Description
Planning, designing and conducting in-house usability testing sessions to support the design and development of digital services. Leading the usability testing process from developing user recruitment briefs through to test moderation, analysis and report writing; Conducting in-house research to test new product and concept developments (including user requirements gathering and early stage concept and prototype testing, research, and other approaches to ensuring the user need is fully understood in the service design). Working with Service Managers to devise appropriate research strategies to generate focused insights and to convert concepts into high quality stimulus material; Working closely with designers and developers to turn user data into actionable product/service requirements that feed into prototype development, and influence product direction; Presenting findings and related design/business recommendations and customer insights to senior decision makers.
Senior User Researcher
Job description
The role User Researchers are key figures in the teams that design and deliver services. They help their teams develop a deep understanding of the people -- citizens, businesses or government colleagues -- who use a service. Their findings allow their teams to design and build better services more quickly and at lower cost and risk. And to continuously improve services, based on data and evidence. As a Senior User Researcher you will plan and lead user research activities as part of a delivery team working on complex services. You will build user centred practices, and align user research activities with wider plans to inform service proposition. You may work with other user researchers to assure and improve research practice.
Main responsibilities
- Planning, designing and preparing a range of user research activities to support the design, development and continuous improvement of complex government services.
- Carrying out a wide range of user research activities from recruiting participants, preparing discussion guides and moderating research sessions.
- Leading colleagues to analyse research data and synthesise clear and actionable findings, including working closely with analytics colleagues to create a rich picture of user behaviour.
- Communicating user research findings to help the team and wider organisation develop a deep understanding of users and their needs.
- Working closely with product managers, designers and developers to turn user research findings into stories and actions that lead to valuable product and service features.
- Aligning user research activities with wider plans to inform service proposition.
- Contributing to the wider user research community - including presenting at meetups, writing blog posts and leading on aspects of practice.
Skills and experience
It's essential that you have:
- Experience of advocating for user research and engaging sceptical colleagues and stakeholders.
- Experience of helping teams to adopt user centred service design and delivery practices and embed them into their agile workflow.
- The ability to understand the complex problems a team is trying to solve, and align user research activities to inform decision-making and action.
- Experience of helping teams adopt a wide range of user research methods, analysis and synthesis techniques and approaches to presenting and sharing findings.
- Proven experience of introducing new user research methods into a team, and guiding colleagues in the choice and effective application of research methods.
- The ability to include all kinds of users in appropriate research activities to help teams understand the diversity of users of government services.
- A good understanding of the social and technological context for government services, and experience of aligning user research activities to help teams understand changing user behaviour.
It's desirable that you have:
- Knowledge of the technologies used to build and operate digital services, and the ability to work closely with colleagues in technical roles and to constructively challenges technical constraints.
- Experience of user research for government services.