Breaking Research Silos: An IO Psychologist's Path to Equitable UX Design

Brandon: So how did you first get into UX research?

Kendall Brown: It’s a long-winded journey that’s non-linear. It started back in college, if I were to pinpoint what directed me to where I am today. For context, I went to Boston University. I was a psych major, and for a while, I was kind of scared of being a psych major.

This is because I thought that being a psych major meant only having two career paths available to you - either going the clinical or counseling route, or getting a PhD and devoting your days to research.  Obviously I ended up working in a research capacity, although transparently, I didn’t know that UX research existed at the time.

So out of fear and naivete, I tried to switch my major a few times, but I always found myself coming back.

When I finally settled on being a psych major once and for all, I joined a few different research labs as a way of discovering what else was in the realm of possibilities for psych majors. My time in the lab strengthened my pull towards all things DEI, since a lot of my research focused on historically underrepresented communities and, since this was also during the pandemic, we looked at how the pandemic was influencing communities of color at a disproportionate rate.

I thought that was really interesting, but again, research in and of itself didn’t really suit me. I thought at the time that it was kind of a slow-moving process because this was academic research, and a lot of my time as a research assistant was spent applying for grants to get funding in order to even conduct the research. During my few years in the labs, I never truly saw my research come to fruition or be implemented, so I felt like it was kind of a thankless job.

But I will say that the benefit of working in the labs, besides the experience researching and feeling like I was working towards helping a community greater than myself even if I didn’t see the payoff immediately, was the exposure to other disciplines within the psychology field. In speaking to other research assistants, I learned about the field of organizational psychology, which combined a lot of my interests. I never had an ideal job title in mind, but I had characteristics of jobs that I wanted. While I wanted to be doing work that benefitted someone where the impact was palpable, I also wanted a collaborative work environment. I loved thinking critically about DEI, well-being, and bettering a community or environment. And through the discovery of IO Psych, I felt that I found a discipline that encompassed all these aims.  

I graduated in the midst of the pandemic, when burnout was at an all-time high, and DEI was finally on the forefront of global consciousness with the resurgence of the BLM movement. I had taken an internship in IO psych shortly before the pandemic, but I wanted to be able to apply more formal learnings and theories in order to be a resource during this time. So, I applied to graduate school and ended up enrolling in Columbia University’s Masters program in Social-Organizational Psychology. 

I went into that program with the idea that I’d go into consulting, HR or DEI. In my first year, I ended up applying to an internship at Uber because I saw on their website that there was one available in what at the time was called “Inclusive Design”, but later became the Product Equity team. The role was for a UXR intern, and I didn’t even know what those letters stood for.

I read the job description, and it said, “zero to two years of research experience, must be interested in topics related to equity and inclusion.” I’m lucky to have such a supportive and encouraging network, and though I thought I wouldn’t get it, the interview process alone opened up a new avenue that I didn’t know existed in terms of my interests.

I ended up getting the internship, working on the team for the summer, and then receiving a return offer. That’s where I am today - back at Uber, not on the Product Equity team. I’m now a User Experience Researcher on what’s called the Rider team, but when I can, I work closely with the Product Equity team. And I like to incorporate their principles into everything I do in my work. 

Brandon: That’s the team for riding in the car, right?

Kendall Brown: Yeah. So anytime you open the rides app and see something new - so maybe there’s a change in how wait time is displayed for example – that change probably went through myself or one of the other few researchers on my team to get a sense of how this implementation would impact the user.

Brandon: Very cool. I’m always happy to speak to another IO psychologist. I definitely feel the same. How would you say the field of IO psychology and social-organizational psychology really help you as a UXR?

Kendall Brown: That’s a great question. I think one of the biggest learnings from grad school was just how interconnected systems are—groups, teams, industries, and individuals—and how all of these elements interact. That’s what we learned to be called “Systems Thinking”. It’s about how the industry, the organization, the group, the team, and the individual can feed into one another.

