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Isadora Taam
UX Research & Strategy
Both my personal and academic trajectories inform the UX Researcher I am today. It is essential for me to be able transfer skills from previous fields of work and study into my job. Below you can find how I think those experiences translate to my role in Product teams.
Performing Arts
Empathy | Rapport building | Daring to innovate | Workshop facilitation | Group-thinking
My curiosity about human behaviour led me to study Theatre for 8 years alongside my academic studies. I am trained in the American Method Technique. I studied the method in Los Angeles with Acting coach Howard Fine - known for coaching of Meryl Streep, Bradley Cooper, Will Smith and others. In Rio, I coached the actors in 3 films and prepared many actors for auditions.
The method consists in connecting your own life experience to the character’s context and break down their journey in the play to understand their obstacles, needs and objectives in each scene.
The method specifically helps me to both build rapport with the users during research activities as well as to synthesise data into Personas, Empathy Maps and User Journeys. By learning to use empathy and creativity in analytical processes, it helps me understanding easily the user’s mental models, how they use a service or a product in context, and how they workaround obstacles to be able to accomplish tasks.
In addition to that, I bring some Theatre dynamics into workshop facilitation, making sure I shape or create the exercises according to what the teams need to learn from Research at a particular moment in Product Development.
Architecture
Spatial Thinking | Design Principles | Creative-collaboration | Project Management
I studied Architecture for my first Bachelor’s degree. During my studies, I was an intern for an Architecture office in Rio de Janeiro, in which I was the connection between our building sites and the office, making sure the projects were being translated correctly by our constructors.
My experience in Architecture gave me the ability to design products for people to live in - which is ultimately the most basic of all human needs. I have practiced thinking how users of a space will experience products in terms of function, materiality, flows and atmosphere. And I believe this was my first experience in UX. Those skills have helped me to think of user flows and interactions, especially on a Service Design level.
I am also well-trained in the ability to make creative decisions collectively and timely. In projects, we had to choose and justify all creative choices in group and then implement them within tight deadlines. That trained me to listen to ideas objectively and prioritise the ones that were feasible with resources we had, at each stage of the project’s development.
Business & Marketing
Customer-centered Approach | Data-Analysis | Business Strategy | Market Research
Throughout my Master’s in International Marketing I solved business problems through the lens of UX before I even knew what that was. I found out about UX at a Google Analytics Bootcamp I took to support my studies. From that moment, there was no way back for me: I did my dissertation on the subject and a Digital Product Design immersive course. Because of that, my approach to UX is fundamentally connected to finding solutions to business problems.
During my Master’s, I worked as a Market Researcher for a Consultancy Agency in a Market Entry project for a well-known food brand. There, I practiced my quantitative research and data visualization skills. After that, I worked in branding and content strategy for two startups, where I transformed my previous experience in Content Production into data-driven content production for businesses. Both experiences collaborate to my data-driven approach in UX.
Film & Digital Media
Storytelling | Content production | Art Direction | Collaborative problem-solving
I studied Film & Digital Media for my second Bachelor’s degree, having spent 1 year of that program at the University of California Santa Cruz and 1 year in Los Angeles working in Content creation afterwards.
In the industry, I worked in Screenwriting, Set Design/ Production Design, Post-production Production and Licensing.
From screenwriting, I have learnt the value of character development and narrative structure and that. helps me creating personas, storyboarding, user flows and/ or customer journeys that tell a story of someone with a mission, overcoming obstacles to be able to accomplish a task. In Set Design/ Production Design and Post-production production I learnt to understand and manage multiple departments' needs throughout a project, and to overcome challenges collectively, within tight budgets and deadlines.
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Coming from a Communication Studies background, I believe that every UX decision is ultimately a Communication decision. In the end, our job really is to reduce cognitive load and build products for people that are easy to use to an audience that needs to solve a problem - preferably fast.