Kathy Garcia Alvero

Profile

Award-winning and results-driven UX research professional with 6+ years of experience using various qualitative and quantitative user research methods in the tech industry. Leader known for promoting team wellbeing by coaching colleagues on their projects. Contributing cross-functional initiatives to grow customer engagements and to create and nurture customer user research participation programs. Expert in building and executing impactful research roadmaps that directly impact businesses and successful feature launches specializing in user-centered design and research methodologies. Proficient in leading customer-facing requirements workshops. 

CORE COMPETENCIES

Key Skills: Usability Studies | Database Development | Methodology Engineering | User Research & Experience | Qualitative & Quantitative Research | Ethnography | Usability Testing | Data Analysis | Persona Creation | Human-Computer Interaction 

Technical Tools: Adobe Illustrator | InDesign | Photoshop | Premiere Pro | Figma | Microsoft Office Suite 

Methods: Usability Testing | Jobs to be Done | Kano Survey | Benchmarking | Journey Mapping | Outcome Driven Innovation | Surveys | Concept Testing | Secondary Research | Interviews | Heuristic Evaluations 

Experience

Lead User Researcher, IBM, remote – June 2023 - August 2024

  • Earned promotion to lead team of 3 user researchers executing high-priority projects across full product development lifecycle. 

  • Allied with Product Management, Design, and Development leaders to form actionable research roadmaps aligned with key business goals, directly influencing direction of 1 successful product launch and 2 major product feature launches. 

  • Reviewed and co-refined final presentations, enhancing clarity and impact of findings and recommendations, with 75-100% of recommendations being integrated into product roadmap. 

  • Launched an innovative customer user experience program, gaining feedback from 20+ product customers and securing 2 companies as regular collaborators, resulting in inclusion of recruitment slide in all sales pitch presentations. 

  • Empowered 5 user researchers, creating a research roadmap that aligned with business impact and individual strengths, resulting in 4 promotions within 6 months and 1 graduate becoming a full-time member. 

User Researcher, IBM, San Jose, CA and remote– June 2019 - May 2023

  • Allied with sales specialists and end users in highly regulated industries (banking, healthcare) to help them participate in user research studies, leading to improved customer engagement and larger likelihood for reinvestment in IBM software. 

  • Excelled within IBM's Data and AI team portfolio by focusing specifically on data governance products and experiences such as the product Watson Knowledge Catalog on Cloud Pak for Data, which recently won an iF Design Award. 

  • Planned and conducted UX research ranging from generative to tactical; collaborated with stakeholders in different disciplines (design, product management, development) to execute research studies. 

  • Revitalized sales pitches and materials, increasing YoY revenue by 4%, by conducting customer interviews and implementing recommendations from 4 key themes discovered via survey of 200+ internal workers. 

  • Streamlined research access and enhanced collaborations by building and maintaining comprehensive Airtable repository, saving each researcher 16 hours per month and providing stakeholders instant access to past insights. 

UX Research Intern, IBM, San Jose, CA – March 2018 - June 2019

  • Planned and conducted usability studies, interviews, competitive evaluations, and expert heuristic evaluations. 

  • Synthesized user research findings; created personas, task flows, and documentation of research techniques. 

Education

M.S. Human Factors and Ergonomics - San Jose State University, June 2019

  • Thesis: Factors Affecting Visual Search for Medication Vials 

  • Conference poster: Facilitators and Barriers to Electronic Whiteboard Implementation in Emergency Departments 

  • Related coursework: Human Computer Interaction, Interaction Design, Usability Testing, and Statistics 

  • Activities and societies: Human Factors and Ergonomics Society, User Experience Association 

B.A. Anthropology and Art History, Minor in Classics - University of Miami, June 2015

Awards

IBM Performance Awards: Entrepreneur Award (2023), Outstanding Technical Achievement Award (2021), Design Luminary Program (August 2021), People’s Choice Award (June 2020) 

Part of product team that won multiple international design awards, including: iF Design Award (2021), Red Dot Design Award (2021), German Design Award (2021)