Headshot of Leo Hoar

Leo Hoar, PhD

Founder, UXR Institute · UX Researcher & Educator

UX research can deliver enormous value to both users and a business. We provide rigorous education to help every UX researcher reach new heights of fulfillment and impact.

About

Leo founded the UXR Institute after witnessing its power to help businesses make smart decisions. He founded the UXR Institute to make it easier to exchange real, substantive expertise in the UXR community.

Over a UX reesearch career working primarily for startups, Leo built research teams that demonstrated real business value. Leo partnered research functions tightly with not just product teams, but sales, marketing, and operations. His team's research uncovered service inefficiencies that saved millions and did generative research that created successful new products. He's also led impactful growth efforts in a combined UXR-PM capacity.

With fifteen years of award-winning university teaching at the University of California and Ohio State, Leo is passionate about creating truly effective learning experiences that lead to real growth for researchers, designers, and PMs.

UX Research Experience

  • Beam Benefits, UX Research Manager
    • Built the research function from the ground up, growing from Senior Researcher to Research Manager
    • Lifted product sales 30% with new enrollment tool developed out of generative research
    • Doubled new product users in 2024 through a growth strategy leveraging behavioral design
    • Stood up “rolling research” and a CSAT program for continuous, company-wide feedback
  • Samsung Research America, UX Researcher & UX Writer
    • Ran prototype usability studies that guided early product development
    • Shaped a mobile health app native to Samsung devices with 50m+ users worldwide
  • Freelance / Consultant
    • Designed qualitative and mixed-methods research for client startups to find product-market fit and drive growth efforts
    • Led an exploratory study on applications of AI across industries (2018)
  • The Ohio State University, Research & Education
    • Built online learning tools reaching 10k+ students using generative and evaluative research
    • Lecturer, College of Engineering

How I think about qualitative analysis

Qualitative analysis is where most researchers feel the squeeze between rigor and speed: the coding is slow, and the pressure to “just give us the headline” never lets up. I don’t think those have to trade off. Used carefully, AI can take the grind out of the first passes without flattening the meaning, which frees you to do the interpretive work only a human can do: turning scattered observations into an argument a team can actually act on.

Areas of expertise

Qualitative data analysis AI for qualitative research Mixed-methods research Research strategy & influence Usability testing Survey design

Courses Leo teaches

Credentials & Education

  • PhD, English Literature
    University of California, Irvine
  • MA, English Literature
    University of California, Irvine
  • MA, English
    Fordham University
  • BA, English & Government
    Georgetown University
    summa cum laude · Phi Beta Kappa

Honors & training

  • CEO’s ‘Hero’ Award
    Beam Benefits, for research guiding C-suite decisions
  • Three teaching awards
    University of California, Irvine
  • Design Research training
    with Prof. Liz Sanders · Ohio State, 2018
  • Disruptive Strategy
    Harvard Business School Online, 2020

Body of work

Articles by Leo Hoar

New writing publishes here regularly.
Leo’s first articles are publishing soon: writing on qualitative analysis, AI, and research strategy.

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