Kenya Oduor

Dr. Kenya Oduor is a human-centered researcher, strategist, and solution designer with more than 20 years of experience spanning industry, consulting, entrepreneurship, and academia. She is the Founder and CEO of Lean Geeks, a research and design firm focused on helping organizations understand people, identify opportunities, and create effective technology-enabled experiences.

Kenya’s professional background combines human factors psychology, UX research, design thinking, product strategy, and organizational leadership. Her work focuses on understanding people within the broader systems and environments in which they use products and services, rather than examining user behavior in isolation.

At Lean Geeks, Kenya works with organizations to improve user research, solution definition, design practices, and organizational processes. The firm’s work includes user research, usability testing and evaluation, system and interaction design, human-AI interaction, accessibility, content strategy, and requirements definition.

Kenya also has extensive experience working within large technology organizations. Before founding Lean Geeks, she served as Director of User Experience at LexisNexis and worked in IBM’s Software Group, where she developed experience in user-centered design, software interfaces, product development, and technology-enabled solutions.

Her approach to research emphasizes understanding people rather than simply collecting more data. She advocates for research that helps teams understand the context behind behaviors, identify the right problems to solve, and translate findings into practical decisions and solutions.

Kenya is also actively involved in academia. She is an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Computer Science at North Carolina State University, where her areas of expertise include human-computer interaction, user experience, artificial intelligence and intelligent agents, and healthcare information technology.

Her academic background is rooted in human factors and psychology. Kenya earned a Ph.D. and M.S. in Human Factors/Experimental Psychology from North Carolina State University and a B.S. in Psychology from the University of Maryland. Her training has given her a strong foundation in understanding human behavior, cognition, work systems, and the interaction between people and technology.

Kenya has also become increasingly involved in conversations about AI and UX research. She advocates for using AI as a tool that can amplify researchers’ capabilities while maintaining human judgment, research validity, cultural context, and empathy.

In a Userlytics UX Spotlight episode, Kenya discussed the human side of AI in UX research, including synthetic users, AI-generated personas, research validity, cultural context, and the risks of removing human understanding from the research process. The conversation explored how research teams can use AI responsibly while preserving the human element that makes research meaningful.

Through her work as a researcher, consultant, entrepreneur, educator, and UX leader, Kenya brings together academic rigor and practical experience. Her multidisciplinary perspective helps organizations move beyond simply gathering data toward developing deeper human understanding and designing solutions that address the right problems.