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 work

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 post-surgical patient education, years before Claude and ChatGPT went mainstream. That work led to a paper I co-authored that was published at CHI and 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, with a focus on trust, control, and human oversight in agentic systems. These topics were uncharted territory two years ago. I defined the research questions that shaped trust, control, and oversight patterns for the product, presented the answers to executive leadership, and transformed an idea into a product shipped in 2025

AI has been the focus of my research for a decade. Recently, I’ve also transformed how I do the research itself by building new tools to streamline my processes. I use AI across analysis, synthesis, and reporting workflows. Simultaneously I'm defining the evaluation frameworks Azure uses for agentic systems with cross-functional stakeholders on my team. The result: higher-quality work, shipped faster, tailored to specific audiences.

  • 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

Projects

Azure Deployment Agent

Leading research on a 0→1 agentic AI product, currently in preview. My research is shaping UX patterns for Azure's agent portfolio, in territory where no playbook existed for trust, control, and human oversight. This work defined the trust, control, and oversight patterns now being adopted across Azure's agent portfolio.

Details coming soon

Virtual Machine Networking

Uncovering unmet user needs and challenges for one of the highest traffic and mission critical pages in the Azure portal. This research reframed a stalled redesign by showing that features generating "junk drawer" complaints were the same features generating a competitive advantage. This reframe unlocked the redesign and drove a material increase in load balancer deployments.

Details coming soon

Hernia Coach

Designed, built, and evaluated a conversational AI agent, Hernia Coach, focused on post-surgical patient education for my dissertation on patient-facing conversational AI in healthcare. This work directly produced a paper, published at CHI, that I co-authored with academic and industry researchers, extending Nielsen's heuristics for conversational agents.

Details coming soon

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

    Senior UX 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

Get in touch

If you're working on agentic systems, human–AI interaction, or enterprise UX, please reach out.

Send me an email