Profession: User Experience Researcher and Innovation Strategist
Current Place of Work: Palo Alto Research Center
Position: Research Fellow
Residence: Oakland CA, USA
Nationality: British and Naturalized US Citizen
Interests: Science, Music, Food, Nature
Contact: My Surname at Gmail
LinkedIn:
http://www.linkedin.com/in/bellotti/
Current Place of Work: Palo Alto Research Center
Position: Research Fellow
Residence: Oakland CA, USA
Nationality: British and Naturalized US Citizen
Interests: Science, Music, Food, Nature
Contact: My Surname at Gmail
LinkedIn:
http://www.linkedin.com/in/bellotti/
WHAT I'M ALL ABOUT
OK, if you hate self-promotion just stop reading here. STOP! Otherwise proceed with the understanding that I am British and we naturally find this sort of thing very uncomfortable. This page is just for recruiters and hiring managers.
If possible, I like to work up-stream in the system innovation process where I’m able to define innovative product and service concepts. I am highly experienced and effective in competitive analysis, user experience research (qualitative and quantitative), strategic business and product concept invention, storyboard, wireframe, rough design and leading agile development activities. You'll find testimonials to this sort of thing on my LinkedIn page.
Since I joined Lyft, my obsession has been to optimize research efficiency whenever appropriate, since UX Research always seems to be in such short supply. I especially wanted to dispel the notion that someone with my more heavyweight academic research background couldn't adapt. So I:
I work especially well with engineers and have made a point to collaborate closely with them throughout my career, rather than sticking with other social scientists. I have converted many engineers from social science skeptics into fans and cheerleaders (Dan Russell at Google and Bo Begole at AMD Research, to name two).
I’m the person you can rely on to make sure things get done on time and well. I’ve worked many a late night and weekend for sustained periods under pressure to deliver client satisfaction.
Despite the fact that I usually end up doing the user research in most team efforts, colleagues have told me that my attention to the details of system features would make me an excellent product manager. I have advised start-ups on their UX design regularly and led a team in a lean development effort to get a social app up-and-running in a matter of weeks. So all this is to say, I do have a strong affinity with the details of product design and development well beyond just specifying requirements.
If possible, I like to work up-stream in the system innovation process where I’m able to define innovative product and service concepts. I am highly experienced and effective in competitive analysis, user experience research (qualitative and quantitative), strategic business and product concept invention, storyboard, wireframe, rough design and leading agile development activities. You'll find testimonials to this sort of thing on my LinkedIn page.
Since I joined Lyft, my obsession has been to optimize research efficiency whenever appropriate, since UX Research always seems to be in such short supply. I especially wanted to dispel the notion that someone with my more heavyweight academic research background couldn't adapt. So I:
- Perfected the art of note-taking during qual interviews in such a way that analysis was less subjective and much faster. These days transcription software is always available as a back up should someone doubt the accuracy of my notes.
- Taught myself Figma so that I was never dependent on designers for any mockups or tweaks that needed to be made to get ideas across or compare alternatives.
- Begin teaching myself SQL to the point that I often didn't need a data scientist to help with behavioral recruiting.
- Worked with contractors and taught them how to be super efficient as well.
- Delegated low-context, lower-priority research to students, either in a masters capstone project or a Parker Dewey micro-internship.
I work especially well with engineers and have made a point to collaborate closely with them throughout my career, rather than sticking with other social scientists. I have converted many engineers from social science skeptics into fans and cheerleaders (Dan Russell at Google and Bo Begole at AMD Research, to name two).
I’m the person you can rely on to make sure things get done on time and well. I’ve worked many a late night and weekend for sustained periods under pressure to deliver client satisfaction.
Despite the fact that I usually end up doing the user research in most team efforts, colleagues have told me that my attention to the details of system features would make me an excellent product manager. I have advised start-ups on their UX design regularly and led a team in a lean development effort to get a social app up-and-running in a matter of weeks. So all this is to say, I do have a strong affinity with the details of product design and development well beyond just specifying requirements.
SOME HISTORY
I worked at PARC (a Xerox company research lab) for many years doing a wide range of projects and external collaborations. I became one of nine research fellows (the most senior level). I led many projects with government and commercial clients (especially from Japan) on high-speed and large projects. Most of my research at PARC had practical objectives to help clients innovate and develop more competitive and strategic product solutions. I brought in about $7M in research contracts and extensive experience in business development (I was asked to join the PARC bizdev team at one point), strategy and agile UX research, and project management methods. I was an area manager from 2003-2010 leading a team of seven excellent UX researchers before “abdicating” to focus on research and become a research fellow. I helped hire my successor, Patrick Cook, who was not a researcher and thrived on all the business development and didn't miss doing research; this had bothered me a lot.
Throughout, I mentored and managed dozens of up-and-coming UX professionals at PARC as contractors assisting on PARC projects and as student interns advising on their study and career decisions. I also developed a technique of managing very large teams of up to 15 distributed student assistants on very rapid ethnographic research, sometimes with more experienced students managing new assistants.
Eventually I decided it was time to move out of corporate research and consulting and into a more high-speed high-growth company product org, so I joined Lyft. There I worked for one year in their growth org, partnering with PMs on developing attractive pass and subscription packages, conducting large-scale surveys to allow me to do exploratory factor analysis into features of packages and of customer behaviors that would allow us to better predict what would likely be most attractive. I moved to the autonomous vehicles division where I mainly focused on safety driver human factors in relation to training and performance measurement.
