Key Responsibilities and Required Skills for User Experience Research Assistant

🎯 Role Definition

We are hiring a User Experience (UX) Research Assistant to support a product, design, or research team in running high-quality user research at scale. This role focuses on operationalizing research — recruiting participants, running and documenting usability tests