United Kingdom

Service Design

Customer Experience (CX)

Project Management

UX Testing

UX Research

Service Design Research

Bachelor's degree

Maria Sakharova

Staff UX Researcher

Qualitative research

Communication

Collaboration

Problem-solving

Time management

Critical-thinking

Empathy

Team player

Organisation skills

Presentation skills

Conflict resolution

Stakeholder management

Leadership

Negotiation

Content research

User research

Optimal Workshop

Optimizely

SurveyMonkey

UserTesting

Airtable

ChatGPT

Figma

Intercom

Miro

Notion

UserZoom

Introduce yourself, define mentoring expectations and goals. Learn and grow together.

General mentorship

Making remote and globally distributed teams work for you and your needs.

Working remotely

Learn essential burnout prevention techniques and replenish physical and emotional energy.

Managing burnout

Talk to people who have learned to manage their imposter syndrome.

Dealing with imposter syndrome

Navigating micro-aggression, getting paid what you are worth and finding a community.

Being a woman in tech

Understanding factors that lead to a motivated team - recognition, communication and more.

Keeping team members motivated

Understand the process of training, motivating and directing your team members.

Managing people

How to create a positive workplace culture that drives collaboration and productivity?

Fostering a good team culture

Steps to building and maintaining a strong, cohesive and effective team.

Building an effective team

Learn the tips to successfully manage a team in a remote environment.

Managing a remote team

How to maintain trust, commitment, accountability deliver results while handling conflict

Avoiding common dysfunctions

Strategies for maximizing your design internship or co-op program.

Getting the most out of my internship

Tips for transitioning into a new role or company.

Changing roles

How to successfully prepare and position yourself for a job promotion?

How to get promoted

How to ask for a promotion and negotiate for salary raise?

Negotiating a job offer

How to think about design career paths and what progression looks like for designers?

Design career path

Get actionable feedback on your resume or portfolio.

Resume and portfolio review

Practice HR, technical and behavioural interviews with mentors.

Practice mock interviews

Talk to people who've broken into the tech industry and learn their stories.

Breaking into tech

Learn the best ways to answer technical interview questions with frameworks

Acing technical interview questions

How to set up the team for success by defining and measuring team's performance.

Choosing metrics and team goals

How to define and execute a successful launch and managing stakeholders expectations. (eg. MVP)

Launching new products or features

Manage team expectations and get the most out of your meetings.

Running effective meetings

Identify and define potential product problems and generating possible solutions.

Identifying problems vs solutions

Learn how to properly present your work and share ideas and opinions.

Presenting your work with impact

Tips on how to work and collaborate with designers.

Working with designers

How to work with team members with different skill sets but towards a common goal?

Working cross-functionally

Explore different generative and evaluative research techniques. User research synthesis and presentation.

Conducting good user research

Navigating the working relationship with PM's and engineers as a designer.

Working with product and engineering

Ways to provide constructive feedback to team members.

Giving effective feedback

How to define an ambitious product vision and how to best communicate it to stakeholders?

Creating a product vision

Tips on how to work and collaborate with engineers and developers.

Working with engineers

Best practices for documenting projects, epics, and stories

Writing product requirement documents

How to conduct interviews, what to ask, and how to analyze your results? (eg. user interview)

Conducting effective customer interviews

As a trusted research partner, I collaborate with start-ups, product teams, corporations, and individuals, helping them grow and make the right decisions through carefully crafted guidance.
My work creates impact on multiple levels:
1) Strategic Impact — driving long-term business growth and uncovering new opportunities;
2) Product & Design Impact — supporting the next iteration and leading the full research cycle;
3) Personal Impact — mentoring UX researchers in their professional journey.

