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Role
UX Researcher!
I planned research
strategy and conducted research over one year and built trust with my organization
Method
Team
Informal interview
Desk Research
Contextual enquiry
Ethnographic Study
Usability Studies
Organizational Research
Journey Mapping
Service blue print
Mid-Fidelity prototype
Dr. Sonia Savelli
My efficient boss
Me - UX Researcher
Brie Yost
PM who simplified tasks
Susanna Lammervo
Super knowledge- able PhD candidate
Suzzane Schereck
Sound Transit Boss :)
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Timeline
March 2024- April 2024
CONTEXT
A city-scale Seattle train system was growing 4X — but its operations model hadn't evolved.
Seattle’s Sound Transit — a key piece of the city’s transit backbone — has faced chronic inefficiencies. Its network is projected to grow 4X in the coming years, prompting urgent conversations about how to scale operations. Leadership proposed a $60M Unified Control Center (UCC) — a physical facility that would unify the Link Control Center, Security Operations, and Field Dispatch to enhance coordination and minimize service delays. It sounded logical — but would it solve the real problem?
As an embedded UX researcher, Our team was brought in to evaluate this proposal. What followed was a deep, year-long, multi-phase study that reshaped a citywide strategy — not through surface observations, but through immersive, evidence-led discovery.
GOAL
I wasn't just validating a solution — I was reframing the question.
The brief was straightforward -
"Explore whether a centralized physical control center would improve Sound Transit’s coordination and operational efficiency"
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But our research goal was deeper —
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To understand what operations actually looked like, felt like, and broke down like on the ground.
RESEARCH QUESTIONS
"What are the systemic barriers to effective coordination in Sound Transit operations — and what does an ideal future state look like?"
"Does Sound Transit’s proposed 60$mil Unified Control Center (UCC) address the root causes of coordination breakdowns?"
CHALLENGES
With no precedent, I had to build trust, uncover silos, and surface truths leadership hadn’t seen.
Predefined solutions
The $60M control center was treated as inevitable — we had to challenge it with evidence
Siloed operations
Each department had its own tools, processes, and assumptions about others
Invisible labor
Coordination work, especially emotional and cognitive effort, wasn’t acknowledged
Lack of research precedent
There were no prior studies or user data to lean on — we had to start from zero
These early hurdles reinforced the need for a phased, exploratory research approach grounded in systems thinking and frontline immersion.
MY RESEARCH APPROACH: A YEAR OF DEPTH STUDY
Designed a 4-phase research arc — layering generative, contextual, and participatory methods across 12 months.
Phase 2: Contextual Inquiry Inside the Control Centers
How do people coordinate under pressure? Used embedded ethnography to capture the real-time realities of frontline decision-making.
Phase 3: Auditing the Tools
What’s breaking behind the screens? Conducted a tool and workflow audit to expose redundancies, gaps, and unacknowledged dependencies.
Phase 4: Co-Designing the Future
From findings to futures — facilitated cross-functional workshops to turn insights into system design concepts.
PHASE 01
What’s really happening on the ground? Used semi-structured interviews and benchmarking to map invisible workflows and surface real-world friction.
Phase 01 methods
Over the course of 6 weeks, I led over 20 in-depth, semi-structured interviews with key stakeholders — from leadership role using snowballing method
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Each session ranged from 45 to 90 minutes and was conducted via Zoom, with participant consent for note-taking and transcription.
Over the course of 6 weeks, I led over 20 in-depth, semi-structured interviews with key stakeholders — including dispatchers, field supervisors, SOC leads, control center operators, service planners, and systems engineers.
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Each session ranged from 45 to 90 minutes and was conducted either in person at Sound Transit facilities or remotely via Zoom, with participant consent for note-taking and transcription.
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To guide the conversations, I used a flexible interview guide designed to surface pain points in incident handoffs, coordination workflows, tooling limitations, and role clarity.
In parallel, I benchmarked three leading peer transit agencies — TriMet, MBTA, and MTA — to compare their control center models, operational tooling, and SOP structures. This comparative research revealed that most high-performing systems do not rely on physical co-location alone, but instead invest in unified information systems and clearly distributed roles.
This early-phase discovery helped challenge a critical assumption underlying the $60M UCC proposal: that proximity alone leads to better coordination. It also positioned the research to interrogate systemic and behavioral contributors to misalignment — not just spatial ones.
Why this method?
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Ethnography captured the moment-to-moment decisions and cognitive loads in ways retrospective interviews never could.
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Analysis Method:
Observational logging and contextual tagging fed into behavioral patterns and emergent roles.
PHASE 02
What’s really happening on the ground? Used semi-structured interviews and benchmarking to map invisible workflows and surface real-world friction.
Seattle’s Sound Transit — a key piece of the city’s transit backbone — has faced chronic inefficiencies. Its network is projected to grow 4X in the coming years, prompting urgent conversations about how to scale operations. Leadership proposed a $60M Unified Control Center (UCC) — a physical facility that would unify the Link Control Center, Security Operations, and Field Dispatch to enhance coordination and minimize service delays. It sounded logical — but would it solve the real problem?
As an embedded UX researcher, Our team was brought in to evaluate this proposal. What followed was a deep, year-long, multi-phase study that reshaped a citywide strategy — not through surface observations, but through immersive, evidence-led discovery.