Senior UX Researcher

About the role

We are looking for a Senior UX Researcher to help us raise the next $10 billion for charity by informing the product strategy and user experience vision through impactful user insights. This role will focus on the Consumer/Donor Experience, and will take on a high level of responsibility across a variety of complex projects and user journeys. We are looking for someone with holistic systems thinking, who will help prioritize research across the organization, develop research processes and methods adopted by the team, drive collation of insights that come from other teams such as Partner Success, Marketing, Sales, Product, and Data, conduct generative and evaluative research, and evangelize crisp findings and insights to drive the product roadmap. 

We’ve recently brought on board our Director of Design and are excited to now be investing in the growth of our UX & Product Design team. As one of the first two User Experience Researchers to be hired at FreeWill, you will help shape our collaborative design research practice and product offerings, and establish the value of UX research to the company. You’ll learn a ton about the unique challenges we have in the non-profit transformational giving industry, and work alongside an incredibly talented team of designers, developers, product managers, partner success strategists, and many others in what you will find to be a thoughtful, intentional, joyful culture that cares about people, values work-life balance, and focuses on learning and growth.

To be a great fit, you will be a strong advocate for the voice of the user and unafraid to take on complex problems that engender paradigm shifting ideas. You lead in ambiguity and are a creative systems thinker. You will spearhead the design and delivery of best practice user experience research including framing key questions, creating research plans to address those, conducting research, synthesizing findings into meaningful, actionable insights, communicating them clearly and persuasively, facilitating thoughtful conversations, mentoring cross-functional partners on research best practices, and driving impact across the organization.

This role will report to our Director of UX & Product Design, Sheba Najmi, who reports directly to our co-CEO. 

Responsibilities

• Work highly collaboratively with other departments, employing your strengths in communication and inclusiveness to help create a strong user-focused culture across the company
• Conduct both generative and evaluative user research at all stages from discovery to validation, leveraging your mastery of a wealth of methodologies to conduct qualitative research on your own and to partner with others on quantitative research 
• Know how to perform formal research studies when resources allow, but also be comfortable getting scrappy and finding ways to quickly get an idea in front of users for a gut check, including maintaining rolling participant pools 
• Be deeply in sync with the R&D (design, product, engineering) team’s roadmap so as to proactively identify research opportunities, structure ambiguous problems, and define tasks needed to bring clarity
• Collate, leverage, and share insights from both UX research and a variety of data sources originating from other teams
• Guide product managers, designers, and cross-functional stakeholders in refining their questions and assumptions into clear research goals and learning plans, and providing strong research expertise to ensure we are asking and answering the most strategic questions
• Connect learnings from across the ecosystem to ensure seamless, delightful user experiences that consider horizontal implications
• Work collaboratively with designers to understand constraints and create solution hypotheses for research findings
• Leverage excellent verbal and written communication and presentation skills to tell a clear, concise, well-organized, and inspiring story of the research that brings insights and strategy to life
• Advocate for user needs in internal discussions, design critiques, and project meetings, and demonstrate leadership qualities that enable you to build consensus and drive alignment
• Educate cross-functional teams on quality research and scale community knowledge around research methods and practices, including creating a library of user research templates and patterns for use by the group and others
• Actively monitor and analyze research, data, and trends from internal sources and industry reports to inform and improve our approach
• Create energy and investment in research by sharing early and often
• Leverage analytics tools and quantitative techniques to measure success, present opportunities, and support decision-making and prioritization

Required Skills and Experience

• 5+ years as a hands-on user experience researcher (some of which could be as a market researcher)
• Bachelor’s degree in a relevant field (Psychology, Cognitive Science, Human Factors, Human Computer Interaction, Anthropology, Sociology, Behavioral Economics...), or equivalent practical experience
• Hands-on experience using a wealth of research methodologies (concept and usability testing, interviews, ethnographic observations, participatory design, card sorting, diary studies, RITE studies, surveys, etc.)
• Experience with storytelling styles and delivery mechanisms, storytelling with data and visualizations
• Experience with managing a complex workload and prioritizing in accordance with business priorities in a self-directed and efficient manner
• Experience guiding teams to employ the best research methods for the problem
• Excellent written and verbal communication and presentation skills, including skillful facilitation of stakeholder discussions and workshops 
• Experience creating quality deliverables that clearly and persuasively communicate the UX strategy, including research plans and protocols, crisp research findings, personas, and journey maps
• Solid experience with both generative and evaluative research
• Skillful moderation, ability to get to the root cause of issues and understand users’ mental models through deep inquiry, adaptation, and working off script to explore the most meaningful information