UX RESEARCHER | WRITER | DESIGNER
KARL A. NEUMANN
Karl works with qualitative and quantitative methods to de-risk assumptions, power data-driven decisions, and advocate for people interacting with technology.
Karl has experience in AI, content design, conversational design, digital health, in-depth interviewing, patient engagement, survey design, user interface design, & user experience [UX].
Research
“Truth is what your contemporaries let you get away with.”
– Richard Rorty
Statistical analyses of >700 patients investigated patient engagement, satisfaction, & accuracy related to patients’ race & SES. Answered: "how might Memora Health quantify AI bias?"
Quantitative | Evaluative | Health Equity
Semi-structured interviews explored clinicians' & care teams' workflows, expectations, & needs. This telehealth system connected rural ER patients & remote psychiatrists.
Qualitative | Generative | Lean UX
This product strategy & 8-week research timeline was made to design and refine a mobile app for CD patients to monitor key gut biomarkers. Methods include interviews, focus groups, & unmoderated tree testing.
Mixed Methods | Service Design
Writing
"There is no great writing, only great rewriting."
– Justice Louis Brandeis
"...[P]rocess[es] to proactively train healthcare AI chatbots to be more accurate and safer for patients, accelerating the ability to implement AI in healthcare settings."
Natural Language (NLP) | Publication
"A common adage of innovation is that 'the future is already here — it’s just not very evenly distributed.' Nowhere is that more true than at the intersection of healthcare & tech."
Technical Writing | Public Health Tech
V1 conversational design included:
- Standardized voice, tone, & format
- Writing at a 7th-grade reading level
- Consistent calls-to-action to patients
Content Design | Conversational AI
And now, a poem
Behind the Scenes:
Every artificial object secretly saturated with intent, its subjects in mind, by design
Each item that comprises life involved countless meetings to (re)invent, iteratively built, by design
Everything engineered to fix problems we are now likely to prevent, taken for granted, by design.
June 9th, 2018
by Karl
About
"We can only see a short distance ahead, but we can see plenty there that needs to be done.”
– Alan Turing
Since 2018, Karl has been mostly operating remotely and asynchronously. He works via calendars, notes, and to-do lists but also cherishes time spent collaborating and in person. See Karl's employee style guide for more details.
Outside of work, most of Karl's time revolves around music: listening, jamming, producing, & playing instruments. Otherwise, you might find him tending to his plants, taking photos, discussing philosophy, or running along Lake Michigan.
Karl is a researcher, writer, & designer with a background in psychology, neuroscience, and philosophy. He has industry experience in early-, mid-, and late-stage startups, academia, & is now consulting at ZS.
Karl's research began with a focus on the psychology & neuroscience of music at McGill University. However, after realizing how impactful the same methods could be when applied to medical problems, he refocused on pain, chronic pain, & the placebo effect at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). This led to his first industry role researching chronic pain & substance use disorder at Vitality Biopharma (now Graphium Biosciences).
His focus then pivoted to user experience [UX] at Memora Health — a digital health company in Silicon Valley. Karl joined as their 8th employee in 2019 and 10x-ed with them in terms of employees, users, & revenue.
Like stem cells for these developing firms, Karl adapted as these companies grew and took on functions beyond research to meet the business' & users' needs. His responsibilities included content, design, project management, implementations, & technical writing.