with evidence from the interviews, and secured approval for cost-effective localized product changes that closed the quality gap.

Act III, The results

Sales increased 20–30% for three consecutive months. Regional churn dropped 6%. Positive customer feedback surged. The research worked, the location had reversed its decline.

Then COVID-19 forced the closure in early 2020. The restaurant didn't survive the pandemic.

The pivot

This experience didn't end with the building. It proved I could uncover root causes through direct user research, translate insights into business action, and deliver measurable outcomes, core UX research skills I carried into roles with Helping Hands Community, Flyhomes, Winston Francois, Applause, Orbello, and beyond. The restaurant closed, but the methodology survived.

Journey-Driven Discovery

Why Volunteers Deliver Once and Disappear

Helping Hands Community · Nonprofit contract

During COVID, Helping Hands Community mobilized volunteers to home-deliver food boxes to at-risk neighbors. Deliveries were happening, but volunteers were quietly churning after a single shift. In-depth interviews with home-delivery volunteers mapped the journey end to end and surfaced six friction themes, from unclear expectations to a routing experience that lost people mid-delivery, which I translated into POV statements, a future-state volunteer flow, and 18 concrete recommendations.

  • 6friction themes uncovered
  • 18recommendations delivered
  • 1future-state volunteer flow
Read the full case study

The problem

Home delivery was the program's hardest-working channel and its leakiest. People signed up with good intentions, completed one delivery run, and never came back. Nobody knew exactly why, so I treated retention as a journey problem, not a recruiting problem, and went straight to the volunteers themselves.

The research

I ran in-depth interviews with home-delivery volunteers, walking each one through their full experience, from "I wonder what volunteering here is all about?" to the moment they drove away from the last drop-off. Synthesis turned the transcripts into POV statements, service blueprints, and Crazy Eights ideation, then into a future-state volunteer flow the team could build against.

What volunteers told us

1. Flexibility comes first. Busy people needed control over when they volunteered, where they delivered, and how many boxes they took on. "There's just certain neighborhoods that I'm not comfortable delivering to alone."

2. Know before you commit. Volunteers walked in blind to what the job actually required. "I don't recall being warned about how heavy the boxes are."

3. The job needs tools. Heavy boxes, stairs, towing anxiety, and language barriers made shifts physically and mentally harder than they had to be, especially for volunteers over 55.

4. Volunteering felt lonely. "I think the biggest thing missing is a sense of camaraderie. It's great knowing it's not just you and that you're part of a group."

5. There was no ending. Shifts ended with silence instead of closure or impact.

It was just kind of like you finish and then you drive away. No reporting back. Thought it was a bit odd, it did feel off. I was just like, oh, what should I do?

6. Routing broke trust. "The first time when I put in the link it didn't even show me the stops. And so I'm like, I'm not going to bother with this."

The recommendations

The 18 recommendations mapped each theme to a fix: availability schedules visible to partner organizations, box counts volunteers choose themselves (3 to 10, with time warnings), a four-step explainer carousel and wiki that answer most questions before commitment, dolly-and-partner prompts at sign-up, shared community spaces for volunteers, a "done" checkout that triggers impact stories and recipient thanks, and just-in-time routing with the stop order curated in advance.

The strongest signal in the data was the one the program had never designed for: volunteers stay when they can feel the impact of their work.

When people directly thank you, that makes everything worth it. It gave me the sense of THIS IS WHY.

Recommendations

What collaborators say about my work.

Leaders across growth, product, strategy, and AI on turning customer insight into decisions that move teams forward.

Tree Hines

Zack is a highly insightful and tech-savvy UX leader known for his easygoing personality and collaborative nature. He helped me understand the Jobs To Be Done (JTBD) framework when I was tasked with applying this method in a study. He is particularly knowledgeable about AI tools and shared his expertise by delivering a presentation on AI use cases to our team as part of professional development initiatives. Zack is truly a delight to work with.”

Tree Hines UX and Consumer Insights Researcher
Matthew Helfrich

He’s the embodiment of turning insights into action and an absolute pleasure to work with. He’s helped unlock insights that’ve turned into company-wide messaging frameworks, personas, communication strategies, and more.”

