Mark Feldman, CEO, RevenueBase
“Karen Donoghue and Craig Newell are very skilled in understanding founders’ needs, helping them understand how to prioritize and focus on designing new product concepts that clearly and succinctly tell the story of a new product while being mindful of the constraints of developing software technology.”
“As the CEO of an early-stage venture in Boston, I hired Karen Donoghue and Craig Newell from HumanLogic to assist in an investor presentation and help our founding team envision our product as a concept to be shared with various stakeholders.
Karen Donoghue and Craig Newell provided invaluable feedback and concrete recommendations on our product planning, using their deep expertise and skill in interaction design and data architecture to help set a vision for the product we will build. In addition to tackling the technical and data-intensive aspects of our product, they focused on ensuring the user experience concept is simple and promotes self-service, one of our business goals as a SaaS offering.
Karen and Craig are very skilled in understanding founders’ needs, helping them understand how to prioritize and focus on designing new product concepts that clearly and succinctly tell the story of a new product while being mindful of the constraints of developing software technology.
I highly recommend Karen and Craig to early-stage founders for product planning and designing new technology product concepts.”
Max Kirsch, Product Manager, Google Chrome OS (2020)
“Karen Donoghue and her partner Craig Newell combined their skills and experience in platform UX and software architecture to perform product discovery for Google Chrome OS in a new market area. Their domain understanding of software platforms enabled them to rapidly discover the unmet needs of our target users using research techniques and expert analysis.”
“I hired HumanLogic as a contractor from May to August of 2020, and this is the second time I have engaged them for a project.
Karen Donoghue and her partner Craig Newell combined their skills and experience in platform UX and software architecture to perform product discovery for Google Chrome OS in a new market area. Their domain understanding of software platforms enabled them to rapidly discover the unmet needs of our target users using research techniques and expert analysis.
Karen and Craig brainstormed concepts, then developed and tested them with target users. The research they performed to envision new product concepts is being used to guide feature development for Chrome OS.
Karen and Craig worked independently and are incredibly responsive to our needs. They worked well and collaboratively with all members of the Product Management team that participated in product planning.”
Max Kirsch, Product Manager, Google Chrome OS
“I hired Karen as an independent contractor to research and design a brand new reporting, monitoring, and alerting experience for Chrome enterprise/education customers. Karen is phenomenal to work with across the board, but what stood out most to me was:
1) Her initiative in bringing structure to the problem space and solving it. I gave Karen the basic “why” for our project (customer feedback on reporting) but she brought the methodology for deeply understanding the space and the raw skills in research, design, and interaction architecture to guide the project to completion.”
“I hired Karen as an independent contractor to research and design a brand new reporting, monitoring, and alerting experience for Chrome enterprise/education customers. Karen is phenomenal to work with across the board, but what stood out most to me was:
1) Her initiative in bringing structure to the problem space and solving it. I gave Karen the basic “why” for our project (customer feedback on reporting) but she brought the methodology for deeply understanding the space and the raw skills in research, design, and interaction architecture to guide the project to completion. From segmenting customers to building personas to validating/disproving our theories and her designs with research, Karen gave life to the project and created a compelling vision for the product we should build. She did all of this independently while working remotely.
2) The sheer quantity of the artifacts she produces. Karen not only solved the problem she set out to solve, she also connected the dots to multiple other areas of our product to make sure the overall customer experience was cohesive. For example, although we had initially envisioned the output as a product design, Karen also learned early from the customer research that API access was equally important, so Karen designed an innovative feature to help novice users learn the API (and it ended up testing just as well with advanced users). Karen is a product & UX machine who will leave no idea undeveloped and no concept untested. I was just as pleased with the negative findings (e.g. customers actually don’t care about X) as with the many positive findings, because the data from the research gives us confidence that we’re focused on the right features.
3) Her eagerness to spread her expertise to the rest of the organization. By the end of Karen’s contract, she had not only completed her part of the project, she had set up the organization around her to build the product successfully. Through a couple of important training and mentorship opportunities on the team, she spread both a culture and a methodology of making strongly-reasoned well-vetted product & UX decisions. This will continue to pay dividends for the team far into the future.
