1. Tell us a little bit about yourself.
Professionally, I'm a Workforce Experience Researcher, focused on improving employee experience. HR Ops professional in another life and currently consult on digital HR transformation and strategy, ensuring employee needs are central to the process. Personally, I'm a mom just entering toddlerdom for the first time. Wish me luck! Outside of being a parent, I love hiking with my husband, a not-too-hoppy craft beer, and a good board game.

2. What attracted you to get involved with UXRS?
UXRS was one of the first resources that really resonated with me when I transitioned to UX research. Being able to contribute and join the UXRS team so that I can help others make the leap into UX research and strategy is what it is all about.

3. What was your favorite thing about UXRS and why?
The practicality and approachable nature of UXRS resources is HUGE in my book. Research is a skill to develop and UXRS gives people resources to explore, ideas to run with and a community to lean on. I am particularly fond of Method Mondays because who doesn't love a little nudge on a Monday to get out there and do something different?

4. What would you like to see in UXRS's future?
I would love for us to really build a strong connection with our community and reach out beyond us - how can we as a community give back? Is there a hackathon team we could put together? What about pro bono small projects? Scholarships for those interested in UX Research? 

1. Tell us a little bit about yourself.
Before I transitioned to UX research, I worked as an architectural and urban designer and focused on neighborhoods and master planning. The challenging, and at times, frustrating, part of our work was ensuring that our projects weaved into the existing place—its people and its history. Anyone can create something beautiful and drop it on a map but the most rewarding part was integrating the voices of the community and the existing urban fabric. For me, my role as a UX researcher offers the same opportunity—I strive to understand how our designs and products can support our customers and best be integrated into their lives in a way that is conducive to their existing lifestyles.

2. What attracted you to get involved with UXRS?
I find the goal of UXRS to “make topics both approachable and actionable” incredibly compelling. There are not enough UXR resources that show researchers how to make our work digestible for the people we impact. For me, this is an opportunity to support a community of enthusiastic and like-minded individuals, interested in applying research to our daily work and, ultimately, democratizing the study of research. 

3. What was your favorite thing about UXRS and why?
The UXRS events! Recently, I attended “Challenging UX Research Norms” with Meena Kothandaraman and later referenced her work to better integrate research at my organization. And I could download the presentation and transcripts and watch the re-watch presentation videos to learn and absorb at my own pace, without worrying about a paywall. It’s also a nice coincidence that UXRS was started in Texas—my home state! :)
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4. What would you like to see in UXRS's future?
As a researcher who started as the sole researcher of my organization, I hope to support a community of research teams of one/first-researchers! I have been lucky enough to learn from others in this position and would love to see a group that supports the development of research within a larger organization.

Jake Rhodes has worked in technology all of his adult life but his experience working with software developers as a Technical PM at Microsoft opened the door for him to explore UX design and UX research full-time. Since moving into UX Research, Jake has worked on projects targeting a wide range of audiences including researchers themselves, consumers using Windows, to parents using family safety products. He is most energized by the process of understanding the motivations of customers and helping his team understand customer needs as clearly as possible. Today, Jake is a user researcher in Microsoft’s developer division, focused primarily on development frameworks and tools. He’s also an avid cook, woodworker, and carpenter at home - in many ways, It’s all the same work.

Side projects: Recently, he has become obsessed with understanding purpose motives in work, and the effects of technology saturation with learning and judgment. He is currently working on generative work in these areas separately from everything else going on.

Now let’s take a deeper dive with Jake and have him answer a few questions.

What attracted me to get involved with UXRS?
I was inspired by the spirit of openness, sharing, and support on the UXRS Slack channel. I have a deep, personal view that we as a discipline should be doing more to help new practitioners establish themselves and we should be doing more to share our collective body of knowledge with each other.

What’s your favorite UXR Event and why? 
For a variety of reasons, I was getting a little frustrated with how much I was having to rely on remote moderated studies and I was looking for ideas on how to run remote contextual inquiry for an upcoming project. As luck would have it, UXRS offered an event on this exact subject:  Deb Gelman’s talk on Remote Contextual Inquiry. It served as both an introduction to the faces behind the group of UXRS and it also served to broaden my thinking about how to adapt contextual inquiry methods to a remote context. I was inspired by some of her ideas and have used some of these approaches with recent developer projects.  


What do you see in UXRSs future?
Digital technology is expanding into every part of our lives and the need for ethical, human centered UX research practitioners is going to continue to grow. We also have growing interest in our discipline with new colleagues joining the UX research ranks from many backgrounds:  undergraduates, established academics, bootcamp graduates - you name it. I hope to be part of a UXRS future that is successful connecting researchers with each other and maximizing the impact of that economy.  
You can find Jake on social media: 
LinkedIN:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/george-rhodes-seattle/ 
Twitter:  https://twitter.com/UxRhodes
Facebook: gorhodes