Senior User Researcher

Senior User Researcher - 6-Week Contract - £500 per day - Outside IR35 - Immediate Start

After a last mintue drop out, one of our key clients is looking for an experienced User Researcher to support them on a critical government project.

The client is looking for an empathetic, proactive, and experienced Senior User Researcher to lead on planning and conducting research activities to understand user needs, motivations, and behaviours, as well as organisational goals, processes and policies.

Your research will be key to supporting the wider team to develop simple and intuitive services/products, based on a deep, shared understanding of user and organisation needs. Your research will also inform strategy and policy decisions.

You'll also be responsible for coaching and mentoring colleagues and clients, supporting recruitment into the client's Design team, planning their approach to new business opportunities, and helping to develop our Design community of practice.

Essential Skills & Experience

• Leading on the research approach for projects, understanding strategic priorities and identifying knowledge gaps. Selecting the most appropriate methods and considering constraints around time, budget, and recruitment
• Conducting research within a fast-paced, agile delivery environment, as part of a multidisciplinary team working with designers, business analysts and product managers (among other roles)
• Conducting research to inform the design of digital products or services
• Facilitating discovery research with users and stakeholders, using methods such as interviews, surveys, and observation
• Facilitating evaluative research to assess the suitability and usability of proposed solutions, using methods such as usability testing and diary studies
• Passionate about ensuring your research approach is inclusive, recruiting diverse participants and considering the needs of people with low digital skills and disabilities when planning and facilitating research
• Ensuring your research is ethical and respects users' privacy, adhering to GDPR
• Analysing findings from a wide range of research activity, synthesising large amounts of potentially conflicting information to produce clear and actionable insights for the team
• Producing high quality outputs to help communicate your research findings, such as (but not limited to) personas, user needs, journey maps and findings reports
• Excellent communication skills, sharing insights and rationale with all levels of stakeholders in a clear, compelling, and engaging manner, advocating for user needs and the value of user-centred design
• An understanding of the Government Service Standard and how to apply the principles in your role
• Confident in managing the expectations of multiple stakeholders of varying seniority levels, and using your influencing skills to achieve the best outcomes for users and the business
• Mentoring, coaching and upskilling team members and clients in user research methods and ways of working
• Comfortable working remotely, and willing to travel to client sites when needed

Desirable Skills & Experience

• Experience of working on complex government services, delivering to the Government or NHS Service Standards (ideally including representing User Research at Government service assessments)
• Experience of working in and navigating multi-stakeholder environments
• Experience of working as the sole User Researcher on a multidisciplinary team, owning the entire end-to-end research process
• Experience of working in a holistic service design environment, conducting research with both external users and internal staff/stakeholders to inform the design of an end-to-end service
• Experience or skills in other areas of user-centred design, such as UX, Service Design or Content Design, to support the wider team where needed
• Experience of planning and facilitating workshops with stakeholders or users to gather information, align teams and move projects forward
• Experience of line managing junior or midweight user researchers, managing performance and professional development

Values & Behaviours

• Inclusive in your approach to research, ensuring your participants represent society, including users with accessibility needs and people from different social, cultural and economic backgrounds
• Passion and empathy for user needs, building rapport and making research participants comfortable to get the best from your sessions
• Confident taking the lead, able to motivate and coordinate others, influence stakeholders, and make good decisions
• Proactive and take ownership of your work, knowing what needs to be done and delivering to a high standard
• Ensure we're solving the right problems for our clients and users, and have a positive and solution-focused mindset
• Collaborate and build strong relationships with team members and stakeholders, combining your expertise to co-design the best solution for the user and the organisation
• Work openly and transparently, encouraging your team to participate in research activity and actively sharing learnings with your peers and client teams through communities of practice, Lunch and Learns, and blogs or podcasts
• Comfortable managing competing priorities and requests, and delivering at pace
• Approach your research with curiosity, focus and attention to detail
• Self-starter, keen to learn and develop

Apply ASAP as applications are being considered this evening & tomorrow.