I find real-time strategy mobile games like Clash of Clans and Last War fascinating. My niece and nephew got me into them. The games are microcosms of society, but there’s anonymity, which doesn't exist in real-world interaction. I love observing people without the strictures that come with real-world identity, and seeing how that manifests in a fictional societal experience.

I've always been driven by the desire to understand why people do what they do. I worked at a market research firm that served Fortune 500 companies and tried to get Meta — Facebook at the time — as a client. That turned into a series of interviews for a job at Facebook, and I haven't looked back since. It's been almost 13 years. I'm the longest tenured researcher at Meta, and am now responsible for the UXR group.

The landscape for how we connect with others and to the things that matter most to us is evolving. As a result, the expectations of the many constituencies Meta serves and our obligations to them are also evolving. UXR ensures people — meaning users or potential users of Meta technologies — have a voice and helps Meta successfully meet the needs of our communities.

My teams and I think about where we could be most impactful and define what the opportunity is for the people we build for and the company. And then, we determine how we’ll deliver that value in our technologies.

I talk to a lot of different people to understand what they want. Then I help figure out the smallest number of things that we can build to make the most people happy.

I worked for my aunt as a teenager. One of my tasks was taking dictation on a typewriter. You ended up with janky output if you made a mistake while typing, or you had to type multiple drafts if the content needed to be restructured. Then computers became popular and the process became faster and quality improved. If you messed up on a computer, you could just edit and move right on.

I think this kind of iterative progress is what AI will enable for research. Researchers will be able to focus on strategy and craft. We’ll spend less time note-taking, poring over transcripts and cleaning data, but we’ll spend more time crafting the right questions, translating analyses into impact and connecting that information with the right cross-functional partners to build the best technologies.

We’re really focused on accessibility — building for everyone. There are a number of different components to accessibility, and one is interfacing with the people that use our technologies to make sure that we understand their pain points and ensure our solutions deliver a positive user experience.

The challenge in serving global communities is building for accessibility at scale. One way my team helps do this at Meta is by supporting user experience researchers and designers across Meta to understand and use protocols that prioritize accessibility from the get-go.

I’m proud of how our teams prioritize equity so that we can build technologies that anybody can use if they want to. This is a tremendous responsibility and opportunity for UXR.

I would gift them a copy of the Free Solo documentary, the story of rock climber Alex Honnold scaling Yosemite’s 3200-foot El Capitan without ropes. There is something so beautiful and compelling about flawlessly executed craft. I find it very inspiring and analogous to the precision of great design.