Brian Keel

The best research doesn’t begin with a method—it begins by understanding what a team truly needs to learn. I’m a Senior/Staff-level UX researcher and research leader who helps organizations create clarity from ambiguity. I partner with Product, Design, Engineering, and leadership to uncover the questions behind the questions, challenge assumptions with evidence, and translate customer needs and behaviors into practical product direction. My experience spans AI-enabled products, enterprise SaaS, financial services, HR technology, recruiting, payroll, tax, education, and consumer products. I lead research from early discovery through concept development, usability testing, launch, and ongoing measurement. At Principal Financial Group, I led research for a new financial-planning experience, including five mobile studies with 100 participants that identified five critical issues before launch and seven improvements for the next release. At Sense, I established the company’s first UX research practice and led discovery that informed the decision to build a proprietary AI recruiting CRM. At Microsoft, I researched how people understand, trust, and transition between Copilot and Pages. I can help teams with research strategy, generative and evaluative research, customer interviews, moderated and unmoderated usability testing, surveys, benchmarking, journey mapping, research synthesis, feedback programs, and Research Operations. I also create AI-assisted research workflows with human review and source validation; one reporting workflow reduced synthesis and reporting time by approximately one day per study. Whether you need an experienced researcher to own a project, clarify an uncertain product decision, or strengthen your research practice, I bring a collaborative approach focused on shared understanding and actionable evidence.