Dafe Soko

I am a skilled User Researcher with over 5 years’ experience in the public and private
sectors. My area of specialisation covers Operational, Change management, Performance
and Digital transformation, among others. I am a strong communicator and committed to
creating clear, easy to follow procedures and documentation that help businesses progress.
I am a confident, collaborative leader, capable of managing teams and getting the best out of
colleagues with diverse skill sets.

Skills and experience

• Demonstrable knowledge, experience in and passion for user centred design

practices for web, service, or software development.
• Proven experience of understanding user needs for web content, tools, and
transactional services, especially those with the most complex user journeys.
• Proven experience of designing, facilitating, and analysing a wide range of qualitative
and quantitative user research methods.
• Strong understanding of strengths and limitations of different research methods.
• Proven experience of presenting user research findings in a wide variety of formats
and contexts.
• Proven experience introducing and establishing user research practices in an
organisation.
• Proven experience of working in an agile development environment with designers
and developers and product managers to create new digital products and services

EMPLOYMENT HISTORY

User Researcher – HMRC (Atos) May 2022 -

Project: Customs Declaration Services

• Usability Test on prototype as Project at the Alpha and beginning of Private Beta
stage.
• Providing of detail User Research plan that is agreed and signed off by the Project
team
• Working with Service Managers to devise appropriate research strategies to
generate focused insights and to convert concepts into high quality stimulus material
• Working closely with designers and developers in an Agile environment to turn user
data into actionable product/service requirements that feed into prototype
development, and influence product direction.
• Understanding people/users, their motivations, their behaviours, and the challenges
they face
• Ensuring all research projects have defined goals and objectives and outputs can be
measured and easily understood by project teams.
• Daily Collaborating with other teams, identifying customer needs and delivering
insights that inform the development of compelling user-friendly interfaces and digital
products.
• Recruiting participants with accessibility needs and identifying usability and
accessibility issues
 • Leading the usability testing process from developing user recruitment briefs through
to test moderation, analysis and report writing.
• Fostering a culture of team involvement in user research, team analysis, design
rationale and decision making based on user needs
• Conducting surveys to understand user behaviours and measure performance
• Ensuring all research projects have defined goals and objectives and outputs can be
measured and easily understood by project teams and the User Research Team

User Researcher – DHSC (Olive Jar) Jan 2022 –April 2022

Project: Digital Skill Passport for Adult Social Care

• Project at the end of Discovery stage and into Concept and Usability Testing.
• Working with Service Managers to devise appropriate research strategies to
generate focused insights and to convert concepts into high quality stimulus material
• Working closely with designers and developers in an Agile environment to turn user
data into actionable product/service requirements that feed into prototype
development, and influence product direction.
• Ensuring all research projects have defined goals and objectives and outputs can be
measured and easily understood by project teams and the User Research Team
• Understanding users insight, their motivations, their behaviours, and the challenges
they face
• Producing of a detailed user research plan in line with UR road map
• Ensuring all research projects have defined goals and objectives and outputs can be
measured and easily understood by project teams.
• Collaborating with other teams, identifying customer needs and delivering insights
that inform the development of compelling user-friendly interfaces and digital
products.
• Recruiting participants with accessibility needs and identifying usability and
accessibility issues
• Leading the usability testing process from developing user recruitment briefs through
to test moderation, analysis and report writing.
• Fostering a culture of team involvement in user research, team analysis, design
rationale and decision making based on user needs
• Conducting workshops to understand user behaviours and measure performance
• Working with other User researchers to agree and explore the best User Research
approach and methodology

