CLIENT PROJECT
B2B SAAS
MIXED METHODS
Four research methods, one question: why do sustainability teams struggle to turn climate data into decisions? I helped find out, and turned it into prioritized fixes for a climate-tech startup.
Role
UX Researcher
Timeline
Jan – Apr 2026
Team
5 UMSI researchers + Cloudsyte
Methods
Interviews, survey, heuristic eval, usability testing
Status
Delivered to client
What I owned: Interview moderation and synthesis, survey revisions, heuristic evaluation, and usability session moderation.
5
discovery interviews with city sustainability staff
60
usability issues found in heuristic evaluation
4
moderated usability sessions, 6 tasks each
13
recommendations across 4 studies
01 · DISCOVER
We ran 5 semi-structured interviews with sustainability planners, managers, and a director across small and large cities. Notes were coded and clustered in FigJam to find patterns, not one-off stories.
AFFINITY MAP · Cropped FigJam clusters
PARTICIPANTS · 5 INTERVIEWS
2
Sustainability planners
1
Sustainability manager
1
Urban planner
1
Deputy director of sustainability
40-minute remote interviews across small, mid-sized, suburban, and large cities.
FINDING 01
Data doesn’t speak for itself
Managers struggle to turn emissions numbers into stories leadership and residents understand.
“50,000 metric tons of CO2e… goes right over people’s head.”
FINDING 02
Data lives everywhere
Reports depend on other departments and utilities, so every report means chasing, checking, and cleaning.
FINDING 03
History goes missing
Legacy data is often lost or undocumented, making long-term progress hard to prove.
02 · MEASURE & BENCHMARK
We piloted the survey with 3 sector experts. Their feedback turned yes/no questions into severity scales and added a time-split question, so results show which problems actually cost teams the most.
BEFORE · Original checklist question
Which obstacles do you face?
AFTER · Revised Likert matrix
How much is each an obstacle?
We compared 5 tools, from direct (ICLEI ClearPath) to analogous (Tableau), on a 2x2 of technical depth vs. actionability. Cloudsyte sits in the gap: deep enough for experts, usable for everyone else.
03 · EVALUATE
We evaluated the platform against Nielsen’s 10 heuristics plus 2 we created for this domain: data traceability and narrative clarity. Each issue was rated 0 to 4 for severity.
SEVERITY 4
Risky uploads
No undo for bad uploads, and a “Success” message even when files were formatted wrong.
CONSISTENCY
Modules behave differently
Water and Energy tables lacked the Edit/Delete actions Emissions had. Buttons and type varied page to page.
CONTEXT GAP
Numbers without meaning
Metrics had no benchmarks, and terms like “Scope 1/2/3” had no explanation.
4 moderated remote sessions with sustainability professionals, 6 core tasks each: from adding a focus area to editing the public dashboard. Participants thought aloud while we logged where they got stuck.
THE ISSUE · “+ New Focus Area” hidden top-right
2 of 4 participants missed it
THE INSIGHT · Users scan from the left
Actions outside the scan path get missed
RECOMMENDATION · after mock
Primary action beside the page title
Move primary actions into users’ natural scan path
Pull “Public Dashboard” out of Account Settings into its own section
Give every empty state a clear next step
Rename labels by action: “Bulk Upload” becomes “Upload Data”
04 · REFLECT
Our samples were small and used mock data. Next, I’d test with more cities and real datasets, and include staff from other departments who feed data in.
4 studies and a final presentation delivered to Cloudsyte
13 prioritized recommendations for product and engineering
Research presented at the Michigan Sustainability Conference (Sept 2026), with our team credited