About
Nick Stiles
Bio
Trained as an academic psychologist, born-again ux researcher. I get to do what I love for a living: using mixed-methods, human behavior research to make the interaction between humans and tools more harmonious. A love of learning, collaboration, and making real-world impact with research — those are the knobs and levers that drive me.
Mixed-methods UXR with record of impact, leadership, and delivering rigorous yet fast research to product teams. Through partnership building with stakeholders and engaging, clear research deliverables, I've shaped product strategies and design decisions at every stage of the product development lifecycle.
Approach to UX Research
I see myself as a strategic advisor to collaborators. I use both secondary and primary research to gain a holistic perspective of what’s going on in a domain then make those learnings easily digestible, accessible, and engaging to team members.
In short, I see my role consisting of two jobs:
Immersing myself in the user and product world in order to find that sweet spot between business and user needs.
Influencing my collaborators to do what I see is best for the business and user based on the research.
Learn more about my approach in my UX Collective (Editor’s Pick) article:
Immersion and influence—the work of the modern ux researcher
Origin story
Folks often want to know how you got into user research. The disparate backgrounds practitioners come from is one of the great things about the field.
This is a timeline, a history of sorts telling my story. Life is not a straight line. It is a series of uncertain choices based on incomplete evidence and my hope in sharing this is to show that there is no one way into the field.
With a hell of a lot of support, luck, and an eagerness to seize the moment, you can go a long way.
