Senior UX Researcher/Manager

From insights to influence

9+ Years

100+ Studies

1000+ Participants

01

👋 Hey, glad you're here.

I'm Alexandra, a senior UX researcher based in the SF Bay Area.

02

I lead strategic research in complex systems where trust is the product: security, privacy, and now AI.

Malwarebytes Google Huawei Kerr by Ingredion
03

Trained in experimental science, I bring a lab scientist's rigor to a very human question: what experience should we build, and why?

Oregon State University Lanzhou University Beijing Film Academy
04

.practice areas

I shape trustworthy AI experiences by uncovering how people form and calibrate trust, understand system behavior, and decide when to take control.

  • trust calibration & explainability

    Led the research arc behind Malwarebytes' conversational security advisor: uncovering what makes people trust a personalized, adaptive advisor before the industry had the vocabulary for it.

  • human-in-the-loop autonomy

    Built the framework for how much autonomy users would grant an automated security system, and where they needed a human in the loop.

👋 Hey, glad you're here.I'm Alexandra, a senior UX researcher based in the SF Bay Area.

I lead strategic research in complex systems where trust is the product: security, privacy, and now AI.

Trained in experimental science, I bring a lab scientist's rigor to a very human question: what experience should we build, and why?

02 Selected work sample

Messy, ambiguous product problems → evidence-backed strategy that shipped.

Malwarebytes · 01
Kano AnalysisOpen Card SortingMental Models

From Research to Roadmap

A 32-session mixed-methods mental model study that redirected company strategy away from mobile-first — and defined the modular IA behind MB5.

Kano AnalysisOpen Card SortingMental Models
View study
Malwarebytes · 02
AI + TrustConversational UXEnterprise
SA / SAM mockupasset TBD

Security Advisor

Led the research arc behind Malwarebytes' conversational security advisor — trust in a personalized, adaptive advisor before the industry had the vocabulary for it.

AI + TrustConversational UXEnterprise
View study
Malwarebytes · 03
Product RevampUX ArchitectureEnterprise
console redesignasset TBD

From Patchwork to Posture

Redesigning Nebula from the ground up around Security Posture Assessment — card sorts to competitor IA to usability with SMB admins and MSPs.

Product RevampUX ArchitectureEnterprise
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Google · 04
TripTech TestingE2E Task FlowAI Assistant

Grocery Reimagined

Assistive grocery shopping with Google Shopping List — end-to-end task flows, trip-tech testing, and AI personal-assistant concepts that made the list feel less like chores and more like help.

TripTech TestingE2E Task FlowAI Assistant
View study
Google · 05
Google ShoppingParticipatory DesignConcept Exploration
shopping tab conceptsasset TBD

Express → Shopping Tab

Foundational and concept-validation research as Express folded into the new Shopping tab — participatory design, competitor audits, and fieldwork that shaped how shoppers browse with confidence.

Google ShoppingParticipatory DesignConcept Exploration
View study

03 More studies

The supporting research that shaped teams, ops, and product direction.

Malwarebytes 01

Personas with Purpose

Building data-driven personas for consumer and corporate UX — the foundation later studies (and strategy bets) stood on.

Google 02

Power of Desktop Research

A methodology case study featuring Google Shopping SRP competitor audits — when desktop research moves the needle.

Google 03

Clarity in the Chaos

Visualizing UX research recruiting at scale for Google Ads — dashboards that made a messy pipeline strategic.

Malwarebytes 04

Democratizing with Strategy

Building — and knowing when to let go of — a participatory research program so more teams could sit with users.

Malwarebytes 05

From Fragmented Tools to a Unified App

Building Malwarebytes 5.0 — converging four standalone products into one coherent, consumer-first security experience.

Courtesies 06

From Personal CRM to Gifting

Steered product vision from a personal CRM to a gifting platform with light CRM — and authored the strategy set (roadmap, launch PRD, ops plan, decision log).

04

Research philosophy

Understand the system → explain the mechanism → influence direction early → make the evidence travel.

In a complex, data-heavy system, pain points rarely exist in a single dimension; solving them usually requires a set of features working in synergy.

Lately, my research has focused on system-level investigation: reconciling different products, users, workflows, and mental models into a coherent experience rather than optimizing isolated surfaces.