Matthew Helfrich Sr. Director, Growth Marketing
Meredith Han

“Zack is a UX super star. His customer-driven insights made an immediate impact on our entire product team. He pairs strong customer empathy with an ability to pinpoint the most important customer problems for the team to go solve.”

Meredith Han VP of Product
Andria Jannetti

“Zack isn’t afraid to challenge the status quo. He’s adept at building trust within an organization, digging into the problems the team is facing & surfacing real world, tangible evidence that alter the direction of a product – for the better!”

Andria Jannetti Product Manager
Maggy Wardell

Zack is a creative, thoughtful, empathetic, and engaging leader. Any company would be fortunate to have him on their team, and I offer my highest recommendation!”

Maggy Wardell Strategy & Operations Leader
Christopher Fryer

“Zack isn’t just good, he is shockingly good. Each time he produced results something about it went above and beyond what I expected, what was shocking was how consistently he did that. He constantly demonstrated a level of experience and expertise that I have only found in the most seasoned veterans.

Christopher Fryer VP of Product & Brand
Elaine He

“I was always impressed by his great empathy for users, high quality user reports and dedication for the company mission. He is always passionate, curious and willing to contribute more! Zack is truly the best researcher I’ve ever worked with.

Elaine He AI Product Manager
Method spotlight

The practice behind the studies.

Case studies are the visible output. These are the operating methods that make research findable, shareable, and scalable across a whole organization.

Resource 01 · Inclusive design

Design for more ways of thinking.

An accessible field guide for reducing cognitive load, supporting different sensory needs, and giving people more control over how they experience a product.

Read the 8 principles
Field guide 8 principles

Neurodiversity-Friendly Design Principles

Simple, practical design rules that make digital experiences calmer, clearer, and easier for more people to use.

  1. Reduce cognitive load

    Keep it clean and simple

    • Use short, familiar words.
    • Keep each screen focused on one clear purpose.
    • Make the primary action obvious and specific.
    • Remove anything that does not help someone move forward.
  2. Build predictable patterns

    Stay consistent and organized

    • Put similar information in similar places.
    • Use size and weight to show what matters most.
    • Create clear patterns, then apply them consistently.
    • Give every element a logical, expected place.
  3. Support comfortable reading

    Optimize readability and typography

    • Choose highly readable sans-serif typefaces.
    • Avoid all caps and long passages of italic text.
    • Use comfortable type sizes, line heights, and spacing.
    • Maintain strong contrast and a clear text hierarchy.
  4. Lower sensory noise

    Design with sensory sensitivity in mind

    • Use a calm, considered color palette.
    • Avoid flashing, sudden motion, and neon backgrounds.
    • Keep sound off by default and provide clear controls.
    • Reduce competing visual and audio signals.
  5. Remove ambiguity

    Communicate clearly and directly

    • Prefer literal language over metaphors or sarcasm.
    • Give each message one clear meaning.
    • Label controls with specific actions, such as “Send message.”
    • Avoid jokes or wordplay where clarity is essential.
  6. Help people keep their bearings

    Simplify and clarify navigation

    • Keep navigation compact, visible, and predictable.
    • Label every page and destination clearly.
    • Show progress during multi-step tasks.
    • Make the current location and route back easy to find.
  7. Give people control

    Offer personalization and flexibility

    • Let people adjust text size and color schemes.
    • Offer calm and vivid display options where useful.
    • Allow optional content, motion, or sound to be hidden or paused.
    • Remember and respect each person’s preferences.
  8. Design with, not just for

    Emphasize empathy and inclusive practices

    • Learn how neurodivergent people experience your product.
    • Include neurodivergent participants in research and testing.
    • Involve diverse people throughout the design process.
    • Treat inclusion as a product requirement, not a final check.
Better by default

Designing for neurodiversity does not only remove barriers. It creates calmer, more understandable products that work better for everyone.

Resource 02 · Portfolio craft

Build a case study that earns the interview.

A practical field guide for turning thoughtful UX work into a concise, evidence-led story hiring teams can understand quickly.

Opens your browser’s print dialog.
Read the six chapters

Why case studies matter

Strong work still needs a strong argument.

