S Brian Zavala's Portfolio

Hello!

The name is S Brian (or "S." online), a UX Specialist, and a Masters of Information ⮐ holder, with 5+ Years of experience working in...

User Design & Research ◆ Research Ops ⭓
Gaming ⬤ Hardware ☗ Apps & Software ▲

On this site, you will find my work experience ⮐ and personal case studies ⮐.

Have a role you'd think I'd excel at...?
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Resume

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EDUCATION

The University of Washington. Seattle, WA.
(Graduated: Aug 2026).

• Master of Science, Information Management. UX design & research.

The University of Utah. Salt Lake City (SLC), UT.
(Graduated: May 2021).

  •  Bachelor of Science, Games. Game design, production, and user research.
  •  Bachelor of Science, Communications. Advertising, marketing, and survey research.
  •  Minor, Arts & Technology. Graphic design, digital art, and art gallery curation.

EXPERIENCE

Xbox Research (XR) @ Microsoft (via Experis). Redmond, WA.

User Research Associate.
(Jun 2022 - Jul 2025).

• Study planning, technical setup, survey building, data cleaning, report writing, qual. & quant. data analysis (e.g., usabilities, playtests, surveys, etc.).

User Research Coordinator.
(Aug 2021 - Jun 2022).

• Screening, scheduling, recruiting, and user-test moderating.

Supported: Xbox Design Lab ⮐, Xbox Adaptive Joystick ⮐, Xbox ROG Ally ⮐, Xbox @ gamescom '24 ⮐, and other top-secret games, consoles, and accessories.

PROJECTS

Ongoing Game Development & User Research. Remote.
(Feb 2024 - PRESENT).

• Game design (e.g., ui/ux), systems design, game art, and game user research (e.g., feedback analysis, playtesting, etc.).

Consulting & CRM/Dashboard Setup for the Center of Energy Workforce Development. Seattle, WA.
(May 2026 - Aug 2026).

• Project management, file management, report writing, and qual. research (e.g., interviewing, analyzing data organization methods, etc.).

SKILLS

Certificates: Google Data Analytics ⮐ Google Project Management ⮐

Planning & Production: GitHub, Google Workplace (Drive, Docs, Sheets, Slides, Gmail), Microsoft 365 (Excel, Word, PowerPoint, SharePoint, Outlook), Planning Tools (Jira, Smartsheet, Trello)

Creative & Design: Game Engines (Unreal, Unity, Godot), Graphic Design (Affinity Designer, Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, InDesign), UX Tools (Figma, XD), Video Editing & Recording (DaVinci Resolve, Premiere, Sony Vegas)

Research Methods: A/B Testing, Card Sorts, Focus Groups, Heuristic Evals., Interviews, Observations, Playtests, RITE Testing, Surveys, Task-Based Analysis, Think-Alouds, Usability Testing

Want more details on my work experience?
Download a copy of my resume below!

Download Resume as PDF

Case Studies

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APPROACH

This section features my end-to-end UX case studies, each following a modified version of the Double Diamond (DD) design process I call the "Single Diamond Flatline (SDF)".

In SDF, I start by researching a topic; narrowing issues found into a defined problem (as typical with DD). However, afterwards, I focus my work, or others' deliverables, on a single solution: one testable (re)design that we can quickly iterate on.

STUDIES

UNIFI UW. A Website Redesign for Finding Clubs and Events at The University of Washington.

Role: UX Researcher Size: 5-person team Timeline: 3 months

Links: Post-testing Prototype ⮐ Pre-testing Prototype ⮐