The Real AI Divide Isn’t Intelligence. It’s Bandwidth
Explores how cognitive and emotional margin—not capability—determines who is able to engage with AI systems.
Read essay →
UX Research · Systems Strategy · Cognitive Accessibility
UX research for
cognitively
demanding systems.
I study how people navigate complex systems when attention, bandwidth, and clarity are limited.
My UX research practice builds on 20+ years of client-centered inquiry, structured interviewing, behavioral observation, and pattern recognition across wellness, education, coaching, spatial design, and digital systems.
My work focuses on the translation layer between human cognition and system requirements: how people turn intentions, needs, and decisions into actions within cognitively demanding environments.
Research Perspective
The hidden layer: translation work
Many systems are not difficult because of the task alone. They are difficult because of the translation required to complete it.
Work often depends on turning human intent into structured formats: documents, workflows, forms, tickets, summaries, prompts, and communication that align with system expectations. This translation layer is rarely named, yet it is where a significant amount of cognitive friction occurs.
I’m interested in how research can identify that hidden labor, and how better systems can reduce ambiguity, improve trust, and make participation more possible.
Framework
Cognitive Translation in Digital Systems
Human Intent
Ideas, goals, messy cognition, lived context
Translation Layer
Converting thought into structured inputs
Institutional Systems
Workflows, databases, enterprise tools, AI
This model identifies where cognitive effort emerges when human needs must be translated into system-compatible formats.
Featured Project
Scaffold
Executive function support for cognitive overload
A research-driven support system designed to help adults experiencing task paralysis, overwhelm, or executive dysfunction move from stuckness into the next small actionable step—without shame, surveillance, or coercive automation.
View Case Study →
Writing & Research Perspective
Essays on cognition, AI, and system friction
My writing explores the hidden labor of making human thought legible to systems: the translation burden behind modern work, the uneven distribution of cognitive bandwidth, and the question of whether emerging tools reduce friction or simply raise expectations.
The Invisible Tax: Cognitive Labor in Systems
Examines the hidden work required to translate human thinking into system-compatible formats—and how that shapes who is recognized and rewarded.
Read essay →The Opportunity Gap: Who Actually Benefits from AI
Looks at how AI amplifies advantage over time—and why access to opportunity, not just tools, determines who benefits.
Read essay →About
I research the gap between how systems are designed and how people actually experience them.
I’m a UX researcher focused on cognitive friction, accessibility, and complex human-system interactions. I’m especially interested in the moments where people appear stuck—not because they lack intelligence, motivation, or ability, but because the system is asking for more translation, sequencing, regulation, or institutional fluency than they have capacity for in that moment.
Before transitioning into UX, I spent decades in client-centered work spanning wellness practice, education, coaching, interior design, and digital design. Across those roles, my work consistently involved structured interviewing, behavioral observation, trust-building, and identifying patterns in how people communicate needs, navigate ambiguity, and respond to environmental or cognitive strain.
That experience now informs how I approach research: grounded in observation, attentive to nuance, and focused on how systems are actually experienced rather than how they are theoretically intended to function.
I’m particularly interested in AI-supported workflows, onboarding systems, internal tools, accessibility, education, and service environments where clarity, trust, and cognitive load directly affect adoption, engagement, and outcomes.