Human Centered Design Strategist & Researcher
K. Woodson
Kara Woodson
Human-centered design strategist & researcher
Phone:
651-373-9457
Email:
Location:
Twin Cities Metro Area - Minnesota
A Bit About Kara
Kara is a dedicated human-centered design practitioner and customer advocate with a wealth of experience. She specializes in pairing business objectives with customer needs, leveraging insightful research and management theory. Kara's strengths lie in qualitative research, workshop facilitation, and early discovery techniques, all aimed at delivering practical and effective strategies for your organization.
Work Experience
Target
Lead User Experience Researcher - Global Supply Chain and Operations
U.S. Bank
Principal Service Designer, Design Thinker, User Experience Researcher
University of St. Thomas
Design Thinking & HCD Consultant
Perficient
Client: Large Medical Device Company based in Ireland
Human Factors Engineer
Driving complex, cross-functional enterprise initiatives across the Global Supply Chain and Logistics team by transforming ambiguity into structured programs, aligning senior stakeholders, mitigating delivery risk, and scaling research impact across the organization.
Accomplishments:
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Identified systemic vendor overage and underage issues through mixed-method research, driving cross-functional alignment and solutions projected to deliver $6M+ in network-wide savings.
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Implemented project management tools such as Statement of Works which established a working model across the enterprise — including risk assessment, RASIC, stakeholder analysis, scoped deliverables, critical path and Gantt schedule, quality standards, resource planning, success metrics, and formal change governance protocols.
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Drove one of the first fully cross-functional product development efforts in GSCL by integrating Product, Engineering, Process, Data Science, and Warehouse Operations early in discovery — creating a scalable operating model adopted in subsequent initiatives.
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Reframed executive understanding of site-level constraints by synthesizing fragmented data and 30+ hours of research into a cohesive operational narrative that influenced roadmap direction and reduced delivery risk.
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Increased research efficiency and ROI by standardizing site engagement models, reducing operational disruption, improving artifact reuse, and consulting across 15+ initiatives with 12+ cross-functional leaders.
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Operated as a player–coach within a democratized research model: mentored 10+ UX designers, project-managed parallel research efforts, and coached teams through study design, synthesis, and stakeholder communication while leading my own strategic research programs.
Led large scale and highly visible cross team projects that focused on uniting internal & external processes with business strategy & customer research to develop and design new products and services.
Accomplishments:
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Created guiding principles for U.S. Bank’s future mergers and acquisitions through blueprinting the employee and customer experience, customer & employee empathy interviews, and comprehensive diary study of the U.S. Bank/Union Bank acquisition
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Co-led initiative with the DEI and HR to identify the root causes of low response rates among employees with disabilities. Created a development plan for an improved work environment and management strategy aimed at enhancing the employee experience and decrease turnover
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Created internal team processes, best practices, and team purpose/vision for the Service Design Strategy team that included project plans, test plans, recruiting processes, compliance processes, team branding, and visioning sessions
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Coached and mentored teams across the organization in design thinking, service design, UX design, and other human-centered design methodologies
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Used storytelling and research to change the team’s negative outlook on their highest grossing customers which led to a culture change on the team resulting in a redesigned customer centric dealer portal
Supervised and mentored students who assisted local start-ups with reframing their business needs and focused ideation.
Accomplishments
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Taught students of all levels through lectures and hands-on work about the foundations of the Design Thinking Process and Human-Centered Design
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Partnered with startups to reshape their business needs and challenges, rendering them more accessible for students to tackle
Human Factors Usability Project focused on a newly developed interface for a pain management medical device.
Accomplishments
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Redesigned an FDA regulated test plan (following a compliance testing failure caused by the previous team's approach) leading to the application passing testing and being released to the market
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Served as the official note taker and/or the moderator in 29 summative user sessions focusing on user actions, responses, & data as in accordance with FDA requirements
