Think Like an Ecosystem
Ecosystems move in relation every part, responding and changing due to dozens of influences.
Intersectional research takes the same approach that an ecologist would — studying the interconnected systems.
Taylor’s approach to research — whether it’s designing interview questions for a UX project or submitting a FOIA request — always starts with systems thinking.
Areas of expertise: using decolonized methodologies in UX research, interview design, intersectional research, policy assessment, academic research, participatory action, explanatory journalism, and more.
Case Study: UX research
Case Study: Explanatory journalism
Case Study: Intersectional research
Case Study 1: UX Research &
Content Strategy for a Global Audience
The Goal
Built In’s international expansion required a complete rethinking of how employer brand stories are told across diverse regions, cultures, and candidate motivators. Taylor led Brand Studio’s research-backed content strategy that had one goal at the epicenter — to design an editorial strategy that would draw in job seekers from around the globe.
The Details
the company: Built In
the team: Brand Studio (branded content arm of the editorial team)
the project: revise the branded content strategy for global audience
As Built In expanded its job board to a global scale in 2024, the Brand Studio team faced a critical challenge: how to evolve employer brand content so that it resonated across countries, languages, and cultural value systems. With international recruiters making up a growing share of the platform’s user base — 43% of mid-market and 79% of enterprise companies already hiring globally — Taylor led the redesign of Built In’s branded content strategy to ensure it met the needs of a more diverse, global audience.
To guide this transition, Taylor proposed and conducted a qualitative research review that explored two key areas:
The core motivators driving job seekers in new global markets
The employer brand strategies being used by leading tech companies to reach them.
Using this data, Taylor developed a content ecosystem tailored to the values of candidates in India, Ireland, Singapore, Australia, and beyond. This included mapping motivators like work-life balance, mentorship opportunities, and upskilling support to new article topics and interview structures. They also redesigned asynchronous interview questions to prioritize linguistic clarity, cultural inclusivity, and globally relevant framing.
Rather than a one-size-fits-all approach, Taylor designed a content ecosystem that accounted for widespread cultural dimensions like collectivism vs. individualism, location-specific candidate motivators, and regional hiring priorities.
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Built In’s branded content is meant to encourage talent from around the world to apply for roles at tech companies. The articles typically give candidates an idea of company culture, DEI efforts, behind the scenes of projects, etc.
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Built In’s international expansion required a complete rethinking of how employer brand stories are told across diverse regions, cultures, and candidate motivators. Taylor led Brand Studio’s research-backed content strategy that had one goal at the epicenter — to design an editorial strategy that would draw in job seekers from around the globe.
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Taylor conducted a content review, based in UX research practice, that assessed our article topics for cultural awareness and global accessibility. They then led Brand Studio through a formal, peer-reviewed, vetted research assessment to identify how candidate motivators differ by global region.
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Brand Studio refreshes the editorial article topics and asynchronous questions every year. Taylor saw this as an ongoing opportunity to improve employer brand content that targets technical roles.
Taylor continued UX interviews with job seekers, through cross departmental collaboration with Product Design. They then collaborated with UX researchers to map user behaviors and motivators. They then layered technical candidate motivators onto a content strategy matrix.
This strategy marked a significant evolution for Brand Studio, moving the team from content producers to strategic partners. Taylor ensured the content moved beyond Western-centric success narratives and embraced inclusive frameworks to better reflect Global Majority perspectives.
In addition to the editorial overhaul, Taylor extended this strategy across departments to support sales and UX initiatives. They created a product marketing tool for the sales team that explained how the new branded content supported international recruiting, and led internal trainings to help teams communicate that value to clients. Taylor also collaborated with UX researchers and product designers to adapt the content strategy for technical audiences, including engineering and AI roles. Through interviews and journey mapping, they layered key motivators of technical candidates onto the content planning matrix, ensuring Built In’s messaging could better attract and engage highly-skilled talent.
This project also laid the groundwork for more inclusive, data-informed storytelling that reflects what matters most to job seekers, wherever they are in the world.
Case Study 2: Explanatory Journalism
Empire of Insight
Empire of Insight: The Thread Between Green Tech and the Surveillance Economy
Empire of Insight is Taylor’s second book, a series of reported essays and speculative nonfiction. The work began as Taylor’s thesis research in their Urban Sustainability program. Empire of Insight is now a collection of reported essays. To read more about the manuscript, check out the project page titled Empire of Insight . This case study will examine the research methods that Taylor used while writing Empire of Insight.
Empire of Insight shows how the same tech we hope will save us from climate change is pushing us to consume more and is a tactical tool of a growing police state. Taylor wrote Empire of Insight to be the revolutionary’s primer to understanding the web of data surveillance, the tools of the police state, and the green-washing narratives used to conceal both.
