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Key Responsibilities and Required Skills for Usability Manager

💰 $90,000 - $140,000

User ExperienceUXUsabilityProduct DesignResearch

🎯 Role Definition

The Usability Manager owns the usability and user research function for product lines, designing and executing qualitative and quantitative research programs that drive product decisions, improve task success, and optimize overall user satisfaction and accessibility. This role manages cross-functional stakeholder relationships, mentors UX researchers and designers, establishes repeatable testing processes, and translates research insights into prioritized design recommendations and product roadmaps.

📈 Career Progression

Typical Career Path

Entry Point From:

  • Senior UX Researcher
  • Senior UX Designer with research leadership experience
  • Product Design Lead focused on user research and testing

Advancement To:

  • Head of UX / Director of UX Research
  • Senior Product Design Leader / VP of Product Design
  • Chief Experience Officer (CXO)

Lateral Moves:

  • Product Management (user-centered product leadership)
  • Customer Experience (CX) leadership
  • Design Operations / UX Strategy

Core Responsibilities

Primary Functions

  • Lead and operationalize a centralized usability program that plans, executes, and scales both moderated and unmoderated usability testing across web and mobile products to inform strategic product decisions.
  • Define and own the usability testing roadmap, prioritizing research efforts based on product impact, user pain points, business goals, and technical feasibility.
  • Design and run mixed-methods research plans (usability tests, ethnographic studies, contextual inquiries, surveys, diary studies) to surface user needs, behavior patterns, and actionable design recommendations.
  • Recruit, train and manage a team of UX researchers and usability testers, providing career coaching, performance feedback, and professional development to build research capability across the organization.
  • Synthesize qualitative findings and quantitative analytics into clear, story-driven deliverables (personas, journey maps, usability reports, actionable recommendations) that influence product roadmaps and design decisions.
  • Establish standardized usability metrics (task success, time on task, SUS, NPS, error rate) and dashboards to track improvements over time and tie usability outcomes to business KPIs.
  • Collaborate with product managers, design leads, engineers and analytics teams to translate research insights into prioritized product requirements, acceptance criteria and A/B test hypotheses.
  • Create repeatable templates, test scripts, recruitment screener guides, and remote testing protocols that increase research throughput and consistency across projects.
  • Integrate accessibility evaluations and WCAG compliance checks into the usability process, ensuring inclusive design and measurable remediation plans.
  • Oversee prototyping and testing fidelity strategy (low-fi wireframes, interactive prototypes, coded prototypes) to validate concepts at the right stage of the product lifecycle.
  • Manage vendor relationships and tooling for usability testing platforms (e.g., UserTesting, Optimal Workshop, Lookback), participant recruitment services, and analytics integrations.
  • Drive adoption of research findings by designing stakeholder workshops, research synthesis sessions, and design critiques that make insights actionable and prioritized.
  • Present research insights and usability recommendations to executive leadership, product councils, and cross-functional teams to secure buy-in and resourcing.
  • Coordinate longitudinal usability studies and post-launch usability audits to measure long-term user outcomes and retention impacts.
  • Define and enforce ethical research standards, participant consent processes, and data privacy practices across all usability research activities.

Secondary Functions

  • Support ad-hoc stakeholder requests for rapid usability diagnostics and guerilla testing to unblock immediate product decisions.
  • Partner with data analytics to run convergent validity checks (triangulating UX findings with quantitative metrics such as funnels, drop-off rates, and feature adoption).
  • Contribute to the organization’s UX strategy by identifying systemic usability issues and proposing cross-product design initiatives.
  • Collaborate with engineering teams to advise on interaction patterns and implementation feasibility during grooming and sprint planning.
  • Facilitate design sprints and co-creation workshops with product and business stakeholders to accelerate hypothesis generation and prototype validation.
  • Manage usability research budgets, scheduling, and resource allocation to optimize throughput and ROI of research activities.
  • Lead pilot programs that evaluate new usability tools, remote testing methodologies, and participant recruitment strategies to scale research capability.
  • Mentor cross-functional partners in basic research methods, usability heuristics and how to interpret UX metrics to foster a user-centered culture.

Required Skills & Competencies

Hard Skills (Technical)

  • Usability testing (moderated and unmoderated) design and facilitation for web and mobile platforms.
  • User research methodologies including contextual inquiry, ethnography, surveys, diary studies, and heuristic evaluation.
  • Prototyping and interaction design tools: Figma, Sketch, Adobe XD, Axure, InVision.
  • Experience with usability testing platforms and participant recruitment tools (UserTesting, Optimal Workshop, Lookback, Validately).
  • Analytics and quantitative methods: ability to interpret Google Analytics, Mixpanel, Amplitude, and convert metrics into UX insights.
  • Strong skills with UX measurement frameworks and instruments (SUS, task success metrics, time-on-task, NPS).
  • Accessibility standards and testing (WCAG, screen reader testing, ARIA practices).
  • Basic front-end familiarity (HTML/CSS, JavaScript) to assess implementation and prototype fidelity.
  • A/B testing and experimentation literacy to build UX hypotheses and measure lift from design changes.
  • Research synthesis tools and documentation: affinity mapping, journey mapping, persona creation, and stakeholder-ready research reports.
  • Familiarity with SQL or spreadsheet-based data analysis for ad-hoc quantitative research and segmentation.
  • Knowledge of Agile/Scrum practices and experience integrating research into sprint cycles.

Soft Skills

  • Strong leadership and people management with experience scaling small research teams into high-impact functions.
  • Exceptional written and verbal communication, able to translate complex research into concise, action-oriented recommendations for executives and engineers.
  • Stakeholder management and diplomacy to influence cross-functional teams and prioritize competing requests.
  • Strategic thinker who connects user insights to business outcomes and product metrics.
  • Empathy for users and designers; deep curiosity about behavior, contexts, and pain points.
  • Facilitation and workshop skills to lead synthesis sessions, design critiques, and co-creation meetings.
  • Time management and project planning skills to balance strategic programs and rapid-response testing.
  • Mentoring and coaching mindset with a track record of developing researchers and designers.
  • Problem solving and critical thinking with attention to methodological rigor and research ethics.
  • Change management and persuasion skills to drive adoption of research-led recommendations.

Education & Experience

Educational Background

Minimum Education:

  • Bachelor’s degree in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), Cognitive Psychology, Design, Human Factors, Anthropology, Computer Science, or related field.

Preferred Education:

  • Master’s degree or advanced certification in HCI, UX Research, Human Factors, Interaction Design, or Applied Psychology.

Relevant Fields of Study:

  • Human-Computer Interaction (HCI)
  • Cognitive Psychology / Behavioral Science
  • Industrial / Interaction Design
  • Human Factors / Ergonomics
  • Anthropology / Sociology

Experience Requirements

Typical Experience Range:

  • 5–10 years of combined UX research, usability testing, and design experience with at least 2–4 years in a leadership or manager role.

Preferred:

  • 7+ years of progressive experience in usability and UX research, including demonstrated success managing research programs, mentoring teams, driving cross-functional adoption, and delivering measurable product improvements.
  • Experience working with consumer-facing or enterprise SaaS products, and familiarity with global/localization research if supporting multiple markets.
  • Proven track record integrating accessibility practices and measurable usability KPIs into product development.
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