As part of Microsoft's Unlimited Potential Group, Masuma Henry helps bring technology
to underserved, emerging markets.
What's your current title?
Masuma Henry, User Experience Researcher, Unlimited Potential Group at Microsoft
If you had to write an ad to fill your job, what would it say?
Ever have the desire to travel to China, Brazil, India and South Africa, all in a single year? Are you the most curious person you've ever met? Do you believe that everyone in the world deserves equal access to technology? Do you want to understand people from all over the globe, helping to invent unique products for them that will improve their daily lives?
Microsoft Unlimited Potential is looking for experienced researchers like you as we work to help bridge the digital divide and bring the benefits of technology to underserved communities around the world.
With your well-honed research skills to understand the technology needs and behaviors of people in emerging economies like India and China, you will collaborate with a world-class team of designers, engineers, and business experts to design new technology that can improve the lives of people worldwide. Help us make a difference!
What are at least five duties you have as part of your job?
It's hard to limit it to just five, but here are some typical duties along the path from research to idea:
1. First, I need to determine what research our team needs to make decisions and create a relevant product. This involves going through mountains of past research to figure out what we know and what we don’t know.
2. Then I get together with the team to figure out, among these unanswered questions we have, which ones are the most critical to answer. Often, the team has very specific questions, and it's my job to understand the implications of this question and broaden it so that it has impact over many products, rather than just one.
3. I then plan the research and all the corresponding details and questions (there are a lot of them): Who are we going to research? Where? What is the best method? How long are we going to be there? What do we want to get out of it at the very end?
4. Next comes doing the actual research in the field. This involves the obvious, like observing and asking people questions, but also some less obvious things, like picking up lunch so we have time to eat in the car while we are stuck in traffic, and buying thank you gifts for the participants who have so generously shared their lives with us.
5. Finally, I spend weeks analyzing the data and presenting the findings to our broader Unlimited Potential group. I work with designers and other team members to brainstorm new ideas and designs sometimes we are literally drawing pictures of new technology people could use!
What's the coolest thing about your job?
First, the travel I get to do -- heading to amazing places like South Africa and Brazil is SO cool! If you travel as a tourist, you try to immerse yourself in the culture, but you can only get so far when you don't speak a common language or get a sense of how people live day to day. However, when I travel for my job, I always have a translator with me and I get to go into peoples' homes and businesses, so I get a better sense of how they live and of the culture as a whole. Being a researcher gives me a pass to ask a lot more questions than are normally appropriate in a regular conversation, so I learn an immense amount while I'm there.
For example, I spent two weeks with a group of teachers in India, trying to understand what they do at their jobs, how they use technology in their classrooms, and what their unique challenges were. My "aha" moment was when I discovered that the teachers have very similar challenges as those in developed markets. Their role is to teach, but sometimes they have technology that hinders rather than helps them with that. They spend a lot of time looking after their computers like removing viruses and old documents. Also, many of those teachers don't have the experience to manage these computers, so the computers would become slow and unusable after a period of time.
While similar in many areas, there are some unique differences that we discovered. For example, there are frequent power outages and many times up to 10 students may be using one computer at the same time. So, we focused on alleviating the pain teachers have with taking care of their PCs and tried to make it easier for them. The solution we worked on to directly assist with some of these challenges is called SteadyState, a technology that makes it easier to help inexperienced computer administrators automatically clean up their computers and keep it virus free. And during times of power outages, it also helps teachers get back to the state that the computer was in before the outage.
I often get to work with the Microsoft Research team out of India -- sharing ideas, and providing insight on the solutions Microsoft has developed and that are being used in countries like Indonesia. Multipoint is a great example of this: It is an education solution which allows three to 30 students to simultaneously use and learn from educational software on one computer.
And, I am inspired that that all of my research findings have a good chance of turning into a product that can make a real difference in someone's life. When I see the result of my work translate into a tangible product for people to use, for me, there is nothing more satisfying. It is knowing that I can have some positive influence on someone else in the world that keeps me going.
What's the coolest thing you've done so far in your current job?
Well, one of the experiences that stood out for me recently was an interaction with a woman named Carol who I met in South Africa. Carol is a mother of four and takes care of 12 people in her household, which she built herself out of aluminum sheets. Carol believes strongly that it is really important to give back to her community and help to improve it. Although she knows her life would be easier with a higher paying job, she works as a community rape counselor in the community because of her commitment to seeing this problem get better. One of Carol's biggest frustrations is that on her only day off, she has to stand in line for hours just in order to do weekly errands like grocery shopping and banking. Just standing in line itself posed a threat, as she was basically a sitting duck for thieves.
What's cool about this to me is that I get the privilege to become Carol's voice and share her story with the engineers back at home to help them understand what people like Carol go through on a day-to-day basis. We then get to brainstorm all of the different ways that we could help her out with even the small headaches in her life by using technology in new ways.
Does your career ever get dull or routine? How do you rekindle your love for it?
Sometimes it can, particularly when I am in between research projects and spending most of my time going to meetings all day. But then I think about people like Carol, or the teachers in India, and I remember that it is my responsibility to be their voice and communicate what their lives are like, so that we can build things that are relevant and have an impact in their lives. As soon as we start brainstorming or sketching ideas to do this, my excitement level is back up!
Did you ever expect to have the career you have?
I didn't expect it, but I always dreamed about a job like this. I feel extremely fortunate to do a job that I love! For me, it is the perfect combination of research, which I love to do (maybe because I am inherently curious about peoples' lives), an international focus and an opportunity to do good.
What was your career path?
I started off not really knowing specifically what I wanted to do, but knowing I was interested in human behavior and thinking. So, I got a degree in just that; Psychology. In my last year of school, I stumbled upon a course called "Human Factors Psychology," which entailed scientific research applied to product design with the goal of making things easier and more pleasurable for people to use. This course was an "a-ha" moment for my career. So, shortly after getting a Master's Degree, I came to Microsoft as a User Experience Researcher.
Getting the right education opened the door, but being open to trying new things without knowing where they might take you was also very important.
Do you have advice for how people can find their own cool job and live out their passions?
Think about the things you are naturally drawn to in life, and try to find a job that includes these. If you are not sure whether that job exists, talk to as many people as you can about what's out there. People are usually willing to talk and help, so don't be afraid to ask someone for 30 minutes of their time to describe their job and how they got there.
Spend time with people who are passionate about their jobs and pick their brains about how they went about it. All that positivity and passion is only a good thing! You'll be surprised about how many people can be open to being 'job shadowed' for a few hours, too.
Ultimately, when making a decision, you have to remember that what will get you up every morning after decades of working is not the paycheck, but the question: Do you find your job interesting?