As a researcher, you also have to be aware of all these complex themes that might be existing in every stage of research. In recruitment, you have to be aware of bias and what’s happening in the world and how that might play into the research pool you’re recruiting from and how that might impact your findings.

I think being able to think holistically about different processes and factors that might influence different elements of the study, the product, or more broadly, just anything about how people interact with one another is really important. How you as a researcher show up might impact the session or the results. I think part of that comes from the social elements of the degree. I also think some of that comes from the org psych elements. I learned about group dynamics and took DEI courses, which is definitely something I’m really interested in. So I try to keep those principles in mind.

In terms of the greater organization, I can’t help but put on my org psych hat at times. For example, the notion that breaking down silos is extremely important is a mentality that was directly influenced by my degree. The ability to share findings and processes is helpful in ensuring that we as a team, org, and company are functioning in a cohesive way. So, for example, even though the Product Equity team might be doing research on one topic, it doesn’t mean that those findings wouldn’t influence other teams’ areas of focus, and vice versa. On the greater design team, we have a few different meetings that help with this. We have fairly regular “Design Show & Tells,” “Design All Hands”, and Design Critiques’, as well as “Critiques” that fall into our distinct disciplines, like UXR. These meetings help to knowledge share and work to mitigate group think, since it ensures that people from across the org and across different teams are coming together, asking questions, and thinking critically about a topic at hand. One of Uber’s values is “Great Minds Don’t Think Alike” which I have always loved, because it emphasizes diversity in all its forms - including diversity of opinion. This was a concept that was underlined countless times in my graduate school studies, and I try to attend those meetings when I can to get a sense of what other teams and individuals are doing to avoid having siloed information. The same is true of monthly newsletters the teams send out so that people from across the org can keep a pulse on what is happening cross-functionally.   

Brandon: Sounds good. I’m also interested in hearing a little bit more about your internship and how you’ve been able to use that in your career. You don’t have to talk about any specific projects or anything NDA-sensitive. But if you want to speak more generally about methodologies you use or anything like that, can you tell us more about how your internship has affected your career so far?

Kendall Brown: Absolutely. To further differentiate the two teams I’ve worked on at Uber, the Product Equity team’s focus is to work with and for historically underrepresented communities. This might be people with disabilities or people who have historically been underrepresented in terms of gender expression, or just anything across the board that might put them at a historical disadvantage. It’s an amazing and important team to have.

The team I work on now, the Rider team, isn’t as specific and looks at riders as a whole. So now my job isn’t so much about what we can do to help specific communities, but more about how we continue to develop our app in a way that benefits the community at large. That means I have to be a lot more intentional about including voices from historically underrepresented communities since the vision of the Rider team isn’t inherently about that. As a result, I try to make everything I do about inclusion and involve people who might represent aspects of the Product Equity team’s goals in my research.

I hope that I would have come to that conclusion regardless of where I began, but I definitely think that having transitioned from the Product Equity team, where that was the mission of the team, to a team where that isn’t technically the goal, has influenced me. The Rider team’s goal is really just to improve elements of the app to encourage rider retention, which is all well and good and the impact in terms of the number of people these changes influence is enormous, but I definitely want to make sure that we’re doing that in an equitable way. So I think that has influenced who I recruit and how I think about ways to address questions that are rooted from systemic problems rather than just focusing on addressing the narrower research questions at hand. 

For example, I had a project about a specific product aimed towards older adults. Really, the research questions centered on how we could make this product more appealing to this population, but I spun and expanded the research project to be about how we can generally cater towards the older adult population by evaluating their needs outside of this specific feature. My deliverable included the insights that the team needed in order to launch the feature, but also addressed broader issues surrounding transportation accessibility among this community. I wanted to continue this conversation on a broader scale, so I ended up presenting my research during what is called “Playground Week”, where designers and cross-functional partners across the org are encouraged to stop working on their typical projects and start thinking about ways to improve the platform in a few key areas. Here, the sky is the limit. So, a team rallied around this idea, we ended up proposing a solution based on the research, and now that solution is getting shipped. I think the project would have been fine for the deliverable if I had merely addressed the research questions that the study called for. But this is an example of how I try to think outside of the box about how to design for historically underrepresented communities, while still keeping to my timelines and deliverables. 

