UX Researcher @ American Eagle Outfitters

In the fall of 2016 I decided to try something new. Up until that point I had been working as a user experience... (insert various titles) for primarily Government clients. I wanted to experience UX from the perspective of a completely opposite sector - commercial. This led me to American Eagle Outfitters in Pittsburgh, PA for a 6-month UX Research concentration. What I have learned and reaffirmed:

UX is CRITICAL to the design process. 
As a UX professional I am witnessing a rising trend in web designer-only roles - with little to no actual prior UX experience, or worse - no plans to engage users in the design process. AE has a robust team of UX researchers and designers. Each role is separated but equally critical to making the right design decisions. All of our designs incorporated an average of at least 7-14 (males and females) participant studies for every 2-3 week sprints. My role as a UX Researcher was to perform mobile and desktop usability studies, share the findings with my assigned designer(s), discuss a solution, test the proposed design solution, and present the findings to the team. No decision was done without user input, and no decision was done without defending your research findings to the team. 

Competitors are your (design) friends. 
Part of my role was to learn how to do extensive design competitive analysis, where I investigated what features competitors such as Nordstrom and Amazon utilized in their mobile and desktop sites - learning that when in doubt, knowing what your competitors are doing can make or break a design decision. 

Remote and un-moderated usability tests are actually quite amazing.
Prior to AE I had worked extensively as a user experience researcher for Booz Allen Hamilton. My usability tests were mostly done in person, or remote moderated. At American Eagle all of our usability tests were completely remote and un-moderated through UserTesting.com. That meant that I had to pay focused attention on my test scripts - because I would not be there (with the user) to bring him or her back to the focus of the study should they find themselves going in a different direction. Writing careful, self-guiding scripts are critical for usability tests using UserTesting.com. A misunderstood task will yield little value to the design process. 

Move with speed and accuracy. 
When I think about the difference between being a UX practitioner for Government vs. commercial - I think about speed. Working commercial has taught me urgency, a type of urgency not often found in the Government sector where budgets tend to be allocated on a yearly basis, and your audience tends to be captive. In the commercial world time equals money, quite literally. If a feature is upsetting to the customer - that customer will not spend their money on you. To me, personally,  that meant two things: trust American Eagle's customers to tell me what is wrong (usability studies and voice of the customer complaints), and make sure that I was ready to defend my findings and any design recommendations I made.