Archive · Past Project
06Entrepreneurial Research · EDIT UF · 2017–2018

Designing for Entrepreneurs:
IoT, Voice & VR

Working with EDIT UF — the Entrepreneurial Diversity in Information Technology program — to help minority entrepreneurs translate their vision into reality using IoT, voice interactions, and virtual reality.

Program EDIT UF · wedocase.org/edit Role UX Researcher & Designer Context NDA · Cannot share project specifics

When the stakes are someone's entire livelihood

The EDIT UF program works with entrepreneurs from minority communities — helping them translate their business vision into real, working technology. I was brought in as a researcher and designer, working on projects that combined IoT, voice interfaces, and virtual reality in ways most enterprise contexts never touch.

What made this research fundamentally different was the stakes. In enterprise UX, a confusing interface is an inconvenience. For an entrepreneur building their first product, a confusing interface can determine whether a client relationship survives, whether a pitch convinces an investor, whether a small business makes it through its first year. The emotional weight of every design decision was qualitatively different.

"Entrepreneurial users don't separate the product from the business from the identity. Research in this context has to hold all three simultaneously."

Emerging tech in a high-stakes context

IoT
Internet of Things
Connecting physical objects to digital systems for entrepreneurs who couldn't afford enterprise-grade solutions — required designing for simplicity, reliability, and low-maintenance operation.
Voice
Voice Interfaces
Voice-first experiences for contexts where screens were impractical — warehouses, retail floors, service environments. Required research into how non-technical users form mental models of voice systems.
VR
Virtual Reality
Immersive experiences for businesses that needed to showcase or simulate environments. Research into what makes VR feel trustworthy vs. disorienting for first-time users.

The common thread across all three domains: emerging technology that the target user population had never encountered. Every project required foundational research into mental model formation before any interface design could begin. This is where the instinct for contextual inquiry — not just usability testing — became essential.

NDA Note
Project specifics, client names, and design outcomes are protected under non-disclosure. What I can share: the methodological approach, the stakes, and the lessons that carried forward into every subsequent project.

What this experience permanently changed

Before this program, I studied users as subjects of research. EDIT UF taught me to study them as partners in a shared outcome. The difference sounds subtle. It isn't. When your research participant is also the person whose livelihood depends on getting the product right, your responsibility to the research process becomes personal in a way that no controlled lab study can replicate.

It also gave me early exposure to designing at the intersection of identity and technology — specifically, how entrepreneurs from minority communities relate differently to technology tools than the dominant-culture users most UX research treats as default. This shaped the lens I later brought to research on digital identity and avatar behavior at Meta.

The skills I built here: empathy-based process design under time pressure, designing for first-time technology users, rapid contextual research in unfamiliar domains, and working with stakeholders who have everything emotionally invested in the outcome of the design.

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