Portfolio

Shannon L.
Coleman

PhD  •  Secret Clearance

Experience Research and Strategy Leader working at the intersection of rigorous measurement and AI product practice.

Throughout my career I have been figuring out how to measure things that resist easy measurement, building systems honest about what they do not know, and knowing when a regression model answers the question and when you need to sit with a person for an hour and just listen. The best product decisions are built on both.

Case studies in research,
strategy, and product direction

$15B
Contract value
informed
100K+
Enterprise AI
analytics users
950+
Research panel
participants
800K+
Air Force
personnel served
Department of the Air Force  •  2022–2023  •  Enterprise IT Transformation
When the Measure of Success
Is Whether Airmen Can Do Their Jobs

Persona development, XLA framework design, and pre/post satisfaction research for the Air Force's enterprise IT transformation program. Research findings shaped contract requirements and provisioning strategy across nine pilot installations.

Persona Development XLA Framework Survey Research GovTech Strategic Advisory
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DoD CDAO  •  2023–2024  •  Enterprise Analytics Platform
When a Platform Becomes
a Victim of Its Own Success

Enterprise-scale user research, persona validation, and product roadmap development for Advana, the Department of Defense's AI and analytics platform serving 100,000 users. Research informed a $15 billion recompete and a program-level development pause.

Mixed Methods Product Roadmap Persona Validation Information Architecture GovTech
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Early-Stage Startup  •  2025–2026  •  AI Health Platform
The Product Was Not Broken.
The Entry Point Was.

Usability research and strategic framework development for an AI-powered personal health platform struggling to convert awareness into active users. Research surfaced a trust gap at onboarding and produced the Trust-Transfer Model that reoriented the founders' go-to-market strategy.

Usability Research Strategic Framework HealthTech Go-to-Market Early Stage
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Crowley Webb / Praxis  •  2020–2022  •  Research Operations
Building Research Infrastructure
Regulated Industries Will Actually Trust

Solo build of a 950+ participant proprietary research panel under HIPAA-adjacent and FDIC-regulated constraints, serving F500 pharma clients including Pfizer, Eli Lilly, Merck, J&J, and AbbVie, and M&T Bank. Includes compliance stack design, referral attribution logic, and the decision to refuse a shortcut that would have compromised the whole thing.

Research Operations Panel Development Compliance Architecture HealthTech FinTech
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Tokenized Asset Platform (NDA)  •  2022  •  Consumer FinTech
The Interface Was Clear.
The Users Were Still Afraid.

UX audit and friction mapping for a consumer-facing tokenized asset platform navigating the intersection of TradFi compliance and DeFi mechanics. Research identified 17 distinct friction points concentrated in transaction state legibility, and produced an executive roadmap that reframed a UX problem and a regulatory communication failure as a single unified challenge.

UX Audit Friction Mapping FinTech Web3 Strategic Advisory
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Experience Research and Strategy Leader
Full Resume & Core Expertise

Experience research and strategy across AI platforms, HealthTech, GovTech, and regulated enterprise systems. Includes complete work history, education, and core expertise.

Experience Research Strategy GovTech HealthTech Secret Clearance
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The research background,
the strategy orientation

My path has not been linear. I started in marketing intelligence and child development research, spent years at the PhD level in quantitative methods and psychology, and moved through applied research and strategy roles. Most of that work had a common thread: figuring out how to measure things that resist easy measurement, and building systems honest about what they do not know.

I work primarily with AI-focused product teams, with particular depth in healthtech, govtech, and fintech. The questions I keep returning to are about decision quality: not whether an AI system produces impressive output, but whether it actually improves the decisions users are trying to make, for which users, under what conditions, and how you would know if it stopped.

I am skeptical of demos. I am interested in what happens six months after launch. I think trust is a measurement problem and that most AI products are solving the wrong version of it.

I hold a current Secret clearance and have led research and strategy engagements throughout my career for Fortune 500 pharmaceutical companies, the Department of Defense, and early-stage startups. Earlier in my career I built a consumer and clinical trial recruitment research panel from zero to over 950 participants, an infrastructure project that shaped how I think about research operations and the conditions that make good research possible at scale. The scale of the work changes. The discipline does not.

Generative Research
In-depth interviews and qualitative synthesis
Ethnographic and observational research
Contextual inquiry
Evaluative Research
Usability and concept testing
Information architecture
Persona and segmentation
Quantitative & Behavioral Analysis
Large-scale survey design and analysis
Advanced statistical modeling
Web and behavioral analytics
XLA and CX measurement
Decision analysis
Mixed Methods Research
Longitudinal studies
Integrated qualitative/quantitative synthesis for AI and complex systems
Research Leadership
Research operations and participant panel management
Research synthesis and stakeholder workshops
Strategic risk mitigation and data governance
Governance & Compliance
Data privacy frameworks (ISO 27001, GDPR)
Ethical recruitment in HIPAA-adjacent and regulated environments
Colleague Recommendation
"Shannon is a doctoral-level researcher who profoundly understands the dynamic processes of conducting qualitative and quantitative studies. We collaborated on several significant UX and CX projects where her expertise was critical in a wide range of efforts, from survey planning to data processing and thematic analysis. Dr. Coleman's diverse background sets her apart from other researchers, making her a valuable team member and leader in the experience strategy space. Working with her extensively, I can account for her acute sense of research direction and problem-solving skills toward successful outcomes. Shannon is also an outstanding company contributor, bringing character, expertise, and insights to any occasion, fostering camaraderie and well-being."
Damon Sanchez Associate Director of Experience Strategy  •  Isobar Public Sector

Ground Truth on Substack:
rigorous AI product practice

I write about evaluation frameworks, failure mode analysis, governance design, and the organizational conditions that determine whether good product thinking actually ships. The focus is on what happens after the demo.

Ground Truth  •  Series Introduction
Introducing Ground Truth: A Publication on Rigorous AI Product Practice
Ground Truth  •  Substack
View all writing at Ground Truth
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