Meghana Gautam

Summary

UX Researcher and Service Designer with 6+ years of experience turning complex user behaviour into measurable product outcomes across telecommunications, enterprise software, e-commerce and civic tech. I build research practices from the ground up, lead mixed-methods studies at scale and drive cross-functional alignment. Directed research at Microsoft that increased product adoption by 22%, and led a journey redesign at Verizon that reduced support complaints by 20%.

Experience

UX Research Consultant · Verizon

Aug 2024 – Jan 2026

• Led end-to-end mixed-methods research on in-store kiosk adoption, running contextual in-person interviews and usability evaluations to find friction in complex flows, and delivering recommendations that drove a full interface redesign.
• Drove process improvements through behavioural analytics and journey redesign, resulting in a 20% reduction in technical support complaints within 12 months.
• Identified operational bottlenecks in customer-facing workflows and documented improvements that reduced manual intervention and created repeatable support processes.
• Facilitated cross-functional workshops across Sales, Marketing and Operations on user-centred design and AI tool adoption, turning insights into prioritised business actions.

Senior UX Researcher · Microsoft (via Tech Mahindra)

Oct 2023 – Apr 2024

• Directed a 7-month mixed-methods usability evaluation of enterprise account management tools with 50+ participants, combining SUS, semi-structured interviews and heuristic evaluation to diagnose adoption barriers.
• Integrated bi-weekly telemetry analysis in Microsoft Clarity (session recordings, heatmaps, funnels) with qualitative findings, contributing to a 22% increase in product adoption.
• Aligned findings with global business KPIs by partnering with Sales, Marketing and Data Analytics through structured synthesis and stakeholder briefings.

UX Researcher · Thence

May 2022 – Sep 2023

• Sole research owner for a major consumer retail brand. Diagnosed a 68% product page exit rate by triangulating user interviews with behavioural analytics (Hotjar), and delivered strategic reports that redefined the product display pages.
• Created low- and mid-fidelity wireframes in Figma to bridge research and design, reducing hand-off friction with engineering.

Rising Star Award, within 6 months

UX Researcher · I-PAC (Indian Political Action Committee)

Sep 2021 – Apr 2022

• Built the organisation's first UX research practice from scratch: recruitment pipelines, research templates and a reporting cadence for a non-technical organisation with diverse rural user segments.
• Designed user flows and interaction patterns for a native mobile app. Research-driven optimisation helped it reach 50,000+ installs within 3 months.

Research Analyst · Cognizant

Mar 2020 – Sep 2021

• Ran sentiment and behavioural analysis in R for U.S. healthcare B2B providers (client: TriZetto Provider Solutions), working with complex domain knowledge and time-pressured professional users.
• Streamlined customer query resolution through systematic analysis, delivering 100% on-time project completion across the engagement.

Amber Award, 3 times in a row

Education

M.Sc. Cognitive Science

IIT Gandhinagar · 2017 – 2019

B.A. Social Sciences

TISS Hyderabad · 2014 – 2017

Methods & tools

Languages