Nikki Nicole Crenshaw
Associate Principal User Researcher at Blizzard Entertainment
- Role
- Associate Principal User Researcher at Blizzard Entertainment
- Location
- Irvine, CA, US
- LinkedIn followers
- 500 followers
About Nikki Nicole Crenshaw
Nikki Crenshaw is an Associate Principal User Researcher focused on providing strategic and actionable insights. She has experience conducting end-to-end research on everything from individual features to holistic game experiences and synthesizing complex research problems into digestible findings. For Nikki, data-informed insights are crucial for keeping the player experience at the center of game development. She excels at welcoming her stakeholders into the world of research - taking them on a journey to help them better understand their players’ attitudes and behaviors. Nikki is looking to utilize her experiences driving company-wide research and accessibility initiatives to further cement Blizzard Entertainment as an industry leader in games user research.Outside of her career, she is an avid gamer (current gaming pursuits: Dragon Quest XII Reimagined; Monster Hunter Stories 3; World of Warcraft [Tauren Druid - Guardian; Night Elf Demon Hunter - Vengeance]), loving cat mom, tea aficionado, and adventurous foodie, and photo-journaler.
Experience
Associate Principal User Researcher
Mar 2023 — Present · Irvine, CA, US
٠ Identify and address strategic research questions for the Warcraft franchise in collaboration with franchise leadership. Topics include holistic gameplay experiences, player acquisition & retention, content approachability, and product direction for unreleased & live titles.٠ Leverage research insights to inform development pipelines, design philosophies, and game-wide initiatives in collaboration with game team leadership across Warcraft titles.٠ Conduct end-to-end research utilizing qualitative and quantitative methods, from requirements gathering to study design/execution to results dissemination, and provide actionable, data-informed insights for game developers and game team leadership.٠ Provide mentorship and research craft support for other Warcraft researchers, including creating documentation to standardize research processes, providing peer feedback throughout studies, reviewing research deliverables, and establishing best practices for research excellence across the Warcraft franchise.٠ Manage accessibility audits for CVAA and photosensitivity across Blizzard games in collaboration with Microsoft and continued support of company-wide accessibility initiatives across game and product teams.20••••24: Culture Strike Team Committee Member2021-Present: Way2Play Hero
Education
UC Irvine
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Informatics
2012 — 2017
University of California, Santa Cruz
Bachelor of Arts (BA), Psychology
2008 — 2011
Skills
- Statistics
- Semi-Structured Interviews
- User Research
- Teaching
- Active Learning
- Social Psychology
- Microsoft Excel
- Quantitative Research
- Qualitative Research
- Surveymonkey
- Video Games
- Spss
- Human Computer Interaction
- Ethnography
- Data Coding
- Lecturing
- Research Design
- User Experience
- Experimental Design
- Virtual Worlds
- Usability Testing
- Online Gaming
- Microsoft Office
- User-Centered Design
Find verified contacts for anyone on LinkedIn
Unifers gives sales teams verified emails and direct dials, enriched profiles, and outreach that lands in the inbox.
Free plan included · No credit card required
This profile is compiled from publicly available professional sources. Unifers is not affiliated with or endorsed by LinkedIn. Request removal of this profile.