Techpreneur Magazine: You have chalked quite a number of academic laurels at such a young age, what has been your greatest motivation and why UX.
Gloria: Well thanks for thinking 27 is such a young age to have a terminal degree. I am flattered. Not to sound narcissistic but my greatest motivation has been intrinsic (self). I have experienced a lot of rejections, self-doubt, and I could tell you all about it some other time when we sit to talk.
My path into UX has not been as clear and direct as it seems in hindsight.
It rather is convoluted. As you may or may not know, I started and completed both my High school and College degrees back home in Ghana. Yes! Aggrey Memorial (AME Zion) Secondary School with a General Science diploma and Valley View University with a computer science degree respectively. My last year of college introduced me to Health informatics when a guest speaker from Germany came to my department to give a talk. I got interested and decided to apply to graduate school for a health Informatics degree.
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I applied to Johns Hopkins School of Medicine’s Applied Health Informatics program, got in and started to understand the current state of Health IT in America, concerns, standards and federal regulations surrounding Health IT in America. Towards the second year of my master’s degree, I was accepted into graduate school to work on an interdisciplinary PhD program where I can combine Human-Computer Interaction with Health IT. This started the path to getting the PhD whiles acquiring meaningful extra-curricular internships with tech companies and research labs. That basically summarizes my motivation and path to UX.
Techpreneur Magazine: What do you do as a Senior UX Research Scientist and what has been your most rewarding or inspirational experience as a female UX practitioner?
Gloria: As a Senior UX Research Scientist, what I do is similar to a UX practitioner or UX analyst. However, UX Scientists usually have a PhD and do a lot of abstract research and design on concepts and theories that have not yet been implemented or applied. We usually work in a lab space and patent our work. Sometimes we take concepts from academia that have been under-applied or never implemented and incorporate them into what we are working on.
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Techpreneur Magazine: What do you consider as one of the most difficult challenges you have had as a researcher?
Gloria: For me, I will say the most difficult challenge I have had as a researcher is forging my path forward when it is extremely hard to eliminate possibilities across various research domains. What do I mean by that? In deciding to be a UX researcher, you have to settle yet not settle in one expertise.
Techpreneur Magazine: How do you think women contribute to the UX field at large, given that there are quite a number of them in the field now?
Gloria: I think women’s contribution to the UX field is as significant and diverse as their contribution to any other field. Whereas most of their contributions are downgraded, rejected and not recognized, the field, just like any other has benefited significantly from contributions of women. I think women’s contribution to UX, in general, is reflective on the sheer number of women in the field. A focus on design only may prove otherwise but in general, there are more women in the field. That being said, I really do not think contributions should be weighed in terms of gender lines. This is because we both know that men are more likely to receive credit for work that women do. Personally, I think women’s contribution in the field delves deeper into the amount of volunteering they do, the amount of training they provide, the amount of mentoring they give to other women in particular, and their sheer innate soft skills which the field desperately thrives on.