Overall I *enthusiastically* recommend Karen and hope to work more with her in the future!”
Jason Cassey, PhD, CTO, Beyond Identity
“At Beyond Identity we are focused on improving security while improving the end customer user experience. In order to do this, we engaged with HumanLogic early in our development process to ensure a highly usable, coherent user experience.”
“Usability is often an afterthought in most security products. At Beyond Identity we are focused on improving security while improving the end customer user experience. In order to do this, we engaged with HumanLogic early in our development process to ensure a highly usable, coherent user experience.
The HumanLogic team are domain experts, responsive and fun to work with. I would highly recommend HumanLogic for any early-stage venture that truly cares about user experience.”
Nick Matviko, Director of Engineering, Beyond Identity
“Karen Donoghue and Craig Newell really helped us get a jumpstart before deploying to our first customer.”
“Karen Donoghue and Craig Newell really helped us get a jumpstart before deploying to our first customer, as they found areas to improve the user experience that we did not even think about. Creating very detailed and thorough tickets, they allowed us to move fast and provide quicker value-add to the customer.“
Max Snow, CEO, Yobi
“During our remote engagement, Karen Donoghue worked closely with me to understand the needs of our target users. Karen’s efforts helped validate our product design towards market delivery. I enjoyed working with Karen and would recommend her as an expert design practitioner for software companies with complex offerings.”
“During our remote engagement, Karen Donoghue worked closely with me to understand the needs of our target users. Karen iterated on concept designs that reflected our product offerings, abstracting the underlying complexity of our data-intensive platform while delivering an engaging and simple user experience to empower our end-users to be productive and confident.
Karen’s efforts helped validate our product design towards market delivery. I enjoyed working with Karen and would recommend her as an expert design practitioner for software companies with complex offerings.”
Sam Kassoumeh, Co-Founder & COO, SecurityScorecard
“Karen’s keen understanding of the needs and motivations of our user populations have helped evolve the user experience in our platform. Karen’s early efforts were formative in leading user research to surface new requirements, planning, and guiding interaction model design for work in VRM (Vendor Resource Management) and for our Atlas product.”
“As Co-founder of SecurityScorecard, heading the product team, I have engaged Karen Donoghue to work on multiple projects since early 2017 to help continue to mature our cybersecurity ratings platform.
Karen’s keen understanding of the needs and motivations of our user populations have helped evolve the user experience in our platform. Karen’s early efforts were formative in leading user research to surface new requirements, planning, and guiding interaction model design for work in VRM (Vendor Resource Management) and for our Atlas product.
In addition to her work with our product management and UX teams on new platform capabilities, Karen has also served as a trusted Advisor to SecurityScorecard since the summer of 2017. I highly recommend Karen for early-stage companies requiring deep expertise in user experience.”
Michael Laskoff, Co-founder and former CEO of Annum Health, Founder & former CEO of AbleTo
“Karen speedily and accurately converts ideas and narrative – written and spoken – into visual architectures that enable efficient product development and engineering. She is incisive, collaborative, kind and the sort of consummate professional who makes everyone around her better.”
“Karen speedily and accurately converts ideas and narrative – written and spoken – into visual architectures that enable efficient product development and engineering. Her precise and pragmatic approach uncovers logical inconsistencies and inefficiencies while suggesting superior alternatives. She is incisive, collaborative, kind and the sort of consummate professional who makes everyone around her better.
Having worked with her on an early-stage venture, I very much look forward to the opportunity to work with Karen in the future.”
John Fleming, Founder & CEO, Kaavio
“In days, Karen learned our unique business needs and developed a series of flows and conceptual wireframes for our product, which helped us validate our early hypotheses and develop better presentations to early customers and investors.”
