About
Frank Guo, PhD, Founder and Principal
Much of the user research we see these days is indeed well executed — but falls short of the intended goal of impacting business decisions and resulting in product improvements. To address this problem, I’ve developed my research approach to specifically focus on shaping strategic decisions and product roadmap — via concept evaluation, lean UX research, and full-cycle customer feedback collection. Below is a breakdown of my approach:
1. Decision-focused user research
Focused on informing and shaping decisions via customer/user insight
2. Strategic impact, via lean research
Use iterative and fast-paced research process that works well with agile development and tight timeline to inform strategic as well as tactical decisions
3. Concept research to shape innovation direction
Leverage concept exploration as a cornerstone approach to fundamentally shape product innovation
4. Integrate understanding with solutioning
Combine understanding user problems and needs with figuring out how to solve their problems/needs via an integrated research approach
5. Full-cycle research to continuously inform decisions
Conduct research in supporting each stage of product cycle, from foundational user insight research to launch-and-learn customer feedback gathering, to continuously inform product decisions
Clients and impact
With this approach, I’ve been conducting user research to help tech companies develop products that achieved user experience and market successes, through my consulting firm, UX Strategized, since 2012.
In particular, for these companies, I’ve informed product roadmap, developed customer-insight-informed decision framework, shaped innovation strategy, set up user research processes, and informed tactical UX improvements:
Credentials
I have published more than a dozen professional papers and co-authored a book chapter in the field of user experience strategy and research. I received a best-paper award at a prominent UX conference for a paper I co-authored. I write about user experience, business strategy, and client insights on my UX Strategized blog.
Work and education background
Before starting my consultancy, I set up and led user research practice for Barclays’s iShares business and established foundational digital client insights for the company. I oversaw global user research at BlackRock, the largest asset manager in the world, helping the company advance user research practice on a global scale. I was a key influencer of the UI architecture of BlackRock’s enterprise collaboration platform and iPad app. Previously, I established eyetracking as a key research method, and led advertising research and design guidelines research at eBay. Prior to that, I conducted design-strategy research at Oracle in influencing the UI architecture of its enterprise software suite.
I obtained a PhD in cognitive psychology from UCLA, where I conducted scientific research on consumer psychology and taught advanced statistics to college students.
