Over the years I’ve had the chance to collaborate with researchers, designers, and clients across sectors — here’s what some of them have shared over the last four years.
Collaborators:
Oscar Mayr
(Former) Lead Experience Designer at Capgemini - BP project
“Luis is an invaluable member of the DCX UX Team and key support in establishing Capgemini's role in BP. Since he landed on bp, Luis has received great appreciation for his work from the client to deliver a structured User Research approach that leveraged user-centred design.
He is and has been instrumental in establishing a positive reputation for Capgemini, a reputation critically important to our developing relationship with BP. Luis demonstrated great stakeholder management skills that helped with the buy-in on user research activities and led to more opportunities within the procurement portfolio.
He delivered successfully the three projects he was assigned to in bp, MyProcurement, Supplier’s procurement hub, and Digitize Invoices going above and beyond the outcomes set by the client. At bp account level Luis supported greatly with the onboarding of other resources on the procurement portfolio projects functioning as the extension of the design lead and a team player with tangible leadership values.
For that, he is a flag bearer of the Capgemini values - being honest in his feedback with the team and showing team spirit by collaborating with the team, even on the occasion of being involved on an Adhoc basis.”
Carole Ray
(Line Manager) Lead Content Designer at Capgemini
“As Luis’s manager, I’ve been impressed by Luis’s ‘big picture’ thinking. He is always balancing delivering excellent project work with how to best contribute to DCX, particularly in building the user research community in the absence of a UR Lead.
He is always sensitive to colleagues, using his excellent interpersonal skills to make the UR community a collaborative and supportive space, and uses those same skills to manage difficult stakeholders on various projects, earning excellent feedback from both stakeholders and colleagues in the process.
Luis has taken every opportunity to step up and contribute beyond what is expected of him. He has quickly become a trusted and valued team member at both DCX and project level, with his calm, can-do attitude and high-quality outputs.“
Mauricio Rocha
(Former) Head of Experience Design at Capgemini
“Luis joined our team [recently] and went straight to one of our most challenging accounts –BP, which is currently going through a huge transformation as it needs design in its wildest sense to feed its transformation from an Oil and Gas company to an energy one. A pivotal part of this is user research which informs the design of digital products and services. That’s where Luis comes in. I’ve been myself at BP and it takes constant perseverance, positivity, commitment, and great craft work to succeed. Luis has been very well received at BP, managing stakeholders very effectively, creating buy-in for insight driven design (research), with compelling deliverables and easy to understand artefacts. Luis has infectious patience and a measured attitude which really is powerful when working with challenging clients – the hallmarks of a senior researcher.
Luis supported me and other BP Capgemini team members to put proposals together and especially project plans to ensure we would be in a position to deliver and provide valuable research insights to BP, and in turn create space for more research – leading to more business and increased design reputation for Capgemini.
Beyond project work, Luis took upon himself to lead fortnightly user research get together within the UX team to foster collaboration and culture within the practice. He also supports recruitment as well as the early talent community. Luis is also finding time to widen his skills by taking online courses such as negotiation skills and Google Analytics to name a few.”
Simon Brock-Lowthian
Content Designer at Capgemini
“I worked with Luis within the experience design team. He provided invaluable support during a mentorship program to help me develop my user research skills. Luis supported me while I built the research approach for my project, with suggestions, constructive feedback and guidance as I executed the plan.
His understanding in the field of research really shines through, but he has the ability to share this in a relatable way. Moreover, Luis is a genuinely nice chap, happy to share his extensive knowledge and experience, and is a pleasure to work with.”
Hortance Chang
User Researcher (formerly at Capgemini)
“Luis is a kind and brilliant person to work with. He applies his academic background and business knowledge to strategic design approaches. He also shows his leadership skills by managing cross-disciplinary designers and researchers. He cares about everyone he works with and supports my career growth.”
Feng Chen
UX Research consultant
“Dr. Tsukayama-Cisneros is a distinguished mixed-methods researcher and social scientist in industry. He has carried out extensive research and made great impact on business planning, market strategies, and product development. His research reflects both rigidity of social science and agility of market dynamics, contributing to informing cross-functional decision making across cycles.”
