Dr. Kyle Gibson

Dr. Kyle Gibson is a UX researcher, anthropologist, and research leader who combines social science, human behavior, mixed-methods research, and design thinking to help organizations better understand their users and make informed product decisions. His career spans academia, technology, e-commerce, and UX research, giving him a multidisciplinary perspective on how people interact with products, organizations, and technology.Kyle holds a Ph.D. in Anthropology with a specialization in Human Evolutionary Ecology from the University of Utah. He also holds an M.A. in Cultural Anthropology and a B.A. in Anthropology and English with a minor in Sociology from the University of Nebraska–Lincoln. His academic research explored human behavior, demographics, social relationships, and evolutionary anthropology, providing the foundation for his later work in UX and product research. His professional research experience includes work at Meta, where he applied mixed-methods UX research to complex problems involving trust, safety, and election integrity. His LinkedIn recommendations specifically highlight his work developing models and frameworks to help make elections safer for users. His current LinkedIn profile lists Meta as his professional affiliation and identifies him as a researcher and leader who works with managers, product owners, entrepreneurs, and other decision-makers. Before and alongside his work at Meta, Kyle worked in UX research and management at 1-800-Flowers, where he conducted generative and evaluative research using mixed methods. His research included understanding customer behavior around gifting, altruism, relationships, and exchange. During his time there, he also worked to integrate continuous discovery into the product development process, advocating for regular customer research and making research part of the team’s ongoing roadmap. Kyle’s research philosophy emphasizes connecting research findings to real user and business problems. He advocates for putting user problems at the center of product requirements and has discussed the importance of asking what problem a product is solving for people before jumping to solutions. He also emphasizes triangulating research methods, using appropriate sample sizes, mitigating bias, and distinguishing directional industry research from research designed to establish formal causality. His anthropological background also influences how he approaches research. Kyle has conducted extensive academic research into human behavior and social relationships, including research on parental investment and evolutionary behavior. His doctoral dissertation examined demographic and individual factors associated with suicide attackers, while his published academic work has investigated parental investment in families with adopted and biological children. Beyond his UX research career, Kyle serves as a board member of Pawlytics, a Delaware B Corporation that develops technology for animal welfare organizations and animal rescue operations. He has also maintained connections to academia and research communities through his anthropological work, publications, and research interests. Kyle has contributed to conversations about continuous discovery, UX research strategy, research methods, research bias, product development, customer discovery, and design thinking. His combination of anthropology and UX research allows him to approach product questions from both a behavioral and practical perspective, helping teams understand not only what users do, but why they behave the way they do.