Digital User Researcher

Tasks

• Generate new and useful user insights and translate them into features and actions that will allow service/product managers to iteratively improve their service for users.
• Plan, design and conduct in‑house research to test new service ideas and concept development (including user requirements gathering, early stage concept and prototype testing, guerrilla research and usability testing sessions, and other approaches to ensure the user need is fully understood in the service design).
• Lead the formal usability testing process for a digital service – from developing user recruitment briefs through to test moderation, analysis and report writing.
• Work with Service/Product Managers to devise appropriate research strategies to generate focused insights and to convert concepts into high‑quality stimulus material; work closely with designers, business analysts and software developers to turn user data into actionable user stories that influence product/service direction and prototype development.

• Proven experience of using a variety of usability testing methodologies to reveal actionable customer insights and gather user needs for web‑based services.
• Proven experience of creating research strategies/approaches.
• Proven experience of facilitating workshops.
• Excellent analytical and problem‑solving skills, and the ability to quickly develop recommendations based on quantitative evidence.
• Confident in explaining user needs to senior civil servants and acting as a department at large.
• Extensive knowledge of human factors, ethnography and the user‑centred design process for environment.
• Demonstrable knowledge, experience in and passion for user‑centred design practices.
• Proven experience of audience modelling and developing design personas, with experience across web content, tools and transactional services, especially those with complex user journeys (involving development of a logical sequence of steps to complete transactions).
• Comfortable working with data from gathering and analysis through to design and presentation.
• Comfortable in the capacity of mentor for other user researchers.