After two years at Lyft, I joined Netflix and worked half and half in their ranking algos team and member messaging team conducting a variety of foundational and tactical projects on, for example, temporal signals that might affect content preferences, and jobs-to-be-done research to understand how messaging could support Netflix's business. In my second year, I led research on the 0-to-1 Netflix Tudum endeavor, working with multiple contractors and students, running one tactical qual study every week for six months and layering more strategic research on top of that to support to product vision. By the time I ran out of things to do, I was managing nine mostly high-speed projects at one time. And once I ran out of things to do I was tempted to join DoorDash.
Unfortunately DoorDash had been hiring too many people and I was cut loose after only 5 months. Nevertheless my work supported products such as Home Chef, Lunch Plan, DoorDash for Work, DoubleDash, and Groceries. Just before I left I completed research on elements of an incentivization structure for dashers, drawing upon my own and prior research into human motivation.
At Netflix and DoorDash I continued to advise students and at Netflix I set up their Consumer Insights Internship program, a feat that involved me managing a team of people through a year-long process of creating all the necessary resources and procedures. I couldn't have done it without the support of Layne Austin, our Intern Recruiting Lead.
Throughout, I mentored and managed dozens of up-and-coming UX professionals at PARC as contractors assisting on PARC projects and as student interns advising on their study and career decisions. I also developed a technique of managing very large teams of up to 15 distributed student assistants on very rapid ethnographic research, sometimes with more experienced students managing new assistants.
Eventually I decided it was time to move out of corporate research and consulting and into a more high-speed high-growth company product org, so I joined Lyft. There I worked for one year in their growth org, partnering with PMs on developing attractive pass and subscription packages, conducting large-scale surveys to allow me to do exploratory factor analysis into features of packages and of customer behaviors that would allow us to better predict what would likely be most attractive. I moved to the autonomous vehicles division where I mainly focused on safety driver human factors in relation to training and performance measurement.
After two years at Lyft, I joined Netflix and worked half and half in their ranking algos team and member messaging team conducting a variety of foundational and tactical projects on, for example, temporal signals that might affect content preferences, and jobs-to-be-done research to understand how messaging could support Netflix's business. In my second year, I led research on the 0-to-1 Netflix Tudum endeavor, working with multiple contractors and students, running one tactical qual study every week for six months and layering more strategic research on top of that to support to product vision. By the time I ran out of things to do, I was managing nine mostly high-speed projects at one time. And once I ran out of things to do I was tempted to join DoorDash.
Unfortunately DoorDash had been hiring too many people and I was cut loose after only 5 months. Nevertheless my work supported products such as Home Chef, Lunch Plan, DoorDash for Work, DoubleDash, and Groceries. Just before I left I completed research on elements of an incentivization structure for dashers, drawing upon my own and prior research into human motivation.
At Netflix and DoorDash I continued to advise students and at Netflix I set up their Consumer Insights Internship program, a feat that involved me managing a team of people through a year-long process of creating all the necessary resources and procedures. I couldn't have done it without the support of Layne Austin, our Intern Recruiting Lead.
PAST PASSIONS AS A RESEARCHER
Towards the end of my time in more academic research, I focused on context-aware computing and peer-to-peer marketplaces. What do these things have to do with each other?
I was a principal investigator on an NSF-funded project to develop open source software that will bring this about. I was the lead author on the second and much larger of two proposals that led to our funding awards. I led the user experience research and design for the system under development.
I also became very interested in service robots into the enterprise. I'm interested in how robots for telepresence, delivery, security, maintenance and cleaning can fit into the workplace, taking on tasks that humans find dull and dreary. In particular, I see intriguing business opportunities in this space for my former employer (Xerox) but wasn't able to persuade them that they could build (or acquire a robot startup) and sell robots alongside printers, with little additional effort.
- Context-aware computing means making use of online and sensed data to make inferences.
- Peer-to-peer marketplaces are disrupting many areas of the economy and are thus hot innovation and business opportunity spaces I am working towards a future in which people will be able to discover opportunities to transact with one another (in service and goods exchanges), through recommendations from systems involving analytics, machine learning and mixed initiative interaction styles.
I was a principal investigator on an NSF-funded project to develop open source software that will bring this about. I was the lead author on the second and much larger of two proposals that led to our funding awards. I led the user experience research and design for the system under development.
I also became very interested in service robots into the enterprise. I'm interested in how robots for telepresence, delivery, security, maintenance and cleaning can fit into the workplace, taking on tasks that humans find dull and dreary. In particular, I see intriguing business opportunities in this space for my former employer (Xerox) but wasn't able to persuade them that they could build (or acquire a robot startup) and sell robots alongside printers, with little additional effort.
PROFESSIONAL STANDING
I developed international reputation as a scientist and was inducted to the ACM SIGCHI Academy in 2013. Only a handful of members are inducted each year. My reputation is largely built on research into and prototyping of knowledge worker activity management solutions, however I have done highly cited work in a number of other areas. While at PARC participated in editorial boards, chaired conferences, participated in panels, gave talks and keynote presentations and so on.
I have published over 60 peer-reviewed papers and am an experienced speaker and advisor to students and young entrepreneurs. I tackle UX design, user research methods and innovation and business strategy challenges.
In 2012, I became an adjunct faculty member at UCSC in the Baskin School of Engineering with no teaching responsibilities. I mainly mentored students and collaborate with faculty where possible.
Once I joined product research at Lyft, I ended those more academic activities, although I continue to mentor students when I can.
Check out my profile on LinkedIn for more information about me.
I have published over 60 peer-reviewed papers and am an experienced speaker and advisor to students and young entrepreneurs. I tackle UX design, user research methods and innovation and business strategy challenges.
In 2012, I became an adjunct faculty member at UCSC in the Baskin School of Engineering with no teaching responsibilities. I mainly mentored students and collaborate with faculty where possible.
Once I joined product research at Lyft, I ended those more academic activities, although I continue to mentor students when I can.
Check out my profile on LinkedIn for more information about me.