Project Overview

Client/Company: Blink UX (in partnership with Fortune 500 Tech Company)

Product: Wearable Technology Product

Role: UX Researcher

Timeline: May 2024 - January 2025 (9 months)

Team: Lead Researchers, Designers, Product Managers, Fortune 500 Tech Stakeholders

Blink UX partnered with a Fortune 500 Tech company to evaluate and improve the usability of a wearable technology product. The goal was to uncover how real users interacted with immersive hardware and translate those behaviors into actionable insights that would guide product decisions and long-term experience improvements.

The Problem

As wearable technology hardware becomes more powerful, its success increasingly depends on how intuitive and accessible the experience feels to users.

While wearable technology products offered advanced capabilities, users were encountering friction during core interactions — particularly around hand controls, gesture-based input, and navigating within immersive environments.

Business + User Tension:
Our Fortune 500 client needed reliable behavioral insights to refine the product, while users needed an experience that felt natural, comfortable, and easy to learn in order to fully engage with the technology.

What I Did

Research

I supported large-scale UX research for the VR headset, working in a fast-moving, cross-functional environment alongside designers, researchers, and product stakeholders.

My responsibilities included:

• Facilitating 120+ in-person and remote VR usability sessions

• Ensuring participants were comfortable using immersive hardware

• Observing and documenting real-time user behaviors

• Capturing detailed research notes during sessions

• Supporting both qualitative and quantitative analysis using Qualtrics

UX Strategy

My strategy focused on:

• Identifying friction points in gesture-based controls and physical interactions

• Understanding how different user groups adapted to immersive technology

• Prioritizing issues that directly impacted task success and learning curves

• Translating behavioral patterns into product-ready insights

Deliverables

• Research summaries and insights reports created using GoogleDrive

• Highlighted usability issues and behavioral patterns presented in Miro

• Actionable recommendations for product and design teams

• Client-facing presentations for Fortune 500 stakeholders

  
  

Research Methods

To evaluate the wearable tech experience, we used a mixed-methods approach combining:

• Moderated wearable tech usability testing

• In-person immersive sessions

• Behavioral observation

• Task success and failure tracking

• In-session survey tracking via Qualtrics

• Qualitative and quantitative synthesis

Participants included teens and adults interacting with the headset in simulated real-world environments, allowing us to capture both performance metrics and experiential feedback.

Process

Before sessions, I collaborated with Lead Researchers and Project Managers to review protocols, prepare materials, and ensure testing environments were ready.

During sessions, I:

• Prompted participants to complete a set of tasks, following up with a set of qualitative and quantitative questions after each task

• Helped troubleshoot hardware discomfort or confusion without guiding the participant

• Captured high-fidelity behavioral notes in real time

• Flagged recurring usability issues as they emerged

After sessions, I:

• Organized findings

• Analyzed trends in Qualtrics

• Helped transform raw data into clear stories and product recommendations

This process ensured our insights were grounded in real user behavior and immediately usable by product teams.

Key Findings

Across sessions, several patterns consistently emerged:

• Users failed tasks more often due to improper or unintuitive hand control utilization

• Many breakdowns were not caused by lack of user knowledge, but by unclear system feedback

• Adults struggled more than younger users to adapt to gesture-based controls

• Small changes in control mapping and visual cues significantly improved task success rates

These insights highlighted how critical physical interaction design is in immersive products.

Impact

The findings were presented to the Fortune 500 stakeholders and used to inform improvements in the wearable technology’s interaction model and usability.

By grounding product decisions in behavioral evidence, the team was able to:

• Reduce task failure rates

• Improve the learnability of hand controls

• Support long-term experience improvements for future iterations

Learnings

This project deepened my understanding of UX research for emerging technologies and enterprise products.

Key takeaways:

• Gained hands-on experience conducting large-scale usability research

• Learned how to translate complex behavioral data into product-ready insights

• Built confidence collaborating with cross-functional teams and presenting findings to high-level stakeholders

• Developed a stronger appreciation for how physical interaction design shapes user experience in immersive environments

  
  

  

Thank you for reading!