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- Use design research to understand user behaviours, needs, & motivations
- Use qualitative and quantitative user research methods
- Become head of user experience or research
As a user researcher you will be focused on understanding user behaviours, needs, and motivations through observation techniques, task analysis, and other feedback methodologies.
DAY-TO-DAY DUTIES
- Planning and designing user research testing sessions to support the design and development of digital services
- Recruiting users for testing sessions and carrying out research
- Using research results to communicate ideas and decide product or service needs and design direction
- Anticipating interaction problems
- Helping colleagues understand user behaviours
- Presenting user insights to project stakeholders at all levels
DAY-TO-DAY ENVIRONMENT
You could work in an office, at a client's business or from home. You could spend time travelling to conduct user research.
You'll need
This role would be ideal for someone who is interested in how people interact with websites, software, applications and physical products. This role requires the use of analytical thinking skills, the ability to use your initiative & excellent verbal communication skills.
There are no set entry requirements for this role.
You can do a foundation degree, higher national diploma or degree in psychology, human computer interaction (HCI), digital marketing, product design or graphic design.
You could apply for a place on a user research or marketing company's graduate training scheme if you have a degree, for example in digital marketing or product design.
If you do not have a relevant degree, you'll need some work experience. You could get this by volunteering to help at user research sessions. You could also get involved in the online user experience (UX) community and find a mentor to help you.
You can apply directly to user research or digital design companies, or go through an agency that specialises in providing user researcher professionals to clients. To apply, you'll need experience in user-centred design practices for web, service or software development, running user research sessions in person and online, user needs for web content, tools and transactional services, designing and analysing a wide range of qualitative and quantitative user research methods and presenting user research findings in different formats.
It will be useful if you have experience of working in agile project development. It will also help if you have a portfolio to show examples of your work to employers.
CAREER PROSPECTS
With experience you could move into a management role and supervise less experienced UX researchers. You could also work on larger, more complicated projects as a head of user experience or research. You could also move into a business analyst or product design role.