User Experience Research Lead

Job Description:

Scope Of Services

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.

Tasks:

• Understand challenges that New Yorkers experience through qualitative and quantitative user research to help define opportunities where the City of New York 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/Experience

• 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/experience:

The successful candidate should possess the following:

• 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