Samyukta Sherugar.

UX researcher

Hi! I’m Sam.

I study people & their habits through observation, listening and data analysis. I love helping products serve the business and the end user.

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Portrait of Samyukta Sherugar

Selected work

From evidence to product direction.

Three stories about deciding what to build, where to invest, and when to change course.

  1. 01 Messenger Highlights Tab · 2025 Guiding investment decision on Messenger's content feed Led field research combining street intercepts, lab interviews, and in-home interviews to evaluate product-market fit and future concepts.
  2. 02 Messenger Notes · 2025 Sizing Messenger Notes use cases to grow the feature How I translated prior qualitative research into a behaviorally targeted survey that compared creator and consumer opportunities.
  3. 03 Messenger · 2026 Finding the top messaging use cases for proactive AI features Used LLMs to classify large-scale Messenger conversation data against research-defined jobs-to-be-done — adopted by product as the primary prioritization signal.

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My journey

  1. Where it all began

    I was born and raised in Bangalore, India, with family roots in a rainy coastal town in the south.

  2. Code → Research

    I started my career in code as a software developer, dabbled in design, and eventually found my way to research.

  3. Google · AdMob

    Before that, at Google, I led research for AdMob, a monetization platform for app developers. My work helped diagnose why the product was not the market leader, informed its platform strategy, and gave product, sales, and marketing teams a shared understanding of AdMob developers through widely adopted personas.

  4. Meta · Messenger + AI

    At Meta, I've spent the last few years on Messenger, most recently working on Meta AI adoption. I've also worked on strategic initiatives spanning Messenger's youth strategy, social features, and early-stage content discovery, partnering across organizations to bring clarity to ambiguous questions beyond my immediate team. In my time here I have worked on embedded and horizontal teams, on 0-1 and mature products, local & international. I'm hands on but have experience leading other ICs, contractors and vendors.

Writing

Writing about research, AI, and the decisions in between.

I love writing about research, product thinking, and general reflections on working in Tech. You can read those here or on LinkedIn.

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