Hi, I’m Ross.

I lead UX research for flagship agentic AI products at Microsoft Azure and have been researching human–AI interaction since 2016. My work defines how startup and enterprise cloud professionals adopt and trust AI tools at scale.

See my selected projects

Research that defines product strategy

I've been studying how people interact with AI systems since my PhD, when I designed and built a conversational agent for surgical patient education, years before Claude and ChatGPT went mainstream. That work led to a CHI Best Paper I co-authored that extended Nielsen's heuristics for conversational agents.

Today I lead mixed-methods UX research for the Azure Deployment Agent, a 0→1 agentic AI product, focused on trust, control, and human oversight in agentic systems, which was uncharted territory when I started. I defined the research questions, shaped the resulting UX patterns across Azure's suite of agents, presented findings to executive leadership, and directly took an idea from concept to a product announced in preview at the Microsoft Ignite 2025 keynote.

Recently I've also reshaped how I do research by building tools that bring AI into my analysis, synthesis, and reporting workflows. Additionally, I'm defining the evaluation approaches for agentic systems at Azure alongside cross-functional partners. The result: higher-quality work, shipped faster, tailored to its audience.

  • CHI Best Paper

    Extending Nielsen’s heuristics for conversational agents

  • Azure Deployment Agent

    Featured at Microsoft Ignite Keynote 2025

  • PhD in Health Informatics

    University of Washington

Selected projects

Azure Deployment Agent

Leading the research on a 0→1 agentic AI product, currently in preview, defining human-AI interaction patterns in territory where no playbook existed. My work centers on the trust, control, and oversight challenges of handing real work tasks to an AI agent, which is the core of whether enterprises will let agentic systems act on their behalf. Announced at Microsoft Ignite as part of Azure's frontier AI product suite.

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Virtual Machine Networking

Directed the UX research behind the redesign of one of the highest-traffic, mission-critical pages in the Azure portal, the surface where cloud and network administrators manage the controls they depend on daily. My research reframed the core problem in a way that unlocked a stalled redesign, which led to increased product adoption, a step-change improvement in user satisfaction, and reduced support burden.

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Conversational AI for Patient Education

Designed, built, and evaluated Hernia Coach, a conversational AI agent for surgical patient education, for my doctoral dissertation. Years before LLM-powered agents were commercially available this work established early evidence for patient-facing conversational AI in healthcare. It also produced a CHI Best Paper, co-authored with academic and industry researchers, extending Nielsen's usability heuristics for conversational agents.

Read more

  • "Ross has been incredibly impactful in shaping how we approach agentic experiences across Azure. His leadership has been foundational to define our strategy in real customer needs."

    Senior UX Designer

  • “Ross is an exemplary researcher and is someone I regularly reach out to when I have research-related questions. Ross has proven himself to be an indispensable member of our team and wider organization. I sincerely look forward to our next opportunity to partner together."

    Senior UX Engineer

  • "Ross has a keen attention to detail and passion for listening that led us to build a better product that served more customers. He is easy to work alongside and is a strong partner. I seize every opportunity to work with him."

    Principal PM

  • "Ross' personality automatically lowers everyone's stress levels. Cortisol cannot possibly compete against Ross."

    Senior UX Engineer

  • "Ross' constant desire to advance the research discipline through innovative methodologies and AI is the most impressive thing about him. His insights have improved our projects and inspired me to integrate AI into my own work. He's a great colleague who always brings fresh ideas with expertise and enthusiasm."

    Senior UX Researcher

  • "Ross is incredibly organized with clear agendas and goals that balance the needs of the team. I appreciate the work he puts into understanding our product's technical components, which enables him to build rapport with our customers while gaining UX research insights. Overall, I'm grateful for the work he does for our team."

    Senior Software Engineer

  • "Ross is an excellent collaborator and always has valuable insights on customer interactions. He knows how to design research studies and always goes above and beyond to ensure the quality of his own work and the work of others. Ross's passion and dedication to his work as a researcher is self-evident. He is continually making our organization better by delivering valuable customer insights to our team."

    Senior PM

  • "Ross has demonstrated strong leadership skills that have cheered the team up in times of setbacks, coordinated strong collaborations, and helped us stay flexible when objectives and constraints shift. His ability to manage timelines has allowed us to ship stellar projects that provide real value to Microsoft. He is a good empathetic listener who brings people together to do great things."

    Principal Software Engineer