Aaron Shannon

There was a man who came into my store two or three times a week for months. He'd filled his entire browser with bookmarks — thousands of them — because he thought if he didn't save the search results, he'd never find them again.

Most people would have just shown him how bookmarks work. I wanted to understand how he saw the internet first.

When he told me he didn't understand how links and folders worked, I told him: "Imagine the content you're looking at is the living room of a house. When you look through the window, are you in the house? No — but you can still see it. And there are other windows too."

He got it immediately. And from that day on, he only wanted to learn from me.

That's when I understood what UX Research actually is. Not fixing interfaces. Understanding how people see the world — and designing for that.

I spent over a decade doing exactly that. At Best Buy, as a Microsoft Expert, as a Geek Squad agent, as a team lead — and now through Precision Designs and Nerds To Go, applying those same instincts to research and design. Every single day, face to face with real people navigating technology that wasn't built with them in mind.

I have hundreds of stories like that.

Because that's how I interact with people. I'm a listener.

That's what I bring to every research session, every usability test, every design decision. Not just methods and frameworks — a genuine need to understand the person in front of me.

I hold an HCI-grounded B.A.S. in Digital Technology & Culture from WSU Vancouver, graduated cum laude in 2024, and hold Google UX Design and Microsoft UX Design professional certificates. My long-term goal is a Doctorate in HCI Psychology.

I'm currently leading client redesigns through Precision Designs while seeking an in-house role where I can bring that same research-driven thinking to a larger scale. If you're building something that should work for everyone — not just the easy-to-design-for — I'd love to talk.