Mary L .Fraser

Research is about Relationships

I am known for empathetic Leadership, expansive listening and engaging storytelling.I have built out zero to one teams of UX Research, and lead teams in design research, CX and UX. I love being a player/coach as well.I love exploring the messy questions and how business can understand users. I lead teams in experience research while ensuring the actionable insights are delivered.Experience research uncovers user needs and strengthens relationships between businesses and users. It looks at immediate actionable needs, but also the latent needs that can be incorporated into design. These are the needs that the user doesn’t even know they need until they do. If these needs are anticipated, the business wins because the user immediately becomes loyal to the product.At my heart, I am a fintech/software researcher, with side gigs in AI, infosec, and trust. I have done cloud, enterprise, and B2C with great success.

Understanding the Mindset of the Wealthy

Truist Bank was losing younger generations of family wealth. We wanted to better understand how the Wealthy among generations wanted to be in relationship with their bank.I conducted 61 IDIs with people who held assets over a certain amount to determine segmentation.We discovered that Wealth is largely a feeling of freedom and trust, and not a numerical value add.A roboadvising tool was implemented as a synthesized tool (specific to basis points) along with better relationship skill training for advisors and clients.An increase in client retention was the overall result. In addition, we were able to discover five distinct pathways ot wealth that could then be further explored for a better understanding of this population.

UXR is not Obsolete, Not even close

We started with the hypothesis that UXRs and AI are better together than one or the other alone.We brainstormed ways in which AI could be used to run a study in the following spaces: fintech, healthtech, morality, education, and trust. We asked ChatGPT5 the same question. After bucketing these, each researcher asked a handy sample of other UXRs (Na=20, na1=5x4) to identify which hypothesis might be more achievable or measurable.Based on those results, we developed research plans: one human and one AI each for a metric research (tactical) and an exploratory research plan. The third offering was a hybrid of human and AI. Each researcher on the team used a handy sample of different UXRs than previously asked to ask which was a better plan (Nb=20, nb1=5x4).The result was overwhelmingly (83%) the plan developed concurrently with AI and Humans.Many teams know the results of this internally and intuitively. We showed that this result runs across domains and across spaces, regardless of team, company, or UXR.AI and humans simply work better together.