Shara Coutourier

Shara Coutourier Research Lead at
Three Five Two

Shara Coutourier

She/her

Shara Coutourier is a Lead User Researcher with over 10 years of experience in user research, product management, and consumer insights. Currently, she works at innovation and growth firm Three Five Two where she leads user research engagements for long and short-term clients, including strategy sessions, generative, research, and usability testing.

Her most recent work focuses on examining the home repair space for opportunities to improve the user experience.

🗓️ Shara’s talk:

Our Equitable Future Depends on Forming Inclusive UX Teams NOW!

As UX professionals, we are taught when you design for everyone, you design for no one. We learn to say, “that’s not our user.” What if our future is to design for everyone? As inclusive design, personalization, and technology mature, we approach a future where designing for everyone is possible.

We can’t get to this future with how we form teams today. Overcoming gaps with empathy is not enough because empathy is not a substitute for lack of representation. If technology continues to improve faster than diversity on teams, we remain vulnerable to creating exclusionary gaps for underserved communities. We need to form diverse teams with a focus on solidarity (unity in action) over empathy. Only when we have inclusive teams unified in action can we be on track to “design for everyone.”

Co-presenter: Ally Hwang