It was the beginning of the pandemic. Early 2020. Kids were at home. Parents were at home. Lots of people were at home scrambling to educate, work, and care for one another.

With students at home at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, IBM’s P-TECH program hosted webinars for high school and university students to learn about skills for “new collar jobs”.

P-TECH hosted webinars about cybersecurity, quantum computing, and human-centred design. I had the opportunity to share my experience and educate students on the role of the design researcher. Unfortunately, the webinar recording has been taken down from IBM's website.

I collaborated with a fellow IBM design researcher to shape a presentation and webinar. I designed some take home research exercises so that kids who were interested could become design researchers at home. I prepared some MadLibs-inspired activities for them to conduct usability tests on their household items.

I thoroughly enjoyed this small side project at IBM. During my time at IBM, I continued to educate and mentor students.

I was an industry advisor for a senior-level design and engineering course at The University of Texas at Austin.

I mentored an architecture student who wanted to start a career in user researcher. She is now smashing it as a senior user researcher at a large digital health organisation in the United States!