Summary | Key Expertise | Work | Mentoring | Thought Leadership | Skills | Education | Professional Development | Publications

A strategic and accomplished Research professional with over 10 years of experience and a PhD in Psychology who leverages creativity and curiosity to find and solve complex problems by making insightful connections and inventing new methods. Trusted by leaders, colleagues, and customers across a variety of industries (AI, cybersecurity, health technology, social media, and insurance) to build and advocate for a holistic understanding of user needs and journeys, by digging deep into the context of people, problems, and solutions.

• Contributed to over $360k in new revenue for a cybersecurity startup, by creating and owning the research roadmap throughout the product development lifecycle for a new risk and insurance vertical.

• Increased adoption by showing that users of a digital contact tracing app struggled to understand and trust the original onboarding, inspiring a redesign for increased understanding and trust that raised onboarding by 17%.

• Altered leadership discussion on extreme communicators, by showing that they have the same kinds of problems as other users, and are influential in purchase decisions but typically are not buyers.

• Invented a method for studying classical composers and showed that their styles are distinctive and learnable.

• Respected thought leader and mentor with blog posts reaching 3,000+ readers, and who has coached 250+ in research, UX, and storytelling.

Analytical and Critical Thinking | Complex Problem-Solving | Communication - Written, Oral, and Visual | Research Strategy and Methodology | Innovation | Leadership, Mentoring, and Teaching | Influence, Persuasion, and Negotiation | Cross-functional Collaboration | Project Management | Process Improvement | Synthesis of Actionable Insights | Business Recommendations

Bailiwik, Inc. | Place-based social media startup | Remote from Los Angeles, CA

Senior UX Research Consultant (contract), April 2023 - Present

• Informed company’s business and app strategy by providing recommendations to co-founder and Growth team based on understanding retention and engagement via generative research with churned users.

SecurityScorecard | B2B SaaS cybersecurity ratings startup | Remote from Los Angeles, CA

Senior UX Researcher, November 2021 - January 2023

• Changed execs’ IA choice from use case-based to traditional by presenting triangulated qual and quant data.

• Improved UX infrastructure by building processes (e.g. onboarding, work tracking) as UXR on UX leads team.

• Prompted new collaborations with Data Science, CSMs, Support via UXR on churn and hackathon projects.

• Raised value, reduced risk of 9+ other OKR and high-priority initiatives via generative and tactical research studies.

User Researcher, July 2021 - November 2021

• Influenced CEO to request redesign of Public Scorecards for customer needs and pains, leading to Chrome Extension.

• Founded UXR team as first researcher at cybersecurity startup, growing team from self to 6 in 10 months with manager.

• Boosted quality of Product and Marketing insights by training stakeholders in surveying and interviewing best practices.

Research Bookmark | Remote from Los Angeles, CA

UX Research Mentor (contract), July 2022 - August 2022

• Coached 6 career changers on usability, resumes, storytelling in a 6-week UXR  mentoring program.

Microsoft Corporation (via Allovus Design, Inc.) | Remote from Los Angeles, CA

User Researcher (contract), January 2021 - June 2021

• Shaped leadership conversation on users’ value by showing that extreme users have influence, not purchase power.

• Increased focus on solving known user problems by noting high overlap of extreme users’ and other users’ struggles.

• Thought leadership shown by literature review shared with international teams via synthesizing past research.

• Influenced division’s strategy via foundational communication research insights presented in financial year planning.

• Improved internal sharing and learning by providing feedback to speakers ahead of company-wide UXR conference.

Neochrome, Inc. | web design and development agency | Remote from Los Angeles, CA

UX Researcher and Designer (contract), July 2020 - December 2020

• Successfully launched Reebok First Pitch, project managing six weeks of QA testing with team of 5 developers.

• Recommended usability and marketing improvements to executives based on  interviews and focus group.

• Created framework and algorithm to recommend activities for travel planning app via literature review.

• Mentored and supervised junior UX Designer through diverging and converging design process.

PathCheck Foundation | health technology non-profit | Remote from Los Angeles, CA

UX Researcher (contract), May 2020 - October 2020

• Influenced organizational market pivotto health departments by identifying brand risk associated with higher ed.

