My background
I've worked at the intersection of language and design for the last decade or so, primarily doing UX writing, service design, and content strategy. I'm also a trained qualitative researcher with a PhD in sociocultural linguistics.
Research methods
Each project team has different questions, calling for different research methods. My strong suit is qualitative research:
- Generative interviewing, including artifact-based interviews
- Acceptance testing with storyboards
- Usability testing with interactive mockups
- Discourse and conversation analysis applied to support tickets, chat logs and other documents
- Mixed-methods triangulation – qualitative findings validated against analytics, SEO and survey data
Design methods
Similarly, each project calls for its own design approach. Some of my favourite tools and methods to use:
- Journey mapping across channels, including non-digital ones
- Prototyping in words: writing the interface to facilitate decision-making
- Co-creation workshops with users and/or stakeholders
- Using RITE (rapid iterative testing and evaluation) to turn insights into action
- Content modelling to set up structured, reusable content and knowledge bases
Let's talk!
Sounds good? Reach out to lara.portmann[at]discourse.ch