— Led the research function in the Account squad (money actions, balances, interest, card, transactions);
— Collaborated with Product, Eng, and Analytics to conduct a mixed-method foundational study on consumer financial management, shaping roadmaps for the entire domain and providing new strategic opportunities for decision making at the C-suite and VP levels; 
— Pitched and led a multiphase generative Account structure research resulting in redesigned foundations of the Account (Balances, Card, Interest) and 3 new products;
— Conducted both summative and formative research, leading to a new Money Actions model that drove significant growth in annual cross-currency volume, achieving the strongest Q impact among teams;
— Worked closely with x-functional partners on quarterly prioritizations and owned the Add money OKR in the Balance team (not typical for researchers);

— Introduced user research to the company, built and led a team of 3 researchers
— As a team, we did more than 50 different research projects using a wide variety of methods and interpreting results through the combination of UX, data and social science
— Established a close collaboration between the researcher and analyst to look at every insight through the mixed method lens with a deep understanding of user needs, metrics, business goals and market trends
— Developed and tailored the Discovery process for the double-diamond product cycle based on the best practices from the industry
— Developed research infrastructure for the company (research templates, tools, insights repository, agile research processes, recruitment, budgeting)
— Our research team launched regular CSAT surveys and other initiatives to evaluate chauffeurs CX at every stage of the lifecycle
— Invented UXR progression framework and tailored it to the company's hiring and development goals
— Educated design team on how to run rapid unmoderated tests (preference, 5sec, first click)
— Interviewed researchers and PMs on both markets in the UK and Russia

— Led service design project of reinventing the onboarding process for chauffeurs in all countries (UK, RU, FR; +30 user/stakeholder interviews and tests)
— Conducted mixed-method research on understanding causes of chauffeur inactivity and churn, resulting in amended policies and new tariffs
— Found the proper positioning and target audience for implementing new features aiming to enhance journey hours among passengers
— Effectively managed and prioritized research plans through ambiguous and fast-changing environments, aligned and efficiently executed critical insights and worked with a large group of stakeholders

— Led loyalty and retention research efforts (DAU≈6 mln) 
— Defined how to launch loyalty program on the marketplace and tailored design concepts with the team to convert more buyers into the program's subscribers
— Gained and shared deep insights in market developments, competitive environment and UX relevant industry trends
— Supervised and educated designers, PMs, and junior specialists on research skills

— Led research initiatives for 5 product teams within the Buyer Experience domain (MAU≈50 mln)
— Mostly participated in big strategic and discovery projects connected with launching new services or testing raw design concepts
— Coordinated formative research to redesign data presentation of items in different product verticals resulting in buyers' increase
— Initiated  summative app navigation research leading to a decrease of item views before purchase
— Carried out the first quant eye-tracking study in the company; the project was based on international standards for quant research using an eye tracker (30+ participants)
— Collaborated with Design and Product Management on quarterly prioritizations
— Raised awareness on different research methods, advocated for user research and overall evidence-based approach within the domain and the organization in general

— Conducted 20+ strategic, tactical, and evaluative studies using a wide range of different methods (interviews, tests, surveys, design sprints, benchmarking)
— Guided multi-method comparative research resulting in product roadmapping and improvement of key metrics
— Built partnerships with teams across the organization with a variety of disciplines (analysts, designers, developers, market researchers, product managers, etc.) to generate insights which deeply impact the trajectory of the product work
— Tailored and communicated research insights and recommendations to multiple levels of the organisation in creative ways that drive impact

— Collaborated in a banking mobile app development in two roles through leading all kinds of qualitative research and creating business requirements
— Acquired a core understanding of a software engineering, user scenarios, edge cases, and a connection between the frontend and the backend
— Facilitated business requirements discussions with business and senior management executives
— Created functional and non-functional requirements, API specification documents
— The app was shortlisted in the European Design Award

— Worked with international clients such as Instagram, BonPrix, Bosch, and KFC on different research projects 
— Collected and analysed user behaviour through lab studies, in-depth interviews, ethnographic field visits, online surveys, benchmarking, and comparative research
— Developed UX knowledge base
— Communicated results clearly and effectively in any format required

Maria Sakharova🇬🇧