Senior User Researcher

Senior User Experience Researcher

Department             Digital Services/Digital Archiving

Reports to                User Research Manager/Service Owner

Line manages           User Experience Researcher

Band                       Band F

Location                   The National Archives, Kew - hybrid working

Job Purpose

The Digital Services & Digital Archiving departments at The National Archives are committed to delivering high quality, innovative and user-friendly digital services, such as our website and online catalogue, as well as services that preserve and provide enhanced access to the Nation’s digital heritage. We are determined to avoid building technologically perfect services that are under-used. We want to test our assumptions thoroughly and regularly with our users, both public and within the civil service, so that we develop services in line with the needs of these users and ultimately attract new and more diverse audiences to our collections.

We’re currently looking for an enthusiastic senior user researcher to become a leader in our growing user-centred design community. Playing a lead role in a multi-disciplinary team you will deliver products that will enable users to better access The National Archives collections, help build our digital brand and fulfil our ambition to become a 21^st century archive.

We are undertaking several digital transformation projects and understanding our users and creatively thinking about how they interact with our services is central to this work. This role requires a deep understanding of usability and accessibility practices and excellent knowledge and experience of deploying a variety of user research methods, knowing when and how they should be applied throughout the development lifecycle.

Being able to confidently analyse and evaluate research findings to reveal actionable insights and recommendations will help us to build a rich picture of our users and their requirements so that together we can transform our digital services for the benefit of our users, ensuring the archive remains relevant and continues to bring value to the nation.

Role and Responsibilities

Playing a lead role in an agile multi-disciplinary product team you will:

• Lead, communicate, and collaborate effectively within the product team to ensure all work is solidly grounded in user research and evidence.
• Use your extensive knowledge and experience of the range of qualitative and quantitative user research techniques to deploy the best method to gather evidence from a wide cross-section of user groups and stakeholders to gain the best understanding of user needs and requirements. 
• Lead the analysis and synthesis of user research findings and recommend the best approach to take to ensure our digital services are innovative and inclusive for everyone.
• Lead the communication of user research processes and present outcomes to stakeholders and colleagues in other teams in clear, interesting and engaging ways, and broker discussions to find the best way forward.
• Co-ordinate and maintain a thorough overview of workflows, research documentation and design artefacts so that user research ties in at the right times with the wider strategy and service roadmaps.
• Building on your understanding of how people experience and interact with digital services, help drive demonstrable improvement of user experience on site and online.
• Ensure that the designing and planning of in-house user research and analysis is timely and meets the design/development objectives ensuring that users of all abilities and experience can use our services. 
• Be a strong advocate of user-centred design practice, and enthusiastic about sharing your and your team's expertise throughout the department, and the business.
• Line manage, train, mentor and develop user experience researcher(s).

Working Conditions

• Normal office environment
• Display Screen Equipment user

Person Specification

Essential

• Expert knowledge and experience in user-centred design for websites, digital services, or software development, with experience of applying user research to all the cycles of development (Alpha, Beta, Live).
• A thorough understanding of the strengths and limitations of different research methods, both quantitative and qualitative, and the confidence to deploy these appropriately.
• Strong communication and interpersonal skills, able to train user researchers and lead sessions with users in an open, engaging and sensitive manner.
• Experience of applying accessibility guidelines for government services and knowledge of how to deploy user research so that services are inclusive, useable and accessible for everyone.
• Strong critical thinking, analytical skills and a demonstrable ability to collate, synthesise and present user research findings in a creative, clear, rational way that is easy for colleagues in different teams to interpret and contribute to.
• You will be an advocate for user-centred design, have a passion for sharing best practice, documenting user research, and sharing outcomes with others in the user-research discipline both internally and externally, e.g. via Show and Tells and at cross-government DDAT (Digital Data and Technology Profession) events.
• Ability to lead and collaborate effectively within an agile multidisciplinary team as well as with the wider business, demonstrating resilience and creativity to show how understanding user behaviour and user needs can improve digital services and influencing colleagues to ensure user research and user testing is properly embedded in development cycles.
• Use your awareness of the technologies used to build and operate digital services to collaborate with designers and developers to understand the technology options available to best meet user needs and keep product development on track.

Desirable:

• Qualification in Human Computer Interaction, or a similar discipline.
• Experience of building digital services within the heritage sector and/or within UK government departments.

Other Requirements

• Must be willing to travel occasionally for user research

We are an equal opportunities employer, welcoming applications from all sections of the community and from people of diverse ages, experience and backgrounds, including people with disabilities. We are keen to explore the widest possible pool of talent for all our roles. Applications for part-time working will be considered.