Insight into volunteer user research projects at USDR
My role: I volunteer as a user researcher with United States Digital Response (USDR). As a volunteer, I raise my hand for various user research projects that support USDR initiatives or partnerships. Exactly what I do (and who I work with!) varies by project and/or partnership.
Overview
My UXR work integrates my behavioral design expertise.
Process
Research plan: As a researcher, I show up and help scope the research ensuring that we’re designing the project for success.
Interviews: To date, the user research projects I’ve supported have involved interviews with a target population.
Synthesis: Together, the team examines our findings, connecting the dots across research activities, and begins to form our observations related to the work and the way forward.
Share-out: Each of my volunteer projects has concluded with a share-out presentation to our given project partners (and, as a user research volunteer - this makes sense!).
Reflections
Volunteer teams are the best: USDR attracts good humans who do good work. It’s inspiring to be a part of the USDR volunteer network. I’ve been motivated and inspired by each volunteer group - and I always learn so much!
Work is useful and used: I’ve been impressed with how actionable each of the volunteer projects is. It’s rewarding to see how our use research projects are acted on shortly after our work share-out.
Impact is broad and meaningful: The scope of projects varies from a focused community project to a broad project covering the entirety of the United States.