Pear Nerngchamnong, UX Research

joined in 2018, from 🇹🇭

What led you into research?

I’ve always been interested in people’s relationships with each other and have been involved in this space through different types of medium in the past. But what really got me interested in user research would be my admiration for the products/services coming from the Design for Social Impact sector. I went from appreciating the output and change into looking at how they came up with the solutions that create a positive impact on society. The deeper I look into the process of understanding a problem and coming up with the solution, the more I find user research written everywhere. It makes my heart pump three times fuller to be able to help people by learning about them in the way that user research allows. Of course, I wouldn’t have started learning about Design for Social impact without the influence of my friends, so I do have to give them credit for bringing it into my radar. It really does matter who you surround yourself with!

What does a typical day look like?

Weekdays generally (in covid times)

• Greet my cat and my partner
• Put on a good playlist and catch up on work messages, emails
• Weekly and/or monthly routine research if no meetings
• Afternoons are for meetings and non routine research
• Bubble tea
• Meetings and/or non routine research
• Dinner with my cat and partner
• Message back/catch up with family, close friends depending on their time zones

Name three non-researcher you feel inspired by when conducting interviews and synthesizing

I would categorize the type of inspiration I get from three non-researchers into:

1. Research execution aspect: I usually get my inspiration from my colleagues, whether it’s the way they approach the problem, different ways they structure their thinking, or how they communicate their output.
2. Research work ethics aspect: There’s a particular ex-colleague that I had a chance to work closely with in the past, and I look up to her work ethic.
3. Research leadership aspect: I first learned about Sheryl Sandberg from her book, but started to feel more inspired by her when learning about how she reacted when her husband passed away. She used her leadership skills in comforting her children, and ultimately took what she learned from that experience further to help others on a large scale in her professional life.

What would your self-portrait look like?

A pencil drawing on white paper of a stick figure.

Anything you want to promote or plug? (What is something you want to advocate)

Don’t lose your inner kid