Role
Research Lead, Mixed-Methods Researcher
Methods
Semi-structured interviews, survey
Type
Exploratory
Timeline
2020 - 2021
User Experience Philippines (UXPH) is the largest non-profit organization aimed at growing and supporting design professionals, enthusiasts, and students in the Philippines. As part of the UXPH Research Team, I served as Research Lead for its first large-scale initiative: the State of UX in the Philippines (SOUP) report.
The goal of this project was to understand the UX landscape in the Philippines during 2020–2021 and articulate how local educational pathways, workplace realities, and industry conditions shape UX practitioners and leaders. Similar reports had been published in other regions, but none had yet focused on the Philippine context.
As Research Lead, I helped define the research scope, methodology, and execution plan for a study intended to represent students, practitioners, and UX leaders across the country. Given the breadth of the research questions and the diversity of participants, we chose a mixed-methods approach that balanced scale with depth.
We began with a broad survey distributed across UXPH’s network to capture trends and patterns, followed by semi-structured interviews to explore motivations, experiences, and nuances that could not be captured quantitatively. In total, the study included 390 survey responses and 20 in-depth interviews spanning students, practitioners, and UX leads.
A major challenge of this project was that all contributors, including myself, participated on a purely voluntary basis. Team members balanced this work alongside full-time jobs, studies, and personal responsibilities, which led to varying levels of availability and involvement over time.
As Research Lead, I was responsible for maintaining momentum while respecting these constraints. This required a careful balance between flexibility and structure: adapting timelines when unexpected challenges arose, while also setting clear expectations, prioritizing critical tasks, and making firm requests when progress was at risk.
Leading in this context gave me firsthand experience in guiding a team with patience and empathy, while still holding the work to a high standard.
I led and contributed to qualitative analysis by conducting structured coding of interview data to surface recurring themes and tensions across participant groups. These emergent themes were then examined alongside analyzed survey results to identify alignment, divergence, and areas requiring deeper interpretation.
We used qualitative and quantitative insights to contextualize and strengthen patterns, ensuring the final narrative reflected both lived experiences and broader patterns within the community.
The final report was designed to be accessible and meaningful to multiple audiences, including students entering the field, practicing UX professionals, organizational leaders, and educators. To support this, the report was published in six thematic parts, each addressing a distinct aspect of the UX ecosystem in the Philippines.
In addition to publishing the report, I also had the opportunity to present our report findings during Philippine Design Week organized by the Design Center of the Philippines, and the Design Conf by Learners.