With my own graduation looming, I find myself constantly wondering what comes next. In order to help offset some of my anxieties, I reached out to Kristen Barbour to find out what
brought her to her current job. As a former English and Secondary Education and Teaching double major from the College of Charleston, who is currently employed as an associate UX researcher at Indeed.com, the path from her undergraduate studies to her current career was by no means a straight shot, so I wanted to explore the winding road that led Kristen to what she does now.
When I asked about her choice of a double major, she explained that it was both a passionate and a practical choice. She loved literature and felt that it helped her understand the world better, which made English an easy choice. The Secondary Education and Teaching major, however, came as the result of her opportunity to join the Teaching Fellows program, which helped finance a good portion of her schooling in exchange for four years in the service of teaching. As a result, she found a job at Aiken County School District in South Carolina after graduating. While Kristen felt she didn’t share the same passion as other teachers, she said, “I approached teaching more from a perspective of, like, I get to really help people analyze . . . and to teach people how to communicate really clearly”.
Kristen, however, knew that teaching wasn’t a permanent career for her and felt limited by the schedule and pay. Originally, she wanted to become a librarian after her teaching obligations were complete. As she began researching different programs, she learned that they were more focused on helping teachers with software and databases, two areas that interested her. She then began to look into more tech based programs and discovered the field of UX research. On this, Kristen said, “What I really liked about it was the analysis. Being able to synthesis findings, to interview people and try to understand human behavior, and try to craft a really compelling story”. From this description, UX research sounds like an English major’s dream job.
Ultimately, Kristen decided to pursue a masters in Interaction Design and Information Architecture (a long-winded way of describing UX research and UX design, Kristen pointed out) at the University of Baltimore. On top of the program being remote, which was a benefit to her at the time, Kristen explained that the program gave her exposure to real UX research. In one of these projects, she was tasked with interviewing low-income individuals in the Baltimore area prior to the 2020 election, in order to understand how these people got information on the elections. This kind of experience is both very real and very relevant, which reminds me of a quote from Christian Madsbjerg’s Sensemaking that says, “In the midst of changing circumstances, it is vital to reconnect with the emotional—even the visceral—context of humanity”. We live in a world dominated by technology, which can influence decisions on what to buy and, in the case of Kristen’s study, who to vote for. In order to understand how technology can and could impact people, it’s important to see how people interact with and use that technology in the first place.
During her time at the University of Baltimore, Kristen had the opportunity to do an internship in UX research at Indeed.com and another in UX Design at Optoro. The former would eventually lead to her current career at Indeed.com. At this point in the conversation, I wanted to get a better idea as to the type of skills she picked up through her studies as a English student that she uses consistently in her work now. In response, Kristen described that knowing how to research, analyze literature, communicate, and write are all incredibly important skills in her work as a UX researcher. Additionally, she said that being able to identify themes and think abstractly are critical in order to convert human actions into some kind of data. She also added that some psychology is required, as sometimes what people say is not what they do.
UX research, at its core, is bringing the human into the greater conversation about technology. Kristen, through her work, tries to determine in what ways people use Indeed.com’s website to find jobs in order to make the website more accessible to everyone. George Anders, in his book You Can Do Anything, inadvertently describes Kristen terrifically when he says, “You don’t have to mask your true identity to get paid for your strengths”.
Excellent profile! I love learning about these post-grad pathways that make English seem like a crucial step even as the eventual grad degree and job can seem, at first, to be distinct. You might introduce yourself a bit up front as well — your background in tech leading, perhaps, to your interest in interviewing her in particular. Well done!