Senior User Researcher

Made Tech Group; Manchester; Hybrid; GBP 60,000 - 90,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

30 days holiday and bank holidays

Flexible working hours

Remote working (part-time)

Paid counselling

Cycle to work

Job summary

Made Tech is seeking a Senior User Researcher to partner with multidisciplinary teams and ensure research informs the end-to-end design of public services. You will lead and conduct user research, advocate for user insights, and collaborate with data and tech teams to improve service delivery.

You will work within a design-led community, applying qualitative and quantitative methods, while adhering to GDPR and industry standards.

Qualifications

• Experienced in user centred, lean and agile research methodologies including usability testing.
• Contextual enquiry and rapid research to inform design decisions.
• Measurable and evaluative research with a focus on accessibility and inclusive design.

Responsibilities

• Act as the research subject matter expert on a multidisciplinary team, facilitating the end-to-end research process and communicating research decisions to the team and stakeholders
• Scope the focus of research to align on what success looks like
• Choose qualitative and quantitative methods for research projects
• Work as a solo researcher within a multidisciplinary team on client deliveries
• Advocate for user research within the project delivery and with stakeholders
• Plan research that informs the design of public services that are usable and successful
• Analyze and interpret findings to inform decisions
• Present findings in show-and-tell sessions and key meetings
• Build relationships with stakeholders and keep them updated on progress
• Drive decisions based on research insights

Skills

User research

Usability testing

Contextual enquiry

Rapid research

Evaluative research

Accessibility

Inclusive design

Stakeholder communication

GDPR awareness

Research leadership

Job description

Made Tech wants to positively impact the country's future by using technology to improve society. We believe being design-led can create positive outcomes in the public sector through critical services enabled by technology. We are building a community of designers and researchers to support the public sector growing demand for a design-led approach to service delivery.

Senior User Researchers are experienced practitioners who are confident at working with UCD colleagues and professions outside of our service line such as the Data & tech teams. They collaborate with these teams to understand challenges people face when using public services.

They do this by conducting user research through employing the use of qualitative / quantitative methodologies with real people, ensuring what their team is learning in research informs the end-to-end design of a chosen

Key Responsibilities

• Acts as the research subject matter expert on a multidisciplinary team, facilitating the end-to-end research process and communicating research decisions to the team and stakeholders
• Scope the focus of research, so everyone involved has a shared understanding of what success looks like
• Comfortable in selecting the most appropriate qualitative / quantitative research methods when designing a research project
• Able to work as a solo researcher within a multidisciplinary team on client deliveries
• Advocating for user research within the project delivery and with stakeholders
• Plan research that informs the design of public services that are helpful, usable and successful
• Understands and help teams to apply a range of methods to analyse research data and synthesise findings
• Creates compelling and actionable insights which are suited to the research development phase
• Identifies key project stakeholders, builds relationships and works with them regularly to include and update on the progress of research
• Presenting findings in 'show & tells' / in key meetings to project delivery team and key stakeholders
• Analyse and interpret research findings so that teams can confidently confirm or challenge their understandings of problems and ideas
• Advocates for teams to make decisions based on research findings

Skills, Knowledge & Expertise

Practice

• Experienced in user centred, lean and agile research methodologies including:
• Usability testing
• Contextual enquiry
• Rapid research
• Measurable and evaluative research
• Accessibility and inclusive design
• Understands and adheres to Made Tech's research standards, the MRS code of practice and GDPR
• Provide clear and informative communications with research participants, including sharing GDPR policies

Community

• Support the hiring and onboarding of researchers
• Help define Made Tech design principles through delivering good public services
• Represent the community publicly and internally
• Contributes to communities of practice by discussing, sharing suggestions, approaches, ideas and sharing best practice
• Takes a proactive approach to learning (e.g. new research methods / analysis techniques) and shares knowledge back to the UR community.
• Proactively seeking feedback on own work and providing constructive feedback to colleagues
• Desirable: Skills in either Service Design, Content Design, Interaction design.

Key measures

• Delivery of good public services for users with clients
• Case studies of how to design and deliver good public services and outcomes
• Growth and happiness of the UCD community at Made Tech
• Client Focus
• Drive to DeliverLearning and Mentoring
• Experienced in their Profession
• Facilitation

We are always listening to our growing teams and evolving the benefits available to our people. As we scale, as do our benefits and we are scaling quickly. We've recently introduced a flexible benefit platform which includes a Smart Tech scheme, Cycle to work scheme, and an individual benefits allowance which you can invest in a Health care cash plan or Pension plan. We're also big on connection and have an optional social and wellbeing calendar of events for all employees to join should they choose to.

Here are some of our most popular benefits listed below:

• 30 days Holiday - we offer 30 days of paid annual leave plus bank holidays
• Flexible Working Hours - we are flexible with what hours you work
• Flexible Parental Leave - we offer flexible parental leave options
• Remote Working - we offer part time remote working for all our staff
• Paid counselling - we offer paid counselling as well as financial and legal advice

If successful, you will be required to undertake an SC clearance