As a Senior User Researcher, you will be working autonomously to lead user research activities including recruitment, preparing research materials, conducting research using a range of methods and analysis; your responsibilities include:
- Focus on leading and doing user research for complex and high profile agile projects, programmes and/or portfolios of work.
- Leading on planning, recruiting and conducting user research for new data product testing, including playing back user research to stakeholders and digital teams.
- Be a knowledge expert in the user research field and lead on user research and strategic issues, through effective planning, implementation and review.
- Working with user researchers and service managers to develop and advocate appropriate research strategies to understand user needs for a service, and to continually test and improve the service.
- Foster a culture of team involvement in user research, team analysis, design rationale and decision making based on user needs
- Managing and mentoring other user centred design staff to ensure quality of research, and drive improvements in practice.
- Planning, designing, preparing and running user research activities to support the design, development and continuous improvement of digital government services (including contextual discovery, experience mapping, diary studies, early stage concept and prototype testing, lab based and contextual usability and accessibility testing).
- Designing and running contextual and discovery research to develop a deep understanding of the needs of all users of a service.
- Managing the usability and accessibility testing process from recruiting participants, designing test tasks, and preparing discussion guides, to test moderation, analysis and presenting results.
- Designing, executing and analysing quantitative surveys.
- Leading colleagues to analyse research data and synthesis findings so that research is shareable and traceable.
- Understanding the service problem then aligning user research activities to influence and support decision-making.
- Effectively communicating user research findings to the team and the wider organisation, so that they share a strong and empathetic understanding of their users (including presentations at show and tells, designing and maintaining research outputs on the team wall, formal reports)
- Working closely with designers and developers to turn user research findings into stories and actions that lead to valuable product and service features.
- Working closely with analytics colleagues to define user centred KPIs, to create a rich picture of user behaviour to tell the full story of how and why people use our services
PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT
- Identify, discuss and action own professional performance and training / development needs with your line manager through appraisal / individual development plan. Attending internal / external training events
- To participate in all mandatory training as required, i.e. fire safety, information governance and all other mandatory training.
STAKEHOLDER MANAGEMENT
The post holder will develop working relationships and communicate regularly with a wide range of individuals, clinical and non-clinical, internal and external to UKHSA. This will include;
Internal Stakeholders
- Staff across all disciplines and at all levels within the DA&S Data Operations Directorate
- Senior management across all UKHSA directorates
- Staff in the Customer Comms & Innovation and Technology groups
- Executive Directors across UKHSA
- Leadership Teams
- Matrix UKHSA Directorate leads for Programme Management, Communications, Engagements, and Strategy & Planning
External Stakeholders
- Department of Health and Social Care
- Secretary of State and Cabinet Office
- NHS England & Improvement
- NHS Digital
- ONS
- HSCIC
- Other Government Departments
- Commercial Organisations
- Third Sector Organisations
- Members of the public
Essential Criteria
- Demonstrable knowledge, experience in and passion for user centred design practices for web, service or software development
- Educated to degree level in relevant subject or equivalent level of experience of working at a similar level
- Experience of understanding user needs for web content, tools and transactional services, especially those with the most complex user journeys
- Experience of designing, facilitating and analysing a wide range of qualitative and quantitative user research methods
- Experience of advocating for user research and engaging sceptical colleagues and stakeholders
- Experience of presenting user research findings in a wide variety of formats and contexts
- Experience introducing and establishing user research practices in an organisation
- Experience of working in an agile development environment with designers and developers and product managers to create new digital services
- Strong understanding of strengths and limitations of different research methods
- Ability to turn research data into clear findings that inform decisions
- Knowledge of the technologies used to build and operate digital services
- Ability to manage your own workload with limited supervision
- Ability to understand complex problems a team is trying to solve. Align user research activities to inform decision-making and action.
- Experience in line management
- An understanding of and commitment to equality of opportunity and good working relationships.
Desirable Criteria
- Previous experience within government services
- Degree in User Centred Design, Cognitive Psychology or related field
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