Shannon L. Coleman

Independent consulting practice focused on mixed methods UX research and product strategy for early-stage HealthTech and FinTech platforms in regulated markets, working directly with founders and executive teams.

• 16,000+ Users, First Six-Figure Agreement: Grew an AI-powered health platform from a handful of users by surfacing the "Not for Me" Paradox and a trust gap at onboarding; the resulting Trust-Transfer Model reoriented channel strategy toward self-funded employers, unions, and advocacy organizations
• 35–50% Faster Compliance Approval: Reduced compliance approval cycles from 6–8 weeks to 3–5 weeks by integrating UX and regulatory communication as a single workstream from the start, eliminating late-stage engineering rework across design, legal, and engineering
• $50,000–$65,000 in Engineering Costs Prevented: Caught a churn-driving UX pattern in a 6-user prototype test before development began, improving task completion confidence by 35% and redirecting approximately 4 weeks of cross-functional team capacity
• 22% Projected Retention Lift, ~50% Fewer Support Tickets: Diagnosed 17 transaction-state friction points concentrated in a single trust failure mode and delivered a unified UX and compliance roadmap

Principal researcher and strategist for two large-scale DoD programs serving a combined 900,000+ users and personnel.

• ~1,400 Enterprise Users, Multi-Method Research Program: Established the evidentiary foundation for all subsequent AI platform and roadmap recommendations, spanning survey, interview, card sort, tree test, and two rounds of usability testing
• Six Failure Modes Reframed as One Structural Challenge: Directly informed a DoD-level development pause for infrastructure improvements on a platform that had scaled faster than its architecture, its UX, and its organizational support model
• AI Trust-Gap Evaluation: Surfaced a critical trust gap in Advana's AI capabilities by evaluating whether users acted on AI-generated recommendations or routinely overrode them, reshaping CDAO's approach to the platform's AI functionality
• 36% of Users Affected by a Content-Findability Crisis: Diagnosed the issue as an information architecture failure rather than a user education problem, delivering the sitemap, navigation redesign, and content model to resolve it
• $15B Multi-Vendor Recompete, Two Product Roadmaps: Contributed by delivering findings and strategic recommendations directly to the Chief Experience Architect and Chief Product Officer

• 84% Faster Startup, 59% Faster Data Transfer, 92% Less Security Workload: Drove these gains by developing a persona and workflow research framework across nine deployment sites, establishing the segmentation foundation that enabled XLA standard definition
• 800,000+ Personnel, XLA Standards in $5.7B Contracts: Institutionalized UX performance expectations by defining and operationalizing Experience Level Agreement (XLA) standards embedded into vendor contracts
• 74/100 Satisfaction vs. 44 Baseline: Validated the program model before the Air Force committed to scaling by measuring IT satisfaction against comparable pre-transition bases, with speed satisfaction at 73 versus mid-40s elsewhere
• U.S. Air Force Commander's Challenge Coin: Awarded for shifting IT modernization to a user-centric service model, setting foundational standards for DAF digital transformation

• $0 External Recruitment Spend, ~1,000-Participant Panel: Cut study recruitment timelines by at least 2 weeks per study by building and scaling a research panel from zero under HIPAA-adjacent and FDIC-regulated constraints
• F100 Pharma Trial Recruitment Gains (Pfizer, Eli Lilly, Merck, J&J, AbbVie): Increased signups by conducting qualitative interviews, large-scale surveys, social listening, and patient experience research that directly informed site selection adjustments and messaging changes
• Multi-Million-Dollar Phase II/III Campaigns: Improved recruitment conversion by applying quantitative analysis to real-time performance insights, driving site selection adjustments, messaging changes, and budget reallocation
• 2–4 Days Faster per Study: Reduced overall project timelines and eliminated redundant overhead by managing research operations for a 7–10 person team and standardizing recruitment workflows across concurrent client programs

• Multi-Year Longitudinal Study, Dropout Risk Modeling: Led mixed methods research integrating qualitative and advanced quantitative modeling, applying survival analysis and logistic regression to high-dimensional behavioral datasets
• 60%+ Interrater Reliability Gain, 25-Person Team: Managed a research operations team, reducing costly re-coding cycles, producing consistently defensible findings, and strengthening the evidentiary basis for policy recommendations presented at the White House

• 4-Product Category Launch, 100+ Concepts Evaluated (Fisher-Price): Informed the launch by leading usability and developmental research in partnership with Product, Engineering, and Design
• 35,000+ Survey Responses, 30+ Pharma Brands (Segmedica, Inc.): Designed and analyzed a national survey, packaged into a proprietary strategic research product