Once those relationships have a shared language, the architecture starts to reveal itself: what should be unified, what should remain distinct, where structural debt has accumulated, and what changes need to move as a system.

That UX architecture blueprint is where I believe research creates its highest leverage.

A finding is only as strong as the explanation behind it. I treat the first “why” as a hypothesis, then pressure-test it against competing explanations, contradictory evidence, and variables that could change the interpretation. Years of neuroscience lab research trained me to be suspicious of convenient stories.

In a complex enterprise system, a drop-off in one workflow can point to permissions, data state, terminology, navigation, or the sequence itself. I don’t stop at “users are confused.” I trace where behavior diverges, compare the surrounding conditions, and test the competing explanations until the pattern holds across both telemetry and qualitative evidence.

Research creates the most leverage before direction hardens. I invest upstream, while assumptions and decisions are still cheap to change. Working in trust and cybersecurity sharpened my instinct for de-risking: move fast when decisions are reversible; apply more rigor when the consequences aren’t. As AI makes execution cheaper and faster, that judgment matters even more.

Producing good evidence is half the job. I build the reporting rhythms, dashboards, and programs that put it in front of the people whose decisions it should change. Research scales when evidence travels, not when everyone is asked to become a researcher.

05 What's it like working with me?

I believe by working hard, being kind — amazing things will happen.

Nicole Fry
Senior Content Strategist

Thank you Alexandra for your immeasurable contributions leading the UX research team. Thanks to your hard work producing dependable research-backed data, the copy team is able to address our users in a way that supports them and drives the usability of our features, especially Security Advisor! You always knew the right questions to ask when leading a research session to get to the heart of the matter and solve problems users might face. I'm incredibly grateful to have been able to build this relationship and watch how you transformed and elevated the entire research team.

Kimberly Voisin
Sr. UX Researcher

Alex and I worked together as part of a rapid research team supporting consumer ads and shopping at Google. Alex is a highly skilled and experienced researcher. She has a deep understanding of the UX process and an extensive toolkit of methods that she uses to effectively execute studies. Alex is always willing to help others and looking for ways to improve the team’s work. She is also an excellent communicator and is able to clearly and concisely present research findings to both technical and non-technical audiences.

Slack shout-out from Becky Dubrow. Huge shoutout to @azhao for the research behind this launch. Alex joined with two months left, owned the research end to end, and the launch is better because of her.
Jonny Rivera
Sr. Product Director

Alexandra is the best! I loved working with her during our time together at Malwarebytes. Her research always provided actionable insights that we as Product could leverage to help make our user's lives better on a regular basis. She was always able to cut through the noise and find the information that was the most relevant, and distill that into something useful. She is truly a great asset to any team!

Ryan Krepps
Sr. UX Researcher

I consider myself very lucky to have had the opportunity to work with Alexandra. In my experience, it's rare to encounter someone who possesses strong leadership skills AND the domain-specific expertise to help scaffold your own growth; Alex has both in spades. She has an excellent understanding of the UX process (in both methodological and business applications) and how to apply research to provide understanding, insight, and direction. In projects where we worked together, I was always impressed by her ability to “cut through the fog” that can surround research topics and identify the underlying questions.

Beyond her talents as an individual contributor, Alexandra also did an excellent job leading the UX Research team, even as business objectives and priorities would shift rapidly. She advocated strongly for both the role of UX research and for the individual UX researchers on her team, fostering cross-functional collaboration and empowering us to be the internal experts on our users.

On a personal level, every conversation I had with Alex felt honest and respectful. As a result, when it came time for performance reviews, it was much easier for us to talk openly about my strengths and weaknesses and — perhaps more importantly — what steps I could take to continue to grow. I truly feel like her guidance and support over the past 2+ years has had a significant (positive!) impact on my skills as a researcher and my expectations for a leader, and any team lucky enough to have her will undoubtedly find themselves feeling the same.

Team sailing offsite aboard the Kai Lani
team sailing day
Team offsite at the go-kart track, podium celebration
offsites, podium included
Alexandra with her Malwarebytes teammates at the office
my Malwarebytes crew
More kind words on LinkedIn