HOW IT ALL BEGAN
Sitting in the Taco Bell parking lot in a suburb of Sacramento in 1998 is not exactly where I thought I'd find my true calling. But when opportunity knocks, you answer the door.
I was a part-time cashier at Taco Bell and sitting on lunch break in a friend's newly purchased (but used) car when it dawned on me that the person who had owned this car previously was a fan of whatever preset radio station was on the button labeled simply as "A".
At that time, cars had buttons for radio presets, not digital interfaces. And those buttons typically suffered from overuse and wear. The button labeled "A" had been pressed so many times, the letter had worn nearly completely off from overuse.
This was magic to me. I could see how the former owner of this car must have sat in that seat and programmed that A button to a favorite station, and I pondered the location of the button to the driver's right arm....was it the most reachable, the most accessible? Had the owner consciously thought that this was going to be the button relied on most? Or was it just the first letter set up and therefore the "best" or "most liked' station was selected for it.
By studying this car and observing artifacts left behind from the previous owner, I became aware of something inside me that was previously unknown: a spirit that was energized by the careful and intentional observation of humans in action, and collecting evidence that would later form a hypothesis that could be tested with experiments.
Later that spring, just before I turned 17, I enrolled in my first ever college class: Psychology 101. This class changed the course of my life forever, as I knew immediately that my future was to study psychology and I never looked back.
The way people think, why they act, and what they tell themselves have been my constant fascinations since I was a teenager. I have since studied the art and science of human behavior, attitude change, and psychological assessment my entire adult life.
From 2005 to 2012, my education and subsequent career focused solely on research, data collection, analysis, and synthesis of results into understandable and actionable products.
I became interested in creating beautiful art and interfaces as I realized the juxtaposition of my own personal energy with that of my long-standing career in the user research world. So in 2012, I started making websites for family and small businesses, then I took on more work in the realm of user experience and design and became a Sr. UX Design Engineer.
I joined the research, analysis, and assessment world again in 2014 as a Lead Analyst working for a small military contracting company. Since then, I have become a mother, real estate professional, and property manager as well as a small business owner. But that feeling of sitting in that car analyzing that radio interface has never left me.
The repeated use of that radio preset button, to presumably hear whatever station it was set to, was a revelation akin to striking gold. I was already set on the path that would become my future. When I felt my mind turn to "observe" an event that had not occurred before my own eyes, I was forced to make a choice.
It was not just a choice about whether or not I would continue to reflect on this moment for the rest of my life—it was a decision about what kind of person I would become. And when I made that choice—when I decided to embark on a path of always asking the difficult questions and looking closer at the patterns and signals humans leave behind—I found a spirit inside me eager and excited to better understand the ambiguity of the human mind and how we can behave in predictable ways despite existing in uncertain situations.
Inevitably, understanding and studying how beliefs influence behaviors as well as the conclusions that can be drawn from those behaviors have become my life's work.
