Viva Usability Researcher

Job#: 3052091

Job Description:

Viva Usability Researcher

Location: REDMOND, Washington (Remote)

Pay: $59.00-$65.00

Role Overview

This role involves creating and driving plans for research studies for a specific feature area or service. The Usability Researcher will apply various research methods, synthesize data into actionable insights, and collaborate with cross-disciplinary teams. The position focuses on identifying customer context, contributing to solution formation, and ensuring product quality through iterative research and user experience checkpoints.

Key Responsibilities

• Create and drive plans and roadmaps for research studies and programs with direction from management.
• Apply and guide research methods for effective execution and distill data into actionable insights.
• Share insights to activate design and engineering processes, communicating effectively to influence product direction.
• Collaborate with cross-disciplinary teams on research efforts to achieve strong product outcomes.
• Recruit for research programs, review data collection instruments, and ensure privacy and security compliance.
• Apply experience checkpoints and use iterative research to improve user experiences.
• Conduct research to identify customer needs and journeys, informing product strategy.
• Produce research-driven insights on industry trends to reduce uncertainty for future initiatives.

Required Qualifications

Education: [Preferred] Doctorate in Human-Computer Interaction, Human Factors Engineering, Computer Science, Technical Communications, Information Science, Information Architecture, User Experience Design, Behavioral Science, Social Sciences, or related field AND 2+ years user experience research experience

OR

Master's Degree in Human-Computer Interaction, Human Factors Engineering, Computer Science, Technical Communications, Information Science, Information Architecture, User Experience Design, Behavioral Science, Social Sciences, or related field AND 3+ years user experience research experience

OR

Bachelor's Degree in Human-Computer Interaction, Human Factors Engineering, Computer Science, Technical Communications, Information Science, Information Architecture, User Experience Design, Behavioral Science, Social Sciences, or related field AND 5+ years user experience research experience OR equivalent experience.

1+ year(s) relevant domain experience within technology sector.

1+ year(s) experience in research methods impacting both product direction and detailed experience design.

Experience: 1+ year(s) of relevant domain experience within the technology sector and 1+ year(s) of experience in research methods impacting both product direction and detailed experience design.

Technical Skills: Proficiency in qualitative and quantitative research, user acceptance testing, data analysis, and user-centered design principles.

Preferred Qualifications

• A Doctorate in Human-Computer Interaction, Human Factors Engineering, Computer Science, or a related field AND 2+ years of user experience research experience.
• A Master's Degree in Human-Computer Interaction, Human Factors Engineering, Computer Science, or a related field AND 3+ years of user experience research experience.
• A Bachelor's Degree in Human-Computer Interaction, Human Factors Engineering, Computer Science, or a related field AND 5+ years of user experience research experience.

Additional Information

Cross-disciplinary Activation

• Collaborates with others for cross-disciplinary research efforts resulting in strong product outcomes.
• Educates and mentors other disciplines on the value of research and importance of rigor, and methodology, etc.
• Models techniques with teams to be able to help less experienced team members.
• Begins to coach partners on secure UX and participates in security learning series.
• Recruits for programs and participation in research for a feature area.
• Reviews data collection instruments (e.g., surveys, interview scripts), ensuring privacy and security compliance of instruments.
• Assists in planning, coordinating, and executing larger scale customer learning events as requested by the project manager/lead.
• Reviews customer engagement content and makes recommendations to improve and to increase product team learning and customer good will.
• Develops recruitment screeners to leverage for research programs.
• Works within team to align plans with privacy and security requirements.
• Removes PII from results reports with minimal supervision.
• Provides effective tools and templates for product makers to capture their assumptions and express them as testable hypotheses.
• Provides reference question libraries/templates product makers to draw from when creating discussion guides for their research.
• Provides customer correspondence templates for product makers.
• Integrates tools that enforce security principles with minimal supervision.
• Collaborates with team to create well-formed user experience goals, signals, metrics, and criteria for a product.
• Uses instruments for measuring user experience health and drives effective deployment and ongoing utilization within their product teams.
• Integrates security UX key performance indicators (KPIs) where applicable.