Brandon: That’s great. I’m so happy you’re at a place where equity and inclusion are really part of the culture and not just limited to one team that cares about it. With that being said, do you ever feel as though being Black has impacted your career path and experiences? I’m sure it impacts your research if you’re doing equity and inclusion work, but personally, how has it impacted you and your career trajectory?

Kendall Brown: I think being Black has affected my career. I’ve been lucky in the sense that I’ve had mentors who are super gracious with their time and can sit down and guide me. That’s definitely not everyone’s experience, and I recognize that. But I also think that there’s still a very long way to go in terms of people of color, especially Black people, in tech and research.

For me, being Black luckily hasn’t hindered my experience yet, other than the fact that I think there could be room for more support and more Black people in the industry and in the room. But I also think that being Black has given me a unique perspective about how important it is to have diversity in every aspect—to recruit diversity, to foster diversity, to have cultural experiences that I might not have thought about to the same degree if I were not a person of color.

At Uber, I think they do a good job of investing in Black people both internally and externally. Afro Tech is a big example. Last year I attended on behalf of Uber. They sent a lot of people and invested so much in the conference that Uber was the name on the lanyard as the official sponsor. They also regularly have events like galas and luncheons that support social justice initiatives. 

I attended a gala for Al Sharpon’s charity, National Action Network, on behalf of Uber. MLK Jr.’s son spoke, and Woopie Goldberg was honored. It seems like they invest a lot in these conferences and events that uplift Black people and promote the exchange of ideas and culture among Black people.

That said, I still think there’s a lot of room to grow in terms of how many Black people exist at Uber and in the tech industry as a whole. I also think that another reason Black people are definitely needed in more rooms is that not only is it important to have people of color and diverse perspectives in general, but it also has business implications. If you have a diverse group of people creating the product, implementing the product, and researching the product, you have diverse mindsets, and I think that’s a really important aspect that translates literally into money, dollars, and revenue. When there’s a gap there, it can have dire consequences in terms of brand image, reach, and in some cases, the function of the product. 

Brandon: Absolutely. I’m so happy to hear that it has not been a hindrance for you. That’s something that I love to hear and wish I heard more of. But you did point to an issue that I feel like almost anyone with eyes can see, and that is that we need more Black researchers. So I’m curious, what changes would you like to see companies make to better attract, support, and retain Black UXR talent?

Kendall Brown: Yeah, not only is recruiting a big aspect, but retaining is huge. Retention in tech, in general, isn’t great, and especially among people of color, it’s just horrendous. So I have a few ideas.

First, I think that at a lot of big companies in general, the recruiting strategy for early career is pretty simple: let’s go to the quote-unquote “prestigious” schools and not really stray from that. And that’s just an equity gap right there alone. There are so many issues in terms of how people even get to those schools, and there are concerns about how expensive these private institutions can be. So I think that in and of itself is a way to not have a diverse population of people who are even recruited or thought about as being eligible to apply to these jobs, which is not productive.

Another thing is, as I said, I personally didn’t know that this career existed. So I think that colleges need to be better about showcasing the different ways that you can use your degree, like the different career paths you can have. I think that’s kind of a gap that we see across the board.

Also, I think internships are a huge opportunity to foster skills and a sense of community within the context of a company. I myself learned everything about UX from my internship, which I was really lucky to have. But sadly, I feel like tech companies right now are not investing as much in internships as they once did, due to the volatile economy. This has bled into return offers as well—I know there was a recession, so there are other aspects that have been hindering this, but I do think that having all of these things early in your career can really shape the support you are privy to at the very start of your career, which in turn, can impact career progression.

But in terms of mid-career recruitment, Black professionals often face disproportionate challenges compared to those of other ethnicities. Research, including findings shared during my graduate program, indicates that referrals play a significant role in hiring, and can be far more effective than a person applying without a connection. That said, peoples’ networks tend to be homogenous and generally include others who share similar backgrounds. Given the underrepresentation of Black professionals in tech roles, the likelihood of having connections who can provide referrals or facilitate introductions could be significantly lower, creating a systemic barrier to accessing these opportunities.