User Researcher – NHS Digital July 2020 – Jan 2022

Project: GP referrer system

 • Working with Service Managers to devise appropriate research strategies to
generate focused insights and to convert concepts into high quality stimulus material
• Working closely with designers and developers in an Agile environment to turn user
data into actionable product/service requirements that feed into prototype
development, and influence product direction.
• Understanding people/users, their motivations, their behaviours, and the challenges
they face
• Ensuring all research projects have defined goals and objectives and outputs can be
measured and easily understood by project teams.
• Collaborating with other teams, identifying customer needs and delivering insights
that inform the development of compelling user-friendly interfaces and digital
products.
• Recruiting participants with accessibility needs and identifying usability and
accessibility issues in line with GDS compliant
• Leading the usability testing process from developing user recruitment briefs through
to test moderation, analysis and report writing.
• Fostering a culture of team involvement in user research, team analysis, design
rationale and decision making based on user needs
• Conducting surveys to understand user behaviours and measure performance
• Supporting the Customer Labs engagement model in the commissioning, oversight,
and management of user research activities with agencies and partners
• Supporting the Senior User Research Manager to review and assess research
requests and advise teams about the best method of engaging with users
• Ensuring all research projects have defined goals and objectives and outputs can be
measured and easily understood by project teams and the User Research Team

User Researcher - Department of Work and Pension Jan 2019 – May 2020

Project: Improve and supports a service for jobseekers to verify their details with work
coaches before they can be referred for training.

• Planning, designing, preparing, and running user research activities to support the
design and development of digital government services (including contextual
discovery, experience mapping, diary studies, early-stage concept and prototype
testing, lab based and contextual usability and accessibility testing).
• Designing and running contextual and discovery research to develop a deep
understanding of the needs of all users of our service
• Managing the usability and accessibility testing process from recruiting participants in
line with GDS assessment, designing test tasks, and preparing discussion guides, to
test moderation, analysis and presenting results.
• Designing, executing, and analysing quantitative surveys.
• Leading colleagues to analyse research data and synthesis findings so that research
is shareable and traceable.
• Effectively communicating user research findings to the team in an Agile environment
and the wider organisation, so that they share a strong and empathetic
understanding of their users (including presentations at show and tells)
• Designing and maintaining research outputs as directed by the project manager.
• Working closely with designers and developers to turn user research findings into
stories and actions

User Researcher – DEFRA Mar 2017– November 2018

Project: Farmers Assessment Grant System

• Conducting in-house research to test new product and concept developments

(including user requirements gathering and early-stage concept and prototype
testing, research, and other approaches to ensuring the user need is fully understood
in the service design).
• Worked closely within a multidisciplinary team in an Agile environment, including web
developers and programmers
• Conducting user research and the research process, including drafting discussion
guides; recruiting respondents to include users with assessibility and digital needs to
comply with GDS standard
• Organising test venues and mobilising resources; carrying out guerrilla/pop-up
testing.
• Meeting clients to gather information about their requirements and to find out what
needs researching, designing or usability testing
• Analysing a wide range of qualitative and quantitative user research methods have
an awareness of costs and budgets
• Putting users at the centre of a design to make it simple, easy to use and good
looking
• Explaining what needs doing, to programmers, designer, and developers
• Ensured websites comply with the law and equal opportunities policies.
• Turning research findings into actionable user centred de-sign and product goals.
• Sharing insight artefacts that inspire and aid user centred design.
• Presenting findings and related design/business recommendations and customer
insights to senior decision makers.
• Planning, designing, and conducting in-house usability testing sessions to support
the design and development of digital services.
• develop the training manuals.

Business Analyst – Vodafone Oct 2016 – Jan 2017

Project– Delivered programmes that launched new eCommerce platforms and all
associated work packages (IT and business) for Vodafone Brands

