What I Actually Do 

(And Why It Matters More Than Ever)

People usually get it in pieces. Sometimes I can barely explain it myself!

“Oh, you do interviews?”
“So… like UX research?”
“Is it like storytelling consulting?”
“Kinda like anthropology, right?”

Sort of. But not quite.

At Sky Island Project, I run narrative field studies. Short, focused research projects that look at how people actually experience a system, a story, or a space. I listen for what gets lost in translation between strategy and reality. Then I turn that into insight you can act on. 

It’s part qualitative research, part ethnographic observation, part emotional pattern-mapping. It’s designed to answer one core question:

How does this really land with people—and what does that mean for what you do next?

Let me break it down.

Step 1: I enter like a human, not a consultant.

No clipboards. No jargon. Just me, spending time inside your program or platform or neighborhood. Observing. Asking thoughtful, open-ended questions. Paying attention to what isn’t said just as much as what is.

I’m looking for dissonance: where the system talks one way but feels another. Where people stall out. Where trust frays. Where things go unsaid.

🟡 Example: In my project with RootED NWA, a nonprofit helping immigrant parents navigate public education, the organization’s website said “empowerment”—but the experience felt confusing and precarious. Participants didn’t know if they were signing up for support or just sending a message into the void.

One mom said: “I feel relieved that I found it—but I wouldn’t expect this to be the place to make an appointment.”

That wasn’t just a UX flaw. It was a crack in trust. A misalignment between intention and experience.

Step 2: I surface the emotional logic.

This is where I get real quiet and pay close attention.

Not just to what people do, but how they feel while doing it. What feels confusing or affirming or extractive. What assumptions they carry. Where power shows up.

🟡 Example: While working on the Class Equity student platform, I helped redesign the experience from the ground up—for middle schoolers, not just teachers.

Our team noticed students didn’t just need functional tools—they needed emotional feedback. We added visual goal-setting, simple budget views, and ways to customize their profiles. Features that made financial literacy feel intuitive and motivating, not abstract and flat.

Every design recommendation was grounded in lived student experience, developmental psychology, and our own test sessions with kids and teachers. That’s what “emotionally intelligent UX” actually looks like.

Step 3: I translate lived experience into strategy.

Once I’ve gathered stories, patterns, and emotional data, I synthesize it into something your team can use. Not a vibe check. Not just a story. A narrative insight report with clear takeaways, grounded in reality and designed to inform decision-making.

🟡 Example: With Ground Crew, I wasn’t working in UX—I was working in public history. The museum had no idea how many women had shaped Arizona’s aviation legacy. My job was to surface those stories and map the cultural erasure that left them out.

Through archival digging, oral history fragments, and pattern recognition, I pieced together a fuller picture—and that work directly shaped a 6-month museum exhibit and the first published article on the topic.

Same method: get close to the lived story, listen deeply, and use what I find to shift the way people see the system.

This is human-centered research for teams that actually care

If you work in education, civic tech, cultural spaces, or the nonprofit world, your mission likely comes down to people. Which means you need more than data.

You need to understand how your work feels in the real world.

That’s what I do.
I help you get clear on what’s working, what’s off, and what to do about it—so your impact matches your intention.

Curious? Let’s talk.
→ skyislandprojects@gmail.com
→ rbadertscher.com

Copyright © 2025 Ryan Badertscher. All rights reserved.