And beyond this, as I alluded to, I think that once you get your foot in the door, the issue of retention is a big one. Having this community is a strong indicator of how well you can do in this career because even if you get to the job and don’t see anyone like you, or you don’t feel supported, you might feel like you’ve kind of met a glass ceiling. For that reason, I think mentorship is also really important. 

As I said, having a strong Black community and joining groups to meet like-minded, career-driven people is helpful. I myself am part of a group called SiSTEM Collective, where Black & LatinX women in tech come together from across the industry to share, network and empower one another. This has been a great way to meet people, and I’m willing to help out anyone in the collective in any way I can, and I feel that that sentiment is mutual. Though a big part of the benefit of being a member is networking and career development, we do so all while doing fun activities; actually, this past weekend we went apple picking upstate! And though these groups exist outside of companies, having a robust mentorship program within the company would also be beneficial in my view. The Black ERG at Uber, called “Black@” puts on career development events, which I think is a good way to uplift and uplevel the Black community internally.

So all of this is to say, it’s important from every stage of the employee lifecycle. Not only is it important to ensure that people know about these careers and the fact that there is a trajectory that can lead you to this career, but also to have a strong group of people who are there who can support you, guide you, embrace you, and kind of hold your hand and walk you through it at every stage of the process from recruitment to retirement will lead to higher retention.

Brandon: All true. Let’s say you are a young Black professional who was like you a few years ago—don’t know what they necessarily want to do with their psych degree, or are interested maybe in research or care about UXR but want to get into it. What advice would you give them? And for the groups and the community that you mentioned, how would you suggest that they even find these?

Kendall Brown: Yeah, that’s a great question. I would honestly start by looking on LinkedIn for Black UXRs – maybe they are alumni from a school or group you were a part of, or a friend of a friend. After identifying them, I’d ask if you can have an intro call. I think that’s one way that’s just really helpful to kind of get to know different people, even if it doesn’t lead to an opportunity. Just getting a sense of Black people’s experience in this career and having a candid conversation about that can set you up with what to expect and give you a bigger network, which I think will never hurt.

I also think that there are programs you can do. For example, I gave a talk at BrainStation about my own career trajectory, and was blown away at all of the resources they provide their students - I wish I had known about it sooner! Essentially, Brainstation provides a crash course on UX/UXR - going through the entire lifecycle of a product. It’s for people of all ages and stages—early career, mid-career, those who are switching careers—and it gives you a sense of what to expect in UX. You end up with a portfolio, which is something I never had and something I would suggest anyone looking to get into this field should have.

Which leads me to my final piece of advice - I think just doing your own research about the career and what to expect out of it is important. As I said, I kind of went in with nothing, no insight. I was building the plane as I was flying it, which has so far been working for me! But if I were to do it again, I would definitely try to go in with more resources. I would try to reach out to more people and kind of get a sense of their experiences, and I would try to build a community before I even stepped foot on day one of the job.

Brandon: All right, yeah, makes sense. Totally agree. There are so many more resources and opportunities now than I feel like even a few years ago. So yeah, just knowing that they exist is important. So we don’t have too much left. Is there anything else that you’d like to share about your experiences or perspectives on making UXR more inclusive?

Kendall Brown: Yes, I think it’s really important that companies have a team like Uber’s Equity team. I think it’s incredible that that exists, but I also think it’s equally, if not more important, that those same principles are translated into every team. As I said, I try to do that. That said, a lot of the projects on my roadmap are not kind of conducive to that, so I try to get creative in when and how I do it.  

But that’s something that I think should happen organization-wide and industry-wide. I’m not sure how that will happen, but I do think that just because a company has a team that does work related to equity and inclusion, it doesn’t mean that the rest of the company can slack off and not think about that. I think it’s super important to keep that in mind in everything we do, regardless of the team we’re on or who we’re working with.