• Managed end to end requirement analysis from inception through to delivery

• Focal point of contact for the business for the defined product/portfolio of products
• Continuously monitor customer needs, market trends, competitor activity and
regulatory changes to ensure the product remains a category leader
• Managed the end-to-end customer experience of the product
• Managed the capability roadmap, broken down into lifecycle phases tracked against
agreed KPIs from inception through to completion
• Owned product backlog and managed product feature prioritisation; ensuring
stakeholders understand the compromises and constraints
• Led the UX/UI team on product user journey design, ensuring a high quality cross
channel user experience
• Documented processes and training materials to assist customers in the use of the
product feature set
• Engaged with IT and business stakeholders to understand current processes and
business objectives with the aim to unearth business requirements
 • Analysed customer journey on different digital touch points to identify GAPs as well
opportunities for optimisation for improved user experience
• Facilitated a session with the project sponsor, key stakeholders and SMEs in order to
create and analyse “AS IS” and “TO BE” processes.
• Reviewed test strategy, test plans and test cases to provide feedback to the Quality
Assurance team and ensure requirement alignment with the test coverage
• Work with the UX/UI team to create a wireframe/prototypes which was used to test
user experience and validate requirements
• Created test cases to support the UAT testing team to validate system requirement
• Directed the on-boarding process improvement initiative which resulted in a 40%
decrease in overall time to on-board new employees

Business Analyst – (Tech Mahindra Consultancy) Vodafone Jan 2016 – Sept 2016
The Project -Development and Implementation of fault capturing software (Netcool). This
project was initiated to reduce the number of drop calls and increase customer satisfaction
by achieving AS IS and TO BE

• Gathered business requirements using surveys, interviews & workshops across the
organization to ascertain ‘AS IS & TO BE’.
• Used Netcool to analyse alarms relating to various Based Stations and established
bottlenecks within the process.
• Used Mycom to establish drop call rate and worked closely with FO/BO to bring drop
call rate to SLA level.
• Facilitated discussion and Conflict Resolution and empowered the team to Self-
Organize.
• Created and developed implementation procedures for the change. This was
used to

RAN Performance Analyst/Engineer – T-Mobile / Orange UK (Oct 2011 – Apr 2015)

• Network monitoring and availability using NetAct network management tools

• Providing 1st and 2nd line support and fault finding on 2G/3G network
• Fault escalation and liaising with third parties’ vendors ensuring that all assigned jobs
are resolved within SLA
• Technical support and commissioning of Nokia, Ericsson, Huawei RAN equipment
• Providing 2g/3g remote support to field engineers
• Technical support and commissioning of Nokia, Ericsson, Huawei RAN equipment
• Involved in the provisioning, optimisation, and planning of BTS/nodeb using Atoll for
data import and mapping
• Using Cramer and circuit manager for the End-to-end circuiting of newly integrated
ATM, Ethernet, LTE sites using the Cramer datalink / vLAN / IPsec wizard
• Performing troubleshooting and resolving Nokia node b, RBS 205/ 2000 faults
• Remotely supporting RBS 205/2000 Series by loading data on TX, TRX, CF and TF
cards
2G/3G NOC Engineer - Vodafone UK (June 2009 – September2011)

• Network monitoring and availability using NetAct network management tools

• Providing 1st and 2nd line support and fault finding on 2G/3G network
• Fault escalation and liaising with third parties’ vendors ensuring that all assigned jobs
are resolved within SLA
• Providing 2g/3g remote support to field engineers
• Technical support and commissioning of Nokia, Ericsson, Huawei RAN equipment
• Performing troubleshooting and resolving Nokia node b, RBS 205/ 2000 faults
• Remotely supporting RBS 205/2000 Series by loading data on TX, TRX, CF and TF
cards
• Remote network monitoring and optimisation task for 2G/3G e.g., voice and data

EDUCATION & QUALIFICATION

BSc Political Science

Key Skills

• Practical knowledge of a wide range of technologies, including G9 U9

LTE.5G.NR.Netact.OSS.ENM, SQL, Atoll. Proptima, Windows 7&10.
• Capable of analysing a wide range of business needs in highly complex industries
• Excellence in assessing organisations to understand problems and provide solutions
• Technologies and Operating Systems: WIN7 WIN10 Office Suite,SQL
• Strong resource management skills
• ITIL Foundation
• Strong understanding of software development.