Interview with Faye Koukia-Koutelaki, Senior User Researcher at Kainos

We interviewed Faye about her career change, her Psychology background and her approach to Inclusive Design. Enjoy! 🦋

Faye Koukia-Koutelaki

1. How do you think your psychology background helps with UX?

While the context is different now, the skills are the same.

Before doing this job I didn’t know about the world of UX. When I first learned about it my initial thought was “Can I really do this?” because it was so far out of my experience. While I was at university I was working as a research assistant on different academic projects doing qualitative or quantitative research.

While the context is different now, the skills are the same: collect and analyse data, anonymise and protect them, treat the participants respectfully, follow research ethics and find the proper research method to answer your research question. Then write that down to make sense of it to yourself and the people you work with.

This process can be applied in so many different environments. I thought, if it makes sense to me on the psychology side then if I can explain it to people in UX, maybe I have a chance there.

2. I see you have a lot of experience working with young people? Has this experience ever helped you do more inclusive design?

In the past, I have spent a lot of time working with students who have reading and writing difficulties, or problems understanding the content they’ve read. I now work on projects for the UK government website which needs to be accessible to everyone.

Being able to simplify what I want to say in plain English was useful when working in UX, because we need to make sure content can be understood by a 9 years old reader. Making sure the content we use is clear and accessible to all is the job of a content designer, but as a user researcher it’s helpful to be able to explain what I mean in simple terms.

English is not my first language and I often use simple terms to share my views. At first, I thought it was a burden, but I can now see it’s very useful and helpful to everyone.

Use plain English to explain what you want to say

3. When you try to create something for everyone, do you try to define a target audience?

‘in the public sector, you need to make sure what you create meets the needs of everyone’

Let’s say there is a passport application webpage. It doesn’t matter if you’re young or old, university-educated or not, living in the city or the countryside — potentially everyone will need a passport. The way to apply for it needs to be so simple so that you can complete the application no matter what your circumstances are.

If you build something for a business then you have a certain audience, but in the public sector, you need to make sure what you create meets the needs of everyone.

4. Your role is more conducting research to understand everyone. What kind of methods do you use most often?

In an ideal world, you need both qualitative and quantitative research to combine the data and understand the whole picture, but then again also it depends on the stage of a project and what questions you are trying to answer. It really is all about the question. Depending on the question you will need a different method to answer it. However, I think it would be very dry if you only did one type of research.

If you want to know what is happening, you can use analytics, but if you want to know how or why something is happening you need to follow a qualitative approach.

For example, if you are the mother of a new-born who needs to breastfeed at the same time as applying for a passport, it’s not very easy if you have to do both things at the same time. But that can’t be understood unless you observe it because it’s nothing to do with a system.

If you are in the process of creating a system for a specific company it may look like you have all the requirements for the digital procedure to work smoothly, but what if a piece of the procedure needs to happen offline? If you don’t know about it, you won’t ask about it, so you need to observe how the whole procedure works to then gather all the information.

As you move from formative research to design and then to summative research, usability testing becomes the next important part of the process.

5. I understand you started at Kainos as a Graduate User Researcher and you’re now an Associate User Researcher. What are the biggest skills you learned that allowed you to advance in your career?

When I started at Kainos they took the time to introduce me to the world of UX. We had an academy where they taught us about different roles in UX teams and content design made a lot of sense to me based on my previous experience.

The academy lasted a couple of weeks. We learned a lot, were able to bring our ideas on the table, and in the end we provided our feedback (instructors and participants) so the company could see what worked well and what didn’t. As a company, we are iterating a lot, which is good. It’s like a living organism.

6. Do you have any advice for those moving from related fields into UX?

‘Just go for it, do your research — there are so many resources online to learn and educate yourself if you are interested’

The next step for me would be to try and see how your skills can be applied in a job like that. I, for example, read a lot of job descriptions and tried to imagine what being a user researcher would be like. I did my research and put the information together to work out how a researcher does their job, and what they need to do on a daily basis.

All I had to do then was prove that I have used the same skills in the past and I am able to deliver value in the UX context. You might have all those skills but in a different setting or wording. You just need to invest time in yourself to identify the skills you already have and then transform them into UX skills.

Finally, do whatever it is that you’re doing with enthusiasm — it shows in your work when you’re interacting with colleagues and clients. The more enthusiastic you are, the more vibrant it becomes.

‘It’s easy to start thinking about it, and then start asking why: “Why do I hold my glass a certain way?” Once you start that mentality you never stop.’

You can also read a blog to learn more about how she became a User Researcher at Kainos. 😉

7. If you look back, what would you say to yourself when you were just starting out?

I would tell myself to be a little more confident. But at the same time, it was good that I was not the most confident person in the world and I kept asking questions about everything.

‘One thing I would suggest is to never be afraid to ask questions’

People use jargon every day in UX so I kept asking questions when I didn’t understand — I felt I had the right to as I was a graduate! Also, be open to the knowledge of others. Even by observing them and their ways of doing their job can teach you so much!

---

Interviewed by Misato Ehara

Edited by Misato Ehara and Faye Koukia-Koutelaki

Illustrations by Andrea Mendez

Edited with Google docs

Published on 20 Sep 2020

Interviewee: Faye joined Kainos in 2018 as a User Researcher. She works on projects within central government and holds an MSc in Counselling Psychology from the University of Sheffield.

Interviewer: Misato Ehara is founder of The UX Review, former design Strategist at Gensler. Currently completing a Masters in Curating Contemporary Design. Open to UX research roles starting in October 2020.