Product Applications

• Applies experience check points to ensure accountability of product quality before going to the customer.
• Applies a combination of user experience testing methodologies to distill continuous improvement insights and to trigger product or experience direction pivots when appropriate.
• Improves user experiences through continuous iterative research processes for a feature area, product, product line, or service, while beginning to advocate for security-first considerations in design improvements that make secure paths intuitive and minimize friction that could lead to insecure workarounds.
• Conducts iterative research with cross-disciplinary product teams in a lean, continuous, collaborative, and co-experienced manner.
• Uses readily available customer feedback to augment research insights (e.g., in product surveys, crash reports, social media, Net Promoter Score [NPS], System Usability Scale [SUS]).
• Begins to conduct research that identifies and clarifies who the customer is and the critical parts of their context in order to inform product strategy for a feature area, product, product line, or service(s) and user experience direction.
• Develops customers insights into a target customer profile or description.
• Conducts research to identify and understand key customer needs (e.g., Jobs To Be Done) and journeys for a feature area, product, product line, or service(s).
• Produces research-driven insights on industry/vertical trends to reduce uncertainty for conditions that may impact future initiatives supporting a feature area, product, product line, or service.
• Assesses user insights along user journey from awareness, through adoption, and retention, for a feature area, product, product line, or service and addresses different parts of the funnel as appropriate. Leverages both quantitative and qualitative data to develop user journey insights. Develops audience understanding and customer value through mixed methods research. Integrates security considerations (e.g., trust, compliance, data handling) into adoption and product led growth research.
• Contributes to the formation of the solution for a feature area, product, product line, or service by partnering with product management, design, and engineering. Collaborates with others on generative research to determine what solutions or concepts should be used, helping integrate security as a fundamental aspect of the solution development. Addresses business needs while making a business case for the research to product team leader. Focuses more heavily on identifying customer problems to lead to a solution rather than validating a solution in search of a customer problem.

Research Core Work

• Shares insights in order to activate design and engineering processes from insights for a feature area, product, product line, or service(s).
• Creates and/or applies communication methods that promote an emotional connection to a customer, and conveys real user stories that reveal customer insights.
• Creates a common understanding of usage, reaction, feedback, or needs for a defined feature area, product, product line, or service(s).
• Communicates insights to effectively influence product direction with relevant stakeholders that impact business, while starting to emphasize the importance of security-by-default in user experiences and product designs.
• Applies appropriate sensitivity labels and role-based access to deliverables and meetings with minimal supervision.
• Uses sense-making/analysis to synthesize and distill data for a feature area, product, product line, or service(s) into actionable insights with guidance from UX Research management.
• Reviews and analyzes quantitative and/or qualitative data to draw conclusions for a feature area, product, product line, or service(s).
• Contributes to quantifying where usability drives insecure choices.
• Within the research practice, performs data minimization and personally identifiable information (PII) risk checks with minimal supervision.
• Applies research methods for effective execution of a feature area, product, product line, or service(s) with guidance from UX Management.
• Guides multi-person research efforts resulting in strong product outcomes for a feature area, product, product line, or service.
• Leverages approved and secure tools and may supports security-focused heuristic evaluations as instructed.
• Encrypts recordings and datasets with minimal guidance.
• Creates and drives plans and roadmaps for research studies and/or programs for a feature area, product, product line, or service(s) with direction from product team or UX Research management
• Defines and scopes problems for an end-to-end research plan with clear success criteria aligned with business needs for a product.
• Conducts discovery on research and other data sources that has already been done in order to inform the plan.
• Select appropriate research methodology based upon research goals utilizing mixed methods approaches.
• Plans the research to include Diversity, Inclusion (D&I) and accessibility principles, and security-first focus.
• Contributes to implementing secure-by-design principles and practices in study plans.

Skills:

• English language proficiency, clearm accurate and understandable oral and written communication, presentations, research writing
• Qualitative and quantitative research, quality assurance, user acceptance testing, user scenario creation and application
• Analytical thinking, analytical skills, data analysis, data application, problem solving and translation of insights
• Collaborative innovation, conflict resolution, distillation of results, industry trends, stakeholder management
• Decision making, outcome driven innovation, project management, project visioning, scope management
• Creativity, interaction design, user experience, user interface design, user-centered design

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