Company’s first user research program. Fostering user empathy at Rockset and influencing a more user-centered engineering culture.

My Role

Spearheaded Rockset’s first-ever customer user research program.

Led the full research cycle — planning, recruitment, interviews, synthesis, and cross-functional sharing.

Turned insights into action — uncovering quick wins and roadmap directions.

Result

Established the foundation for a continuous user research practice at Rockset

Improved cross-functional engagement and team alignment

Informed roadmap decisions and improved usability across surfaces

Context

In March 2024, I launched the company’s first User Research Program to strengthen user empathy and introduce a research-backed culture into our product development process. To encourage buy-in across functions, I invited a PM to co-lead and included front-end developers to shadow our user interviews.

User Challenge We had little firsthand understanding of how customers used Rockset in their day-to-day workflows. Key questions around usability, unmet needs, and long-term product direction were largely driven by assumptions.

Approach

I led the end-to-end process: participant recruitment, research planning, secondary analysis, interviews, post-interview synthesis, and final reporting.

• We interviewed nine participants from five top customer accounts.
• All sessions were tagged and analyzed in Dovetail.
• To personify the users and spark empathy, I created individual user sketch cards that captured key insights and memorable quotes.
• These were shared with the engineering team to make research findings more digestible, foster user-centered thinking, and influence the broader product culture.

Design Analysis

Design Synthesis

Key Research Outputs