This week’s Scrippsie Spotlight is on Jaclyn Roher, a psychology major who now does User Experience Research for Meetup.com!
Scripps Professionals Network: How did you end up with Meetup?
Jaclyn: I started with Meetup right after I graduated from Scripps in 2012 as a Community Specialist-my job at that time was basically half community management, and half customer service. I communicated with Organizers and members of Meetup all day, answered tech support questions, advised Orgs on how to best lead their community, and wrote content for our site. Over the course of my first year there, I was exposed to so much more of the tech industry than I had seen before (I was a Psych major at Scripps, so I didn’t know too much going in, I’ll admit). But I was intrigued, and after about a year, a position opened up as a User Experience (UX) researcher on our strategy team; it combined psychology and tech in a way that I only WISH I knew about at Scripps.
SPN: Can you tell me about your work in User Experience Research?
Jaclyn: I was fortunate enough to start in that role part time in June 2013, and then was able to transition full time as a UX researcher this past December. Meetup’s UX program is small, but mighty. Whereas lots of companies hire an outside firm to do their usability testing for them (or don’t have the resources to do it at all), we are able to do it all in-house. That lets us throw things in to a test session at the last minute if we need to (which gives our developers a flexible schedule to work), and iterate different versions quickly, essentially speeding up the amount of time it takes to release a product. I run between 2 and 3 sessions daily, testing about 5 different products that our development teams are working on.
SPN: What’s it like working for Meetup?
Jaclyn: It can be tough balancing a whole company’s needs, while at the same time, synthesizing data and debriefing with folks in order to ensure that we’re doing right by our users, but it’s been an awesome journey so far. I basically get paid to collaborate with our product teams, chat with users about how they use said products from these teams, and then help inform decisions that are platform wide!! I’m geeking out here, but it’s honestly an awesome intersection between the social sciences and technology, and I only wish that I had started on this track sooner. I’m happy to answer any further questions you may have, since the UX industry isn’t quite super robust (Not yet, anyway…)!
Does Jaclyn’s work in User Experience Research sound like something you’d like? Does Meetup.com sound like a company you’d like to work for? Check out the Women in Tech internship here or the jobs here, and feel free to hit her up on Facebook if you have any questions to ask her!