Adam Engstrom's Resume

Work Experience

Home Depot

Lead User Experience Researcher, Oct 2022 – Present

• Led research strategy for the Home Services department that better captured the entire customer journey and produced actionable insights for product teams
• Managed tasks, monitored morale, and identified and removed obstacles for a team of four junior researchers and two service designers
• Leveraged design thinking methodology to help stakeholders form project visions and identify key metrics and users
• Developed and coordinated relationships with other research and design teams throughout the company

Senior User Experience Researcher, Oct 2020 – Oct 2022

• Identified common customer pain-points through leveraging data from thousands of non-buyer surveys and coordinated with several departments to create internal processes to reduce barriers to sales and recapture lost leads
• Developed a more nuanced and holistic understanding of customers' goals and pain-points throughout the lifespan of a home improvement project through crafting and orchestrating multiphased and mixed method research studies
• Provided recommendations for how to streamline and modernize customer communications and interactions based off of usability tests and interviews with end-users

Accenture Industry X.0

User Experience Research Architect, Jan 2019 – Jun 2020

• Advised teams on development of usability testing plans for validation of designs across multiple countries such as the US, Germany, the UK, and China
• Identified user pain points in various systems through contextual inquiries and used the findings to develop narratives to build client empathy for the end-user
• Created searchable, interlinked databases of over 1,000 research findings to improve access to user research
• Built interactive Axure prototypes of designs for in-depth user tests and to help clients get buy-in from key stakeholders
• Navigated complex internal client relationships to deliver in-depth critiques and recommendations based on user research

Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan

User Experience Researcher and Designer, Aug 2017 – Dec 2018

• Pioneered the use of and led teams through Google Venture Design Sprints, including rapid usability testing, for both internal and external clients
• Developed and led focus groups through a participatory design exercise that prioritized site features and information and allowed users to play a more active role in the redesign of the Medicaid micro-site
• Conveyed recommendations based on card sort findings to executives for how to better organize web site information architecture to better match users’ expectations
• Worked with designers to develop a multiple phase plan to standardize design across the entire BCBSM digital ecosystem to reduce friction caused by disjointed interactions

U-M College of Engineering Communications & Marketing

Website Accessibility Evaluator, Sep 2016 – Dec 2016

• Developed design recommendations and usability scores for School of Engineering webpages based on detailed heuristic evaluations that spanned 45 distinct criteria

University of Michigan School of Social Work

Work-Study Web Developer, Sep 2015 - Dec 2016

• Leveraged Google Analytics data and heuristic evaluations to craft new user journeys through the School’s site that better matched users’ needs and interests
• Collaborated with developers in updating HTML, CSS, and PHP code and conducting accessibility audits of the School’s website

Citizen Interaction Design

Interaction Design Summer Fellow, May 2016 - Aug 2016

• Uncovered a community need centered on a lack of transparent housing data through contextual inquiries and interviews with residents, landlords, realtors, and city officials
• Nurtured relationships with community partners to generate support for the project
• Designed new system for displaying housing data where residents could easily see detailed inspection data
• Validated design iterations through usability testing with low-income residents

City of Lakes AmeriCorps

Service-Learning Coordinator, Aug 2010 - Aug 2011

• Developed and/or led programs that combined community service and development with academic curricula such as after school clubs, an anti-bullying class, and several school wide service projects

Education

University of Michigan School of Information

Master of Science in Information, Human-Computer Interaction - 2017

University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee

Certificate Web Development and Design - 2015

London School of Economics and Political Science

Master of Science in Social and Cultural Psychology - 2012

University of Minnesota, Twin Cities

Bachelor of Arts (Honors) in Psychology - 2010