“As founder and CEO of an early stage startup, I hired Karen Donoghue as an independent consultant to assist us in validating the requirements for our MVP prototype that incorporated a financial recommendation engine with tools for quantitative financial analysis. Working remotely, Karen rapidly helped us craft user stories and work flows for our MVP release, and helped us translate our requirements into a design for an easily-consumable, customizable product experience. In days, Karen learned our unique business needs and developed a series of flows and conceptual wireframes for our product, which helped us validate our early hypotheses and develop better presentations to early customers and investors.
Karen also advised us in preparing for user research interviews, coaching us in best practices for uncovering user needs through focused user research. Karen is an expert practitioner with very strong skills in working with founders on product design. I highly recommend her services.”
Eve Phillips, former CEO and Co-Founder, Empower Interactive
“As a co-founder and CEO of a telehealth startup, Karen joined me at the outset to help design the MVP product and launch my company, where she later served as a trusted advisor.
“As a co-founder and CEO of a telehealth startup, Karen joined me at the outset to help design the MVP product and launch my company, where she later served as a trusted advisor. Since then, I have worked with Karen on multiple platform development projects including a second project that I led for a telehealth platform. Karen excelled in defining product user experience requirements and designing solutions for situations without clear requirements.
Karen works closely with product stakeholders on balancing business needs with end-user needs and motivations, mitigating risks through her careful user research.
Her skills combine seasoned product design expertise with a very technical background: she clearly understands how software is designed, built, and shipped and can translate between business needs and the technical requirements needed by engineering. Karen works with stakeholders and teams, providing clearly articulated requirements and design artifacts.
I recommend Karen’s services to product leaders requiring deep expertise in user experience and who require trusted expertise in designing and launching new product platforms.”
Elisabeth Embry, Co-Founder, LogiQware
“Karen works very collaboratively, rapidly delivering PM and UX assets to assist a product team in clarifying and validating requirements for a new product offering, helping to establish features and get to a prototype.”
“As a co-founder of a financial planning SaaS platform for high net worth investors, I hired Karen Donoghue as an independent consultant to help the founding executive team plan the MVP release of the product offering. I was familiar with Karen’s work as a UX/PM consultant while I was in an executive role at T-Mobile in Seattle.
Karen works very collaboratively, rapidly delivering PM and UX assets to assist a product team in clarifying and validating requirements for a new product offering, helping to establish features and get to a prototype. As a consultant to our founding exec team, Karen worked collaboratively with our team to help establish requirements, validate and prioritize them and in turn define features and architectural attributes in the product user experience for a MVP release. Karen helped coach the team to use agile product planning methods as part of the product planning process. She expressed major UX concepts and flows that reflected our requirements and enabled all stakeholders to understand the end user experience. Karen rapidly delivered critical shareable artifacts such as flows and wireframes. She reviewed each iteration with the team to help establish feature prioritization and help the team get to a MVP definition.
Karen is a pleasure to work with and I highly recommend her services to software product teams. All of Karen’s work for our executive team was performed remotely and I appreciate her professional demeanor and the quality of her deliverables.”
Robert Orlando, Co-Founder, Liberty Leadership and former Computer Scientist, US Department of Defense
“While serving as a Computer Scientist at the US Department of Defense (CERDEC), I supervised Karen’s work on delivering novel concepts around enabling the management of networked rugged devices in fast-changing network topologies. Karen has a strong ability to look at large problems and design buildable solutions that work well for end-users. Her tenacious research into our signal soldier user population also uncovered a new persona, the reservist, and she designed unique training and onboarding experiences for this new user segment.”
“While serving as a Computer Scientist at the US Department of Defense (CERDEC), I supervised Karen’s work on delivering novel concepts around enabling the management of networked rugged devices in fast-changing network topologies. Karen has a strong ability to look at large problems and design buildable solutions that work well for end-users. Her tenacious research into our signal soldier user population also uncovered a new persona, the reservist, and she designed unique training and onboarding experiences for this new user segment.
