Maria
D. Perez

Professional Experience

Mixed Methods UX Researcher II

The Trade Desk

January 2023 - Till Date

• Executing research to inform early strategic direction through post-release measurement.

• Define and track UX health metrics so that we are constantly improving the user experience for our customers.

• Identify common journeys and patterns in user behavior bringing together data from analytics tools with qualitative insights.

• Generate insights that influence product and design strategy -- both tactical and long-term decisions, using a variety of quantitative methods.

• Help shape the use of analytics within UX and work with partner teams to integrate data into product dashboards.

• Collaborate cross-functionally with product management, UX design, data science, engineering, and marketing, involving stakeholders in every stage of your research.

Quantitative UX Researcher

The Trade Desk

05/2022 - 08/2022

• Designed and executed a mixed method research project to improve users' acceptance of the platform ad campaign recommendations. 

• Conducted in-depth interviews with platform users to understand their behaviour and preferences around ad campaigns. 

• Implemented and analyized a cross-country conjoint survey experiment to identify and test the MVP for ad campaigns recommendations.

• Collaborated with UX Designers and Engineers to generate product recommendations on the platform's ad campaign recommendations system.

Quantitative Researcher, Graduate Research Assistant

University of Southern California

08/2020 - 05/2022

• Designed and executed a cross-country A/B test that increased the subscription of local politicians to a NGO’s newsletter.

• Developed the statistical analysis of public opinion estimates by running hierarchical multilevel models with the R package lme4 using complex survey and demographic data.

• Matched, cleaned and managed sensitive data from the cross-national European Value Survey database and web scraped contact details other official European statistical data sources to feed into the hierarchical multilevel models.

• Generated small-area poststratification frames (weights) using census data and the R package anesrake.

• Designed and implemented a cross-national survey on political elites’ attitudes towards environmental policies with embedded experiments in Qualtrics.

UX Researcher & Market Research

Ableton, Inc

May 2021 - August 2021

• Designed and executed a research project to enhance the reach of Ableton’s software by identifying points of market entry, and identified customer pain points to enhance user experience.

• Informed the advertising product strategy after completing a competitive analysis and benchmarking report and identified how increase the performance and traffic of Ableton’s website.

• Collaborated with the design and product team in creating a mix method research framework to improve users’ engagement with the product. This included defining questions for a survey methodology and in-depth interviews, and developing quantitative measurements for usability testing. quantitative measurements for usability testing.  

Executive Associate Public Affairs and
Strategic Corporate Communications

Estudio de Comunicación, Spain

10/2017 – 06/2018

• Lead consultant in the development of the firm’s new public affairs department.

• ​Defined and implemented corporate political strategies through key stakeholder mapping and corporate political engagement tactics.

• Coordinated local grassroots activity and grassroots mobilization as part of political campaigns

• Designed and analyzed surveys, interviews and focus groups with clients’ stakeholders (i.e. consumers and employees).

Associate Public Affairs

KREAB Worldwide, Spain

12/2014 – 09/2017

• Political strategy consultant for international clients from private and non-profit sectors.

• Planned and implemented public affairs strategies to increase awareness of key areas of the client's business to its socio-political stakeholders. 

• Researcher at the KREAB Research Unit for socio-economic studies on trade and business growth in Spain.

• Designing, implementing and analyzing corporate reputation and perception studies.

Public Relations and Communications Intern

Ministry of Education and Culture, Australia

03/2012 – 08/2012

• Assisted in the preparation and development of the Spanish Ministry of Education Language Assistant Program for 2013-2014.

• Logistic support in the implementation of public relations initiatives at the Ministry.

• Created and delivered press and media content.

• Implemented a cultural collaboration agreement between the Ministry and RMIT University to foster a Spanish Learning Program.