• Helped slow COVID ~15% in AL, HI, LA, MN, Barbados, Cypress, and Guam via UXR on exposure notifications.

• Increased likelihood of viral app sharing by discovering eagerness of COVID-positive users to protect loved ones.

SchoolClosures.org | education technology non-profit | Remote from Los Angeles, CA

User Researcher (contract), March 2020

• Started lean qual research program at a nonprofit with customer support and UX designers to develop proto-personas.

• Recommended 5 information architecture (IA) updates to execs for better findability based on a remote card sort.

UCLA Human Perception Lab | Los Angeles, CA

Researcher, Project Lead, September 2012 - December 2019

• Boosted expert performance 4% on a new math perception test via training them with math learning technology.

• Discovered a user technique leading to 5% higher accuracy on assessment via ANCOVA analyses in SPSS.

• Created a new method to train and measure 43 participants’ learning (p<.01) of composers’ musical styles.

UCLA Psychology Department | Los Angeles, CA

Research and Psychology Teaching Assistant (contract), September 2013 - June 2019

• Communicated complex topics to non-experts in teaching statistics and psychology to 980+ undergrads.

MontiLab at UCLA | Los Angeles, CA

Research Consultant, September 2012 - November 2014

• Innovated methodology for fMRI, resulting in new knowledge that music and language syntax use the same brain areas.

UCLA Human Perception Lab | Los Angeles, CA

Research Assistant, September 2010 - June 2012

• Prepared juniors for UX in 2 career panels and via 30+ individual mentoring sessions, 2021-2023

• Encouraged next generation of researchers via judging 4 science and engineering fairs, 2016-2021

• Coached 200+ junior researchers in A/B testing studies and survey studies in methods courses, 2013-2019

• Effectively trained and mentored research assistants: 83%  are in technical fields, including UXR, 2013 - 2019

• Reached over 3,000 readers via writing 10 blog posts on user experience and psychology, 2012-2023

• Speaker at 6+ international UX and psychology conferences, e.g. Quant UX Con, CogSci, APS, 2013-2022

• Published 3 peer-reviewed academic journal articles on original psychology research, 2 as lead author, 2014-2018

• Organized 3 public interdisciplinary symposia on psychology and music, law, and AI, with team, 2012-2015

PhD in Psychology - major in Cognitive Psychology, minor in Quantitative Psychology (Statistics), UCLA

MA in Psychology, UCLA

BS in Cognitive Science, with a Specialization in Computing, UCLA

• UXR with Participants with Disabilities, UX Research & Strategy, 2023

• B2B Recruitment Strategies, ReOps, 2023

• Conferences: Advancing Research 2023, Quant UX Con 2022 (speaker), BAD - Behavior and Design 2022 (speaker), Include Conference 2021

• Introduction to Content Design, UK Government Digital Campus, 2020

• Certification in Ethics for Human Research - Social and Behavioral Researchers and Staff CITI, 2010, 2014, 2018

Chiang, J.N., Rosenberg, M. H., Bufford, C.A., Stephens, D., Lysy, A., & Monti, M.M. (2018). The language of music: Common neural codes for structured sequences in music and natural language. Brain and Language, 185, 30-37.

Bufford, C.A., Thai, K.P., Ho, J., Xiong, C., Hinges, C.A., & Kellman, P.J. (2016). Perceptual learning of abstract musical patterns: Recognizing composer style. In T. Zanto, T. Fujioka, P. Janata, J. Johnson, J. Berger, J. Slater, & C. Chafe (Eds.), Proceedings of the 14th Annual Conference of the International Conference for Music Perception and Cognition (pp. 8-12).

Bufford, C.A., Mettler, E., Geller, E.H., & Kellman, P.J. (2014). The psychophysics of algebra expertise: Mathematics perceptual learning interventions produce durable encoding changes. In P. Bellow, M. Guarini, M. McShane, & B. Scassellati (Eds.), Proceedings of the 36th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 272-277). Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society.

(also see blogs)