The very first thing I did when preparing this announcement was to rearrange the order a little to reflect priorities. And how’s this for a strong lead: Meena Kothandaraman, in addition to her UX research expertise, is a proud Canadian and is absolutely fluent in poutine and beavertails 😊, and some other languages! She also presented at Fluxible 2019, which really wasn’t very long ago. And, better yet, we’re bringing her back in 2020!

With almost 30 years of experience, Meena has consulted to emphasize the strategic value and positioning of qualitative research in the design of product, space and service. Meena is fascinated by the complexity of human behavior, and applies a credible, structured and transparent approach to integrating human stories and anecdotes into mainstream processes. Qualitative research serves as a vehicle to generating human stories, and additionally serves as a foundation for inspiring design within organizations. Meena’s experience spans multiple verticals, with companies who believe in the value of qualitative research. Meena is a founding member of twig+fish, a research and strategy practice based in Boston, MA, that espouses these research beliefs, while maintaining a utopic work-life balance. Apart from her core consulting practice, she has been a key contributor and Lecturer in the Bentley University Human Factors and Information Design (HFID) graduate program in her 20-year tenure. Meena teaches the capstone qualitative research course.

She holds an M.S. in Information Resources Management from Syracuse University and a B.Com. in MIS from the University of Ottawa, Canada.

If you would like to “nerd out” about qualitative research – come catch Meena!