🔍 Listening First: My UX Research Internship at RELAYTO
Role: UX Research Intern
Company: RELAYTO – Content Experience Platform
Location: Remote | Based in San Francisco, CA
Timeframe: November 2024 – January 2025
Special thanks to: Maria Fedo 🙏
💡 Where Research Meets Impact
During my time at RELAYTO, I had the chance to dive deep into UX research at a company reimagining how we consume content — transforming dull documents into interactive, digital-first experiences. My mission? To uncover the real needs, habits, and frustrations of our users, and turn those insights into better product decisions.
🧠 What I Did
• Conducted user interviews and usability tests to understand pain points across the platform
• Planned and facilitated research sessions with internal and external users
• Analyzed findings to identify patterns and recommend improvements
• Collaborated with product, design, and engineering teams to translate insights into strategies
• Supported the ongoing development of human-centered solutions for interactive content creation
🧭 Key Takeaways
✔️ Empathy-Driven Design: Real users, real voices — always the starting point
✔️ Cross-Team Collaboration: Worked closely with multiple departments to ensure insights didn’t just stay in Notion
✔️ Insight to Action: Turned interviews into roadmap decisions
✔️ Iterative Mindset: Every finding was a building block, not a conclusion
✨ Why It Mattered
This internship taught me that research isn’t just about asking questions — it’s about asking the right ones. It’s about listening without bias, observing without assumptions, and always putting the user’s journey at the core of the product strategy.
And I couldn’t have asked for a better mentor than Maria Fedo, whose guidance shaped not only my research skills but also how I think about impact in product teams.
🔁 Reflection
In just three months, I saw how user research becomes a strategic force — influencing product design, feature prioritization, and even how teams talk about their users. RELAYTO showed me how to connect data to empathy, and that’s a lesson I’ll carry into every project ahead.