User Experience Research Lead

The User Experience Research Lead is a strategic leader who advocates for user-driven and evidence-based digital experiences for New Yorkers.

• This position will report to the Chief Digital Strategy Officer to improve the digital experience for New Yorkers.
• The User Researcher aims to understand user behaviours, needs, motivations, and preferences. This role will provide the team insights through various research methods to inform product decisions and create user-centered products and services.

Duties and Responsibilities:

• Understand challenges that New Yorkers experience through qualitative and quantitative user research to help define opportunities where the end-client can meet those needs by generating hypotheses, prototypes and evidence
• Develop and execute a User Experience Research toolkit that defines the best testing methodologies for different product phases (discovery, definition, testing and monitoring)
• Plan, gather, and analyze, insights about users through new studies and review of existing data
• Compile finished, well-documented research findings to deliver meaningful and actionable insights for stakeholders
• Own UX research and run multiple streams of work at one time

Mandatory Skills and Experience:

The successful candidate should possess the following:

• Expertise conducting unbiased generative research through competitive analysis, heuristic reviews, user interviews, stakeholder interviews, diary and field studies
• Expertise with testing methodologies to define and test a user problem such as task analysis, prototype testing, card sorting etc.
• Expertise conducting unbiased usability testing, A/B and multivariate testing analysing results with statistically sound methodologies
• Experience recruiting users that align with required demographic and behavioural profiles
• Nurture a culture of exploring creative solutions that prioritize the best digital experience for New Yorkers that is informed by strategy, user evidence, analytics and competitive research
• Demonstrate high design standards and inclusion to build a diverse, high-performing team, and actively reach out to diverse communities of digital talent to source prospective candidates
• Inspire City partners and colleagues to anchor their work in human-centered design, user research methodologies and evidence-based solutioning

Desirable skills and experience:

• 10+ years of experience conducting user research through all product design phases
• Strong analytical skills with ability to interpret and identify valid patterns and trends
• Understanding of statistical principles to evaluate data
• Experience working in cross-disciplinary teams of product, engineer and data experts to deliver products and services that improve user's experience and organizational goals, on time
• Expertise in driving user research from planning to conducting research with users with an extensive knowledge of research methodologies
• Strong communication skills with the ability to articulate design concepts and strategies in plain language to partners and cross-functional team
• Exemplifies diversity, equity and inclusion work in design practice and past projects

Expertise and use of methodologies that prevent research pitfalls:

• Over generalizing results
• Biased methodology or conclusions
• Correlation does not imply causation
• Not considering other related factors
• Not understanding or validating data sources