UXR Spotlight: Kris Saber

Kris Saber

This spotlight was part of USERWEEKLY - a weekly email to understand what is happening in user research. It's the best way to keep up on trends, methodologies, insights across the industry, and meet new researchers. Each week, the newsletter captures the pulse of our community and answers a simple question: What mattered in User Research this week?

Hey Kris Saber, tell us a little about yourself.
Hi everyone I’m Kris Saber. I’m from NY and like skiing, playing video games and of course, writing about UX. I’ve always been interested in working with and understanding people, so UX research just seemed like a natural path for me!

From your experience, what is one of the biggest challenges user research(ers) face today?
Getting the first opportunity to become a full time UX Researcher is always really difficult. There are internships and other opportunities, but it really is hard to convince a new team to hire a junior or assistant level position. Especially for product design teams looking for their first UX researcher, they don’t want someone new to the field, because they themselves may not know everything about research. Since hiring a dedicated UX researcher is just starting to become a trend outside of big tech, they often want a senior level employee to create processes and programs.

If you had an unlimited budget and time for research, what would you do with it?
I would run studies on sleep chronotypes. I think there’s a lot of unknowns when it comes to sleep cycles, dreaming, and most importantly to me, night vs morning people. A lot of people’s sleep schedules are flexible, but others have a fixed sleep pattern that works best for them. Morning people have always had an edge in the world (I am not a morning person). I would be super interested in diving deeper and understanding exactly what the implications are for different chronotypes, and with that maybe spend billions of dollars getting the sleep science down!.

What can people reach out to you about and how can they find you?
If you read my content and have something specific you want to talk about, or are a fan of my writing in general, I would love to talk with you on LinkedIn. You can of course follow me on Medium, and would be honored and grateful to have your viewership :). However, I probably won’t connect with people that I don’t know from either real life work or a fan of my writing.

Thank you, Kris!