A few weeks ago, I was fortunate enough to visit an old friend at Google, NY. Now why is that interesting? Because I call Tomer “An old friend” despite the fact that I had never met him. “Wow, you have a strange definition of friend” is probably what you're thinking. Could very well be, but if you think about the nature of friendship, you will quickly realize that a friend is someone you learn from, someone you share experiences with, and someone you respect and, well, like. Such is Tomer.
I have been following Tomer for years on the social web and consistently learning new and interesting things from his expertise. So when I found out that I was gong to be visiting NYC, it was clear to me that we would need to meet up. And so we did. At Google, NY. Below is the interview I conducted with Tomer, both in text and video.
Enjoy!
1: Who is Tomer Sharon? Give me your background.
I am a Senior User Experience Researcher at Google Search in New York City. I'm the author of the book, “Lean User Research for Product Development” (Rosenfeld media, 2015) and author of, “It's Our Research: Getting stakeholder buy-in for user experience research projects” (2012). I founded and led The Israeli Chapter of the User Experience Professionals' Association and am a mentor at Google's LaunchPad program, a bootcamp for early-stage startups around the world.
I preach and teach user research at Treehouse and General Assembly and hold a master's degree in Human Factors in Information Design from Bentley University in Waltham, MA. I am @tsharon on Twitter. I relocated from Israel to the US in 2007 and I am a loving husband to Iris and proud father to Segev, Sella, and Alma.
2: What is a UX Researcher and why is it important for a company and that company's customers?
A UX Researcher is someone who is providing insights into product users, their perspectives, and abilities to the see the right people at the right time. A UX Researcher helps strategize, execute, and assess products before, during, and after development, respectively.