Empire of Insight’s genre of speculative nonfiction offers the reader the question “what if?” but backed by substantial research. The essays offer snapshots of positive potential futures and a warnings against the dystopic path if we do not change. Empire of Insight is a conversation starter on how we can create positive alternative futures by demanding consent, abolition, and anti-racist design practices be incorporated into our tech.
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Sustainable urban planning relies heavily on the use of green tech. Is there a separation between green tech and tools of mass surveillance? How much of our sustainable tech infrastructure is powered by the surveillance economy?
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Empire of Insight is a work of speculation — both of a positive potential future and a warning against a dystopic path if we do not change — that is examined through robust reporting, qualitative research reviews, and explanatory journalism.
Methodology
Taylor undertook a qualitative research review before and during the writing process. Key components of the methodology included:
Literature Review
Review of academic journals, policy documentation, qualitative and quantitative reports relevant to the themes
Review of existing nonfiction books on related topics
Creation of a cumulative annotated bibliography for academic review
Structured Interviews
Formal interviews with experts in fields relevant to each essay’s subject matter
Interview questions were developed using decolonized research methods, emphasizing social, historical, environmental, economic, and ethnographic context for each respondent.
Thematic Coding
Common themes, phrases, and marketing language were noted and pattern coded for recurrence
In vivo coding was used for annotating interviews to preserve the respondent’s language choice and cultural nuance.
The coding process helped determine which tech systems had multiple names and marketing narratives depending on the audience — and when those narratives were purposely used to conceal the capabilities and connections of that tech.
Speculative Forecasting
Speculative nonfiction for reported essays include tactics like systems thinking, natural history narrative mapping, and intersectional cause-and-effect plotting to identify likely outcomes.
Taylor uses informed and intersectional research to horizon scan and document scenes from a potential future.
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Empire of Insight shows how the same tech we hope will save us from climate change is pushing us to consume more and is a tactical tool of a growing police state. Taylor wrote Empire of Insight to be the revolutionary’s primer to understanding the web of data surveillance, the tools of the police state, and the green-washing narratives used to conceal both.
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Empire of Insight’s genre of speculative nonfiction offers the reader the question “what if?” but backed by substantial research. The essays offer snapshots of positive potential futures and a warnings against the dystopic path if we do not change. Empire of Insight is a conversation starter on how we can create positive alternative futures by demanding consent, abolition, and anti-racist design practices be incorporated into our tech.
Case Study 3: Intersectional Research
Eco Justice Communication Strategies
As part of their graduate fieldwork, Taylor collaborated with the North American Digital Agriculture Working Group, a coalition within ETC Group focused on interrogating the corporate narratives driving the digitization of global food systems. In this role, Taylor worked closely with experts in food sovereignty, environmental justice, and labor rights to document the ecological, social, and economic implications of digital agriculture technologies.
Their primary responsibility was to translate the group’s deep, intersectional research into clear, accessible communication tools that could be used by policy experts, agricultural leaders, and civil society organizers.
Taylor proposed creating an interactive toolkit that would allow each group to identify messaging and resources based on their audience and primary advocacy concern. In order to create this, Taylor began by conducting interviews and literature summaries, and annotating them all with qualitative coding to identify recurring themes. Taylor approached this work through a decolonized communications lens, ensuring that insights from the Global South and Global Majority were centered in the final materials.
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Taylor worked alongside ETC’s North American Digital Agriculture Working Group, a collective of experts in agri-food systems, policy, labor rights, farming, and digital agriculture technologies.
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The work of ETC’s North American Digital Agriculture Working Group is ongoing, but Taylor assisted with a narrative assessment project to summarize and share the robust research of the group’s members. This included:
Documenting the ecological, social, economic, and labor implications of digital agriculture
Documenting the corporate narratives of agtech
Developing narrative summaries from the insights of civil society experts
Developing DIY communications tools to counter corporate industry narratives with key messaging for different audiences
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Intersectional research methodology and decolonized communication strategies were used in this project to ensure that:
The primary concerns of experts are presented with the context showing what makes those insights so pressing.
Narratives were gathered and presented in a way that centered the Global South and the Global Majority.
Communication strategy development integrated frameworks of eco-justice, food sovereignty, and the people’s control of technology.
The result of this project was the creation of a DIY narrative communications toolkit titled “Autonomy in the Face of Agtech.” This resource was designed to synthesize the insights of civil society communicators, social movement leaders, and researchers into a practical set of tools for resisting dominant agtech industry narratives. The toolkit included a detailed analysis of corporate messaging strategies in digital agriculture, along with counter-narratives rooted in food sovereignty, ecological justice, and community autonomy. It also features a do-it-yourself media analysis guide to support grassroots organizations in identifying and responding to false corporate narratives in real time.
By developing this toolkit, Taylor contributed to a sustainable, movement-aligned communication infrastructure that equips advocates with the language, framing, and strategic awareness needed to challenge techno-solutionism and corporate control in the agri-food system.