Singapore
User Research specialist by title, Anthropologist at heart. With 5+ years in human-centered research, I tinker with people - confronting unspoken beliefs and unconscious motivations that drive visible behaviors. Through a range of methods, applied at the right moments, I offer my team a new way to see and act. My magic: + Navigating teams from wild uncertainties into simple decisions and meaningful outcomes + Mastery / Fluid use of research - to net both easy wins and strategic advantages + Leading rich discoveries that maximise impact – from the “What Ifs” to the “So Whats” My colleagues know me for my ability to bring clarity to complex problems, with a calm yet incisive rigor (and my meditation classes in afterwork hours). In my own time, I sit in public spaces, observing the way people navigate their environments, and occasionally jump into ethnographic side-projects, including these: - How do people navigate the spaces in a library - What do people seek to accomplish in a Starbucks - How a homeless shelter 'gives dignity' through words and actions - What is homesickness: how people cope in the everyday I communicate some of my human observations in compelling short stories on the Medium platform: https://medium.com/@crystal.tan Ultimately, I am driven by an unending curiosity - About the relationships between people, spaces and objects. About how different experiences can be achieved by changing these relationships.
I was part of the pioneer team that built Singapore’s 1st digital bank from ground zero to real products and experiences seen in the GXS app today: — Impacted decisions at all levels and across the lifecycle, from C- suite to business strategy, and product experiences to tactical designs & developments — Defined, prioritised and led research across all 7x verticals (cards, rewards, deposits, lending, and more): over 200 hours of consumer interviews and exposure, I’ve informed target segments, opportunity spaces or the lack of, and key value propositions down to usability in the hands of consumers — Innovated beyond traditional ‘UX’ qual-quant research: including the use of projectives, semiotics and behavioral science frameworks that informed the (award-winning) GXS branding and tone-of-voice
Adapting ethnographic methods into agile sprints | Weaving user needs into product strategy — Building from scratch to scale: Research Strategy & Vision, Research Repository, Rolling Insights — Deep-dive focus: Interview techniques vs Survey questions, Concept vs Usability tests, Measuring success User Research is a craft: a constant work in progress, where every failed hypothesis is a discovery, and every success a measurement of how close we are to understanding our users' deepest concerns.
— How can we understand the experience of homesickness? — Conducted an in-depth structured interview and home observation to understand 'homesickness': the way it influences people's creation of meanings for spaces and material objects — Applying anthropology in today's society — Analyzed the importance of re-inventing ethnography. Its utility lies in uncovering nuances behind everyday habits and consumer patterns. It reveals, for both employer and interlocutors, the arbitrary and the important at the core of each other’s position. — What is dignity and how can we study it? — Dignity is so elusive that it is hardly studied in anthropology. I attempted to come up with methods for studying dignity. The goal is to uncover what it looks like in everyday life and find out how we can create the conditions to promote it.
— How do staff and volunteers articulate dignity through their everyday practices? — I conducted 5 weeks of participant-observation in the Manna homeless day centre alongside semi-structured and informal interviews. Serving and washing alongside volunteers and staff, I immersed myself in their day-to-day routines to elicit the meanings behind their speech and actions. This is compiled into a 15,000 word dissertation that uses storytelling to locate and capture dignity in everyday life. My main finding is that 'doing' dignity is an ongoing practical activity, consisting of everyday words of affirmation and practices of discretion by volunteers, in interaction with shelter-seekers. Ultimately, these practices not only empower shelter-seekers to regain control of their lives, but serves as a form of social connection and fulfilling project that transforms volunteers themselves.