As part of a new venture in 2020 I have been working with Karen and HumanLogic on another mobile device project. She has been able to mentor our team remotely and help us design and build a new device experience. Karen is an expert in human computer interaction and I highly recommend her services for product teams.”
Christa Crane, Chief Client Development & Marketing Officer, Loeb & Loeb LLP
“I worked with Karen Donoghue while leading a wide-ranging global digital transformation effort in 2018. The project encompassed a complete transformation of our brand and online presence at a market-leading law practice spanning eight offices across the US and Asia. Karen collaborated synergistically with both our internal transformation team and our external development team. Her presentations to our project teams included easy to understand prioritized recommendations clearly articulated for product management and development to utilize immediately.”
“I worked with Karen Donoghue while leading a wide-ranging global digital transformation effort in 2018. The project encompassed a complete transformation of our brand and online presence at a market-leading law practice spanning eight offices across the US and Asia.
Working remotely and independently, Karen validated concept designs with our target audiences before implementation, including interviewing attorneys in our practice, former attorneys and clients in the US and abroad. In two separate research studies conducted during the spring and summer of 2018, Karen delivered well-articulated expert recommendations to improve the user experience.
In the first research study, Karen developed an interview protocol and interviewed six law firm partners to ascertain their perceptions of both the brand and ease of use of the proposed designs. She delivered both qualitative and quantitative research results, prioritized according to impact. She identified new requirements for localization in Asia that influenced the specification of applications and also was able to pinpoint specific areas of performance that needed improvement.
In the second followup research study, Karen developed an interview protocol and interviewed ten attorneys and clients. After completing her research interviews, Karen delivered succinct evidence-based recommendations on improvements to critical interactions, including searching for attorneys and ease of access to thought leadership materials.
Karen collaborated synergistically with both our internal transformation team and our external development team. Her presentations to our project teams included easy to understand prioritized recommendations clearly articulated for product management and development to utilize immediately.
Karen was recommended to me by a trusted advisor. Having worked with Karen on multiple projects, I would recommend her as an expert for executives leading digital transformation requiring independent user experience assessment and validation.”
John Frank, CEO and Co-Founder, MetaCarta
“I highly recommend Karen Donoghue for early-stage technology projects and founders seeking deep product design expertise.”
“As CEO and Co-Founder of MetaCarta, an MIT startup, I was delighted to have Karen join my cofounders and me as an early advisor. She helped us design the core user experience of our initial product and was a key member of our advisory board throughout our earliest fundraising efforts all the way through to our acquisition by Nokia. Karen’s deep design and technical skills helped shape the initial MetaCarta product, which was the first ever map-based search experience for unstructured documents. MetaCarta built the world’s deepest natural language geotagger, which could recognize and resolve latitude-longitude coordinates for geographic references in text, such as “60 miles northeast of Al Hamra” and undersea landmarks. Working with me and my colleagues Doug Brenhouse and Erik Rauch, Karen contributed as a co-inventor on our first patent filings for MetaCarta’s technology. I highly recommend Karen Donoghue for early-stage technology projects and founders seeking deep product design expertise.”
Adam Swartzbaugh, CEO, Almond Finance
“As the founder of an early-stage financial technology startup at MIT, I have looked to Karen for advisory support in developing our mobile platform. When it comes to improving our technology’s user experience, Karen’s skillset has proven invaluable. Karen provided thoughtful and deliberate turn-by-turn evaluations of our workflows and objectives while diagnosing and recommending solutions to friction points and inefficiencies.”
“When it comes to improving our technology’s user experience, Karen’s skillset has proven invaluable.
As the founder of an early-stage financial technology startup at MIT, I have looked to Karen for advisory support in developing our mobile platform. She quickly understood the vision, company and product. Karen provided thoughtful and deliberate turn-by-turn evaluations of our workflows and objectives while diagnosing and recommending solutions to friction points and inefficiencies.
With the guidance provided by Karen in every session, we have made significant and meaningful enhancements to our platform – improving navigation, intuitiveness, and engagement quality. Working with Karen has been an absolute pleasure.”