It's not UX without research.
For several new products, I helped define user journeys to map commonalities across extremely complex processes, conducting in-depth task analysis interviews with both internal and external users.
I led in-person and remote affinity mapping workshops to determine pain points and opportunities.
I also guided a project to modernize old personas in order to help product leaders with strategy development.
Nielsen's culture focuses on big data and quantitative methods, so I continuously evangelized the validity of qualitative data research.
"Who said that?"
Product owners were anxious about feedback received from existing clients. I made sure that all our testing was 100% anonymized, so that everyone could concentrate on the meaning of the results, instead of worrying about sales.
"We want a culture of openness"
From a business standpoint, it's beneficial for a team to feel that they can be honest with each other. But during testing, you're more likely to get genuine responses from a user if they know what they say is private.