User Researcher - UX

North Yorkshire  ‐ Onsite
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Description

We are looking for a User researcher.

The role

The government's approach to digital and IT puts user needs at the heart of decision making. User researchers are key figures in service teams. They help service teams build a deep understanding of their users so they can design and deliver the services that their users need.

They support service managers by generating new and useful user insights, and work closely with designers, analysts and developers to iteratively improve services for users.

As a user researcher you will be experienced in using a variety of user research methods to reveal actionable insights.

You will have excellent analytical and problem solving skills, and the ability to quickly develop recommendations based on quantitative and qualitative evidence.

You will need to be confident in explaining user needs to senior civil servants, and acting as a persuasive advocate for those needs both within the team, the wider organisation and across government.

You will have experience with and be comfortable working with agile development teams. You will be able to introduce user research practices into a team, establish a user centred culture, and continually monitor and improve practices.

Main responsibilities

l Working with lead user researchers and service managers to develop and advocate appropriate research strategies to understand user needs for a service, and to continually test and improve the service

l Fostering a culture of team involvement in user research, team analysis, design rationale and decision making based on user needs

l Managing and mentoring user researchers and junior user researchers to ensure quality of research, and drive improvements in practice.

l Planning, designing, preparing and running user research activities to support the design, development and continuous improvement of digital government services (including contextual discovery, experience mapping, diary studies, early stage concept and prototype testing, lab based and contextual usability and accessibility testing).

l Designing and running contextual and discovery research to develop a deep understanding of the needs of all users of a service

l Managing the usability and accessibility testing process from recruiting participants, designing test tasks, and preparing discussion guides, to test moderation, analysis and presenting results.

l Designing, executing and analysing quantitative surveys.

l Leading colleagues to analyse research data and synthesis findings so that research is shareable and traceable.

l Effectively communicating user research findings to the team and the wider organisation, so that they share a strong and empathetic understanding of their users (including presentations at show and tells, designing and maintaining research outputs on the team wall, formal reports).

l Working closely with designers and developers to turn user research findings into stories and actions that lead to valuable product and service features.

l Working closely with analytics colleagues to define user centred KPIs, to create a rich picture of user behaviour to tell the full story of how and why people use our services.

l Contributing to the user research community across government, presenting at meetups and writing for the user research blog.

Skills and experience

Its essential that you have:

  • Demonstrable knowledge, experience in and passion for user centered design practices for web, service or software development.
  • Proven experience of understanding user needs for web content, tools and transactional services, especially those with the most complex user journeys.
  • Proven experience of designing, facilitating and analysing a wide range of qualitative and quantitative user research methods.
  • Strong understanding of strengths and limitations of different research methods.
  • Proven experience of presenting user research findings in a wide variety of formats and contexts.
  • Proven experience introducing and establishing user research practices in an organisation.
  • Proven experience of working in an agile development environment with designers and developers and product managers to create new digital products and services

It is desirable that you have:

  • Degree in HCI/Usability/Cognitive Psychology/Market Research or related field.
  • Previous experience within government services.
Start date
ASAP
Duration
3 months rolling for 2 years
From
scrumconnect ltd
Published at
19.12.2017
Project ID:
1472531
Contract type
Freelance
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