Daniel K. Mayes Email & Phone Number

Redmond, Washington, Us

A Copilot on every desk, every device and across every role is core to Microsoft’s mission to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. My role is to provide partnership and research insights to drive Copilot to deliver businesses increased productivity, creativity and inclusive collaboration. Together we are reshaping business processes across industries. We continue co-innovating directly with customers.

Dallas, Texas, Us

Oversaw multiple research teams simultaneously including a team of human factors professionals focused on developing processes, templates, and procedures to comply with FDA standards for medical device deployment; a team working on research for a multiple award-winning diabetic retinopathy camera, and teams focused on multiple physician and patient facing software solutions.Developed novel solutions to greatly reduce costs and increase efficiency while maintaining compliance wth FDA guidelines for Human Factors research activities associated with the development and deployment of medical devices across a variety of classifications. Part of the core team to establish key partnerships with client areas, including a being on the ground floor of a key partnership with L'Oreal that required quickly iterating across many innovative ideas before finding a mutual beneficial product space.

Mountain View, Ca, Us

Led a team focused on the Google account with particular emphasis on privacy and security UX. Collaborated to inform a model for how to generate and keep trust with users as well as led team members through critical research to identify trust tiers of different users and how to improve trust across Google product surfaces. The key individual contributor on a large scale, international effort to understand where and how to communicate about privacy and security to users through iconography, messaging, and interactions. This project required setting up relationships and collaborating across Google teams including Gmail, Geo, Identity, Ads, and others. The resulting findings were implemented and set the tone for privacy and security across the most prominent and used Google surfaces. This work also resulted in message points that were one of the key focus areas of the 2022 Google I/O event.

Oversight of a research team focused on solutions for sales and support staff for advertisers. Millions of advertisers resulted in massive amounts of data combined with a limited staff to provide support for speedy problem resolution and only a few staff for giving tips to increase Ad revenue and effectiveness. Led my team to provide the right information in the right way at the right time, resulting in increases to advertiser engagement while reducing operational expenses simultaneously.

Second line leadership over a cross-functional team that includes researchers, data scientists, business analysts, and other skills. After leading the research activities, I created the vision for operationalizing a customer segmentation approach that was used at point of sale with customers to influence customers' decisions. I also acted as the product manager over the technical solution that resulted in increased conversion rates for sales as well as increased customer satisfaction. My role included communicating results to senior executives as well as integrating solution for pervasive use across business areas while simultaneously driving adoption with sales associates through training materials, large and remote group presentations, and other engagements.

Bloomington, Illinois, Us

Provided guidance, training, and support to a team of user experience researchers with varying skills and backgrounds. The team developed recommendations for customer and sales associate facing applications. Many of the projects involve moving from legacy systems to modern web and mobile device systems and required balancing speed of delivery with customer satisfaction and acceptance by sales associates. In this capacity, I worked through a cross-functional team (some virtual workers) to define opportunity areas, prioritize work, and activate revenue and growth driving initiatives. This role also required me to provide individual contributions to our success as well.

Bloomington, Illinois, Us

As a human factors research psychologist, I designed, executed, and communicated research to modernize the approach to selling insurance and financial services products to our customers. Working at State Farm allowed me to develop evidence-based results to influence the products and services provided by State Farm to meet the insurance needs of more customers than any other provider in the United States.I also identified the need to create a unified team for conducting research activities as there were multiple groups doing the same type of work in different parts of the organization. I co-led a grass roots movement to combine these teams into one team, resulting in an organizational shift in how research was performed, leading to better results with fewer resources and better job satisfaction for affected employees. The creation of this team is what first led me from being solely an individual contributor to being a people leaders as well.

Redmond, Washington, Us

Embedded on a team with other behavioral scientists to work on the initial launch of the first and second Xbox and its core set of 1st and 3rd party games. Developed new and novel research methods to study games, including leading the first RITE method (under the tutelage of Mike Medlock), applying behavioral economics principles to game design, and developing and refining an approach based on my dissertation research on video game engagement to study and improve the “fun” of game content while still in development. Also worked on A/B experiments to test concepts like wired and wireless controllers to understand the cost-benefit of hardware and software improvements to users.The novel research performed here has been widely publicized and was grounded in my own dissertation research. I also transformed the questions and approach to using research to guide decision making at Microsoft Games Studio. So, in addition to working directly on AAA games like Halo, Halo 2, Forza, Forza 2, and many others, my work was instrumental in improving the process and quality of information for all first and third party game titles that came through our research group.

Provided research services for pilot selection and training program while completing graduate degree. Research led to the development of height guidelines for commercial airlines to use that allowed for proper pilot selection based on the attributes of aircraft being operated at the time, decreasing turnover and improving safety and increasing work place efficiency.

Orlando, Fl, Us

Worked on a variety of research projects both internal to the university and for vendors, external clients, and government entities. Example research included: computer vs. paper based reading for speed and comprehension of information; research to recommend control station for the first ever Unmanned Aerial Vehicles used by the military; development of a model and questionnaire to gauge video game engagement/fun. Clients included DARPA, NASA, Walt Disney Theme Parks; US Army and Flight Safety International.

Phd, Applied Human Factors And Experimental Psychology

Bachelor Of Arts, Psychology