  • Case studies are crucial for landing interviews in a competitive market.
  • Weak studies can actively hurt your chances.
  • Memorable storytelling connects design decisions to business goals.
  • A portfolio with focused, credible studies builds confidence in your craft.

What compelling studies do

Answer the questions behind the hiring decision.

  • Frame it. Name the problem, user impact, and business relevance.
  • Prove it. Emphasize measurable outcomes, not output volume.
  • Connect it. Link the problem, your decisions, and the outcome.
  • Edit it. Aim for a focused read of less than five minutes.
The Minto Pyramid Principle

Lead with the answer. Then earn it.

Structure the story from the most important result down to the evidence. Open each layer to see what belongs there.

01 Start with the answer Present the single most impressive result first.
  • Include the timeframe and business impact.
  • Quantify the result with a key metric.
  • Connect the result directly to your contribution.
02 Support with key arguments Offer two or three insights that explain the result.
  • Show clear cause-and-effect relationships.
  • Include specific observations and supporting metrics.
  • Turn findings into actionable insights.
03 Provide additional clarity Use evidence to validate the argument and result.
  • Include the numbers and data that matter.
  • Explain testing methods and results, including A/B test specifics.
  • Make your methodical approach easy to follow.

Show your thinking. Validate your claims.

  • Explain the why behind decisions, not only the what.
  • Highlight the tradeoffs and challenges you navigated.
  • Back claims with research, analytics, and credible testing results.
  • Include implementation details and metrics when they add context.
  • Treat UX writing quality as part of the experience.

Avoid the familiar traps.

  • Don’t bury the point in an overly long process diary.
  • Don’t force every project into the same generic structure.
  • Focus on business impact, not a catalog of tools and workshops.
  • Write for hiring managers and answer their key questions.
  • Proofread carefully; the details signal how you work.
The wider portfolio

Choose proof that matches where you’re going.

  • Show functional UX work. Prioritize apps, platforms, and meaningful product flows over static pages.
  • Early career? Demonstrate industry-style experience and sound decision-making.
  • More senior? Consider a concise deck centered on the problem, influence, and impact.
  • At every level: quantify business benefits when you can and maintain a professional online presence.

The strongest case study is not the one with the most artifacts. It’s the one that makes your judgment, and its impact, easy to understand.

Mentorship

Research gets stronger when researchers do.

I mentor UX researchers through difficult study decisions, stakeholder dynamics, and career moves, the messy middle between knowing the craft and making it matter.

  • Sharpen the work

    Frame the decision, challenge the method, and find the clearest story in the evidence.

  • Build influence

    Connect findings to what stakeholders need to understand and decide next.

  • Navigate what's next

    Make career and portfolio choices with a practical, experienced sounding board.

Looking for a researcher who helps the whole practice grow?

Let's talk
What mentees say Reviews from ADPList
About

I'm Zack, a researcher who optimizes for adoption.

I've spent the last decade researching AI products, financial tools, clinical workflows, and hospitality experiences across North America, Europe, and Asia. The thread connecting them: I don't consider a study finished until the insight has changed what a team ships.

That means building the operations around research, repositories, stakeholder rituals, and now AI-augmented synthesis, so findings survive long after the report. I work in English with global teams and lead research in plain language any stakeholder can act on.

  • Focus: AI / human-in-the-loop, international, FinTech & MedTech
  • Methods: Ethnography, contextual inquiry, usability benchmarking, co-design
  • Operations: Research repositories, ResOps, mentorship, AI synthesis pipelines
Contact

Let's talk about the question you're sitting on.

Email: zackdrivesuxinsights@gmail.com

Several case studies are anonymized per NDA. Confidential details remain outside this public repository and deployment.

Beyond the desk

The Human Behind the Professional

When I'm not diving into UX research, you'll find me loving the outdoors, whether I'm rock climbing for fun or recharging in nature's calm. I'm a proud dog daddy, I'm often fueled by too much espresso, and I absolutely love a good breakfast burrito. I also perform in a local improv troupe, indulging my creative side as a cinephile with a passion for storytelling on and off the stage.