Emily Wong
Experience Designer at Capgemini
“Luis was my line manager over the past year (2023), and during that time, provided me with the support and encouragement I needed to grow as a consultant. Whenever I had concerns, Luis would provide an alternative perspective and ways of thinking, often alleviating my worries. Luis has also mentored me on user research, leading the user research alignment sessions sharing his learnings and insights gained from his project experience. Overall, I have really enjoyed having Luis as my line manager.”
Comments and feedback from clients:
BP
Senior Design Engineer
“Working with Luis has and is a pleasure. We've worked through a difficult project together that had ever changing needs and stakeholders. He used his skills to help us ask the right questions and decipher what the users are trying to say. He's also kept the project honest and focused on the user, what was said and their needs. He brings an endlessly critical mind and energy to the project and has been a joy to work.”
User Experience Designer
“I have been working closely with Luis on the [bp account] for a couple of months now, he has been leading the user research within the procurement space globally at bp. As the product designer on the team, it has been great having Luis' support on the project, conducting usability tests and interviews with different users across the globe. He facilitated the approach based on his experience and methods, and executed them very well. Luis has a good understanding of human behaviours which is key in UX, he articulates well with users and shows empathy throughout interviews as well as afterwards when processing insights into clear concise reports. It has been a pleasure working with Luis - he has been a key asset to the team and I look forward to continuing the work with him on the bp.”
DEFRA
Business Analyst
“Having joined the PVS project partway through discovery, Luis picked up, and ran with ongoing UR for complex PVS processes. Some elements of this UR where particularly challenging, but he worked collaboratively with stakeholders across the project including the business SME, to get the job done. Luis implemented lessons learned in your approach to UR for the external stakeholder interviews/analysis that you completed, and this made for much more coherent analysis. I have enjoyed working with Luis, and I wish you every success for his next role. I hope you don't mind be saying, but l'd also like to say that his bravery, and mindset to continue to work whilst undergoing health treatment has been inspirational, and I wish Luis a speedy recovery. Here's to enjoying and experiencing live music in the near future!”
Senior Service Designer
“I worked with Luis from February - May 2022; I was the Service Designer on a Discovery and he was the Lead User Researcher.
I have enjoyed working with Luis and have found him to be incredibly friendly, welcoming and approachable. He is always kind, polite and friendly and remained so even when our project landscape became quite challenging and tense. I stress this first and foremost, as within our team there were some challenging and at times not altogether positive behaviours active within our team.
As a researcher, Luis has been very astute within this project on remaining true to the ethical requirements and principles of User Research despite staunch challenge from the project. Luis has worked tirelessly to help stakeholders understand the value of UR and why it is conducted in the way that it is. His 1-1 interviews were great to observe and we obtained some valuable insights into our users and their experience of the services they were using. Luis facilitated some fantastic analysis sessions, collaborating well with myself and our BA to evaluate what we had learned. In communicating these insights, Luis experienced some significant challenge from project SMEs (through no fault of his own) but worked calmly and pragmatically to resolve these issues, ensuring SMEs became supportive of these insights.
In terms of areas to work on; we were very challenged due to some tight timeframes in the time we had to consolidate, synthesise and visualise our findings. Despite this, I think Luis could allocate more time to thinking about how to present UR findings to stakeholders to really tell the story of what we have learned, considering elements such as amount of text on screen and how to visualise key insights. I do, however, understand that this may have been an anomaly for Luis as Luis was asked to complete a truly gargantuan amount of work in a very short timeframe. Luis came into a project mid-way through, taking over from another UR, and a lot of the project challenges around research were not as a result of anything he did. In turn, however, Luis was expected to deliver a lot within an unreasonable timeframe and, whilst he completed it, I would say it was not necessary in risking health and stress levels over.
Overall, I have thoroughly enjoyed working with Luis and see him as a talented UR whom I would recommend to any”