Selected Projects

Website Usability and Perception Study

Customer Preferences and Concerns Survey

App & Website Testing

Infrastructure Research & Strategy

Infrastructure Research & Strategy

Testimonies

Sal Habash, VP of product at Bite Squad
Esra did an amazing job structuring our usability study and surfacing valuable insights with actionable suggestions. We couldn’t be happier with her process and results!
Anthony Young, Principal Software Engineer at Bite Squad
For Bite Squad, user experience is paramount. We wanted insight into how our customers were using our app, and ways to improve their experience. Esra and her team did a fantastic job conducting a usability study on our behalf. Their study was organized and thorough, which enabled us to confirm a handful of assumptions we made. But more importantly, their study shed light on a few pain points and usage patterns we did not expect! With this new data, we were able to revise the app, thereby improving the experience for our customers. We look forward to working with Esra again!
Gozde Benzet, Founder of Bohemtolia Home Decor Website
Esra made a great work not only for our website but also for our stragetic planning. She widened our perspective by evaluating our briefing and directing us towards the most suitable research method. Thanks to her guidance and thorough finding analysis, we were able to determine the most important action items and take new steps to develop our brand and product.
Sevin Turan, Digital Food Content Manager at Hurriyet
Most of the time, what we have in mind as website editors does not match with what the audience perceives or expects to see on our sites. Esra helped us a great deal in bridging this gap. She was thorough and organized during the whole process. She was very insightful about our needs and incorporated our input into her research questions while in return providing us with very clear and applicable feedback. Anyone who has a chance to work with her will be very lucky and I am looking forward to benefit from her skills and work ethic again soon.
Anthony Dashti, Senior Manager at T-Mobile
Esra is a pleasure to work with and liked by anyone she interfaced with. In the short time she was with us, she made meaningful contributions and improved the process we continue to use today.
David Oh, Senior Product Manager at T-Mobile
I was very impressed with her project management and research skills and her passion for the successful completion of multiple mission critical IOT projects. I would like to work with her again.

Experience

 
 
 
 
 
August 2018 – Present
Seattle, WA

User Experience Researcher

Freelance

I align with engineering and design teams to define their needs and concerns. I turn their insights into research questions, choose the suitable methodology, plan the research budget and timeline. I recruit participants and lead research. My user experience research surface pain points and potential new approaches which I translate into actionable items and recommendations shared with my partners and customers. I follow-up with my partners evolution of each project to measure impact of my research.
 
 
 
 
 
June 2018 – August 2018
Bellevue, WA

Project Management Intern

T-Mobile

I have worked in the coordination of IT, engineering, and business PMs and shipment of the ITA partner onboarding to the new billing platform. I met with our partner teams to find the root causes of the existing inefficiencies in project delivery. My findings turned into three separate projects. I prepared a visual report on project latency covering the last five years on PowerBI to be shared with the leadership. I automated a system generating weekly workload dashboards using a large dataset from SharePoint. I coded an automated follow-up system to be regularly shared with IT and engineering teams. This system reduced latency around 35 percent.
 
 
 
 
 
September 2011 – Present
Seattle, WA

Research & Teaching Assistant

University of Washington

During my PhD, I have conducted mixed methodology research projects; including participant observation, survey, interview, content analysis, focus groups. My dissertation research project on users and non-users of electricity and water infrastructure systems already turned into 3 articles, 18 conference presentations & multiple public talks. I orchestrated a team of 8 teaching assistants as the Head T.A. I designed and taught 2 courses and assisted 11 courses.
 
 
 
 
 
July 2009 – August 2011
Istanbul, Turkey

Research Manager

TESEV Foundation

I was responsible for designing and managing the timeline and budget of 4 ethnographic research projects with 2 separate research teams. I also directed the think-tank’s outreach effort of 8 different research projects, organized 2 national conferences, and built relations with stakeholders and media. I authored 5 articles on research findings in national publications. These research projects and policy recommendations became the basis of many policy changes including a ceasefire negotiation between the Turkish government and the PKK, Kurdish guerilla group.

Research Approach

Listen

I am a listener. I design and conduct customer-obsessed research and carefully listen to my research participants. I empathize and connect with them.

Translate

I am a translator between our users and project teams. I understand people’s painpoints, demands, and needs and translate them into short and longterm roadmaps, recommendations, and design solutions.

Advocate

I am an advocate of users at every stage of the product life cycle. I stand up for our current as well as potential users and direct the teams towards better design.