Meet Olga!

Olga Kramarova

Olga is a User Researcher on our UX Design Team. Learn more about Olga and her Life at and outside of Quora below:

Where are you located and what’s your favorite thing about your city?

I live in Los Angeles, CA. I really enjoy the cultural diversity here.

Why did you choose to join Quora?

As an eternal academic, and university professor, Quora's mission for "sharing and growing the world's knowledge" sounded very relevant to me! I think it's very important to work on a product that you personally value and believe in. I was also looking for an opportunity where I could utilize my UX Research skills to create a lot of impact in a space that did not already have a large established research team.

What is your role at Quora and what team are you on?

I am a User Experience Researcher, and am part of Quora's (tiny but mighty) UX Design Team.

What kind of impact does your team have on the company as a whole?

Quora recently released a new AI Chat app called Poe. The design team has basically been responsible for creating the entire look and feel of this new product. It is MY personal responsibility to help the team design a product that aligns with user needs, motivations, and expectations. By acting as a liaison between our users and the product team, I am able to gain insight into user mental models, opinions, and behaviors. In turn, these insights help drive design and business decisions, as well as assist in prioritizing projects on the product roadmap.

What’s something your team has done that you’re particularly proud of?

Designed Poe - Fast AI Chat! Literally, the design team is the reason that Poe looks the way it does today, and we are only continuing to make it better! By collecting feedback from our users, by listening to their needs and expectations, we are able to improve the usability of Poe and ensure that our users are going to have an enjoyable experience.

How would you describe the culture of your team?

I think the design team is the smallest team at Quora! Working at a fully remote company definitely has its challenges but we definitely prioritize maintaining a "healthy" team culture. In fact, I am head of our Design Team Culture Guild, and I am responsible for coming up with monthly/quarterly team activities that are geared towards team-building and team-member recognition.

Which one of our core values at Quora do you most resonate with?

Agility. Since the introduction of Poe to the tech world, it has been a rollercoaster of planning, executing, detouring and rerouting. Navigating a work environment where things change so rapidly is truly a difficult skill, but all of us at Quora have managed to do that in the recent past, and it has been very inspiring to work with such a cooperative group of colleagues!

What do you like to do outside of work?

I am actually a professional dancer! Everything and anything related to music or dancing is my favorite thing to do. I also love to travel, and create content for my YouTube channel! In addition to that, I teach in the Psychology Department at Cal State University. I enjoy introducing students to the world of Human Computer Interaction, Applied Cognition, and Human Factors Psychology. It is incredibly rewarding to be able to inspire the next generation and share my knowledge with the students!

What has been your favorite memory working at Quora?

We had a design team offsite in October 2022! It was such an incredible experience to meet everyone in person. Nothing can replace real human interaction!

What benefit has working remotely had on you?

In the past, I have worked at jobs that required long hours of commuting (mainly due to traffic rather than long distances). Working remotely has definitely increased the amount of time I spend on actual work, rather than commuting to/from work. But the BEST part of working remotely is that I get to spend more time with my dogs and mom. Just having them near me, being able to eat lunch with my mom every day, and reaching over to cuddle my dogs between meetings makes every day much more fulfilling.

What does your average day look like?

On average, I typically have meetings for 2-3 hours per day. Wednesday is typically "no meeting day" for our team, but even that has exceptions. Mondays are definitely the heaviest meeting days, but they're also the most helpful because they set the plans/expectations for what needs to be accomplished that week. Besides meetings, I work on multiple projects simultaneously. I might analyze survey data from users for a couple hours or spend the time writing a report on an analysis that I've completed. Crafting research plans, collaborating with designers and stakeholders, presenting user findings, and quarterly planning are all tasks that I might work on in a given day. When the time comes for qualitative user interviews, those typically take up the entire day. Once I conducted 9 user interviews in ONE day!

Why have you chosen to stay at Quora?

Quora has only 2 researchers in the entire company! We have A LOT of work to do and a lot of impact to make! I think that knowing how impactful my work can be, especially in the quickly evolving AI space, has really motivated me to stay at Quora. There is so much to discover, to learn, and to create...

What qualities does someone need in order to be successful at Quora?

Given the evolving nature of the AI space, working at Quora means being comfortable with being uncomfortable. Seriously - we are all on this journey together, and there is so much that we do not know. Your managers don't have the answers, and even the CEO may not have the answer. Staying curious, staying flexible, and being able to adapt to rapid changes are the qualities that I believe would be helpful for anybody to be successful at Quora.

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