People of OST: Emily Baumgartner, UX Researcher
Emily Baumgartner is a UX Researcher with a Masters degree in Human-Computer Interaction Design. She helps OST gain clarity on product strategy goals through user-centered research methods in order to discover valuable insights.
Tell us about yourself!
I graduated from Indiana University with a Masters in Human-Computer Interaction Design, where I learned about the core principles and philosophy around user-centered design. I originally went to school hoping to become a UX designer, but I later found that my skill set and strengths were much better suited for UX research. I found research to be so much fun, it’s always different, I’m always learning, and I get to talk to people.
What made you travel to Berlin?
Prior to OST, I was working for a digital product agency in the United States. At the agency, I had been tangentially interacting with my clients which ranged from startups to enterprise companies. I helped them to better understand their users and their customers. I did a lot of research, but I was skimming the surface. I wasn’t able to interact with clients for a long period of time and I’ve always wanted to work within a startup.
Ever since I graduated from grad school, it became a passionate goal of mine to live and work abroad. I somehow made all these things possible. I found a job posting on a Slack channel for researchers. I immediately saw the opening and, to be honest, I was a little intimidated by it. But I figured, it’s in Berlin, a huge tech city, I might as well give it a shot, so I applied. I was impressed by the team and the problems that OST is solving. Research is at the core of everything that OST does, I was really inspired by that. It felt like the leadership gets it, I was really attracted to that and the rest is history.
What does your role as a UX Researcher entail?
I am part of the product team here at OST. We have many different projects, but in the wake of coronavirus, we’re trying to be really lean and we’re using our startup leanness to our advantage. We have a lot of hypotheses in flight and a backlog of open questions that we want to test. I meet with the product team every day. I do research and test our hypotheses. We recruit certain people for interviews and then collect and gather all the data, synthesize it, and then report back.
What have you learned from user research at OST?
As an example, we had a hypothesis that YouTube creators who also have a Patreon account would be really good candidates for us in terms of virtual events. We hypothesized that they want to meet with their fans or followers and be paid. We ended up finding out was that hobbyist creators are so passionate about creating that they don’t care so much about making money. For them, it’s very fulfilling if they can make $50 or $100 through Patreon, they’re not trying to make a several thousand dollars.
This proved to be really useful in the fact that it prevented us from going down a rabbit hole trying to make this work. That was really the consensus with people that I talked to across the board. The bulk of my interviews have been talking to Pepo users. One feature that we rolled out before Pepo Live was Pepo Communities.
People were saying the app is great, but they wanted a theme-based way to consume the content. We definitely listened to the research, we listened to what people were saying and we created communities. We also heard that people wanted some way to engage live. Now that COVID-19 has hit and we can’t physically meet anymore, this is a natural next step that we’re testing and experimenting with. Community admins and members can now meet and discuss different topics in a live landscape rather than having to do video replies back and forth.
What’s your vision for OST?
It’s been an exciting time working for a startup, things change on a daily basis. We’re all trying to figure out where something will stick. It’s not just about finding a feature that works in the world. It’s more about encompassing the user experience and drawing our decisions from user feedback, a core value of the company. It’s really exciting as a UX Researcher to be a part of a company with a long-term vision that is based on actual user research and insights.
Thank you, Emily!
Be sure to view our team page for more interviews! Looking for a career challenge? Visit our careers page for open positions.
