​​​​Eric Russell, Ph.D.​

Lead UX Researcher

Airbnb

June 2019 - present

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• Informed Airbnb's set of business priorities of promoting safety and defending against fraud, account abuse, and offensive content.

• Led the organization, planning, and execution of a company-wide research share-out event that impacted leadership strategy for listing verification.

• Impacted multiple teams' strategies on preventing monetary loss through conducting research on fraudulent transactions/behavior.

• Shaped the design direction and strategy for listing address verification through leading both foundational and tactical research with cross-functional partners.

• Fostered research collaborations between Trust group disciplines that drove cross-functional relationship building.

 

Senior UX Researcher

Facebook

August 2018 - May 2019

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• Generated foundational insights for the News Feed Integrity team, which impacted multiple products across the organization and generated XFN collaborations.

• Planned and led field international field research that has impacted road-mapping priorities for expanding News Feed products outside of the United States.

• Informed key design and executional decisions for a major user-facing UI change that helped shape the product prior to global launch.

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• Pioneered and advocated for a program of foundational research to better understand teen's specific needs sending and receiving messages across Instagram and Facebook Messenger.

• Led a design sprint for messaging and stories teams across Facebook and Instagram that generated messaging interoperability solutions for Instagram's priority market.

• Created and led survey research with Instagram data science and Facebook demography and survey science to identify key markets most open to messaging across Messenger, Instagram, and WhatsApp.

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• Provided continuing support and mentoring guidance to newer and junior team members.

 

User Experience (UX) Researcher

Facebook

August 2017 - July 2018

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• Proactively identified a new area of inquiry and conducted survey work that influenced the direction and focus of the team.

• Led research at a design sprint (including identifying the people problems and creating design personas), which led to the refinement of the team's product strategy for the year.

• Contributed to an analysis that helped define the first version of a new metric for content ranking on Facebook. 

• Drove forward product thinking for a relatively new team by moving them to a more sophisticated framework for understanding bad user behavior on Facebook.

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Researcher and Teaching Assistant

The University of Texas at Arlington

​August 2013 - August 2017

 

• Trained and supervised 20 undergraduate research assistants on data coding tasks which resulted in enhanced research productivity and organization in the laboratory

• Presented results of quantitative investigations at annual conventions and received national recognition for presentation ability

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• Taught lab sections of both undergraduate and graduate statistics, created weekly lectures, planned in-class activities, and graded assignments.

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User Experience Researcher, Intern

Facebook

May 2016 - August 2016

 

• Conducted qualitative and quantitative research for both the Ads Measurement Team and Ads Solutions Team.

• Led two survey investigations about the Facebook Pixel product, which assisted product managers and stakeholders build new features for the product.

• Designed and conducted a series of interviews with Facebook sales team members to get their clients' perspectives on Dynamic Product Ad campaigns.

• Developed and implemented a partner sentiment survey that informed the Ads Interfaces Team how to improve team structure and communication with stakeholders.