UX Design Researcher

We’re on the hunt for an experienced Design Researcher, and are looking to hire individuals who do more than research, but also love the human-centred aspects of creating great products. At IE we want to employ people who are as passionate in their lives as they are about their work.

About us 

IE (the Innovation and Experience company) is a full-service digital consultancy accelerating digital transformation for some of Australia's most successful businesses (take a look at our website for some recent work). Headquartered in Melbourne, IE employs 85+ people (plus a few furry friends) who work in cross-functional teams to innovate and deliver outcomes powered by design thinking and agile delivery.

We are a flexible business that trusts our team members to deliver work in the best possible way to get the best client outcomes. We are committed to a work environment that is curious, innovative, diverse, and thoughtful, and that gives our team members every opportunity to grow. This means autonomy in your work (with a supportive team around you) and the ability to structure your workday in a way that suits your needs - so long as the client’s needs remain paramount.

Who do we want as a Design Researcher at IE?

The successful candidate will become part of a cross-functional customer experience team working alongside designers, developers, business analysts, project managers, and analytics experts. 

Things we’re looking for: 

• Creativity - We hire people not robots! At IE, creativity is key to solving our clients’ problems whether through engaging with audiences in new ways, finding opportunities to improve the customer experience, working with your team members to solve problems. 
• Enthusiasm - We understand that introverts and extroverts display it differently. What we value are colleagues who want to be involved and take part in solving problems.
• Curiosity - We want to work with people who can put themselves in the customers' shoes. At IE, we are always curious about the audience, and strive to speak their language. 
• Growth mindset - We are looking for someone who is eager to learn. There is no predetermined path for innovation, so capacity to learn as we grow is a critical skill.

• Attention to detail - You care about the customer experience, and know that even the smallest things can make the biggest difference to someone’s experience online.  

About the Design Researcher role

You will be a part of a multidisciplinary team made up of both IE and client team members. As a member of this team you will work to transform and create the client's new POS system. You will need to be able to apply both UX and design research skills to translate complex processes and make them simple and scalable across a raft of systems.

The successful candidate will have a broad range of research and UX-based skills including: 

• A minimum of 3 to 5 years of qualitative research experience with a proven ability to scope research, lead fieldwork, conduct interviews, perform desktop research, lead synthesis and communicate findings to stakeholders.
• Experience recruiting participants for research.
• Ability to synthesise research findings and to uncover and articulate insights that will inform and inspire design.
• Ability to shape and lead strategic, systems thinking based upon insights gathered through research. 
• Ability to monitor and compare research insights over time, and keep track of changes in user behaviours, reactions and perceptions in an actionable scientific way.
• Exceptional communication and storytelling skills; fluency and confidence in inspiring teammates and partners with user-driven rationale.
• Ability to work flexibly and efficiently, exercising a balance between research rigour and speed; we are looking for people who can maintain a high degree of rigour throughout, but who also experiment in their approach and methodology.
• Experience using technology and digital methods to uncover needs (e.g.: experience conducting online ethnography, implementing remote user studies, moderating/monitoring online communities, collaborating with developers to build web or digital prototypes to gather feedback, etc.).
• You love working on teams and share IE’s  passion to evangelise  human-centered design.
• Proven experience in managing relationships and co-designing solutions with stakeholders.
• Ability to work with multiple disciplines within IE and with clients (Data, Engineering, UX/CX, and Marketing) and great teamwork skills are fundamental to how we deliver successful projects.
• Ability to work collaboratively as part of an Agile team and participate in Agile ceremonies.

Day-to-day responsibilities will include:

• Conduct a review of existing reports and experiments undertaken by various experts for the client — to come to a point of view around what we know and where we still have questions.
• Analyse existing data that underlies the most robust research on POS systems
• Structure human-centered research and leading the internal and partner teams through fieldwork, analysis of findings and insight development.
• Connect key insights to design and collaborate with teammates to create digital tools to improve the POS system.
• Create deliverables, reports, presentations, and/or videos to document and bring to life insights in an engaging and inspiring way.

Why Us?

We’re an innovative workplace where your ideas matter and we strive to create a supportive environment to make that happen. We mean it when we say there should be work-life balance and we offer a range of benefits to support this, such as:

• Flexible and remote working - we care about effective work versus clock watching
• Plenty of learning and development opportunities - conferences, meetups, subscriptions, public speaking, hackathons, courses, lunch and learns, agile accreditations, university support, study leave, you name it. 
• An active social committee - for the family person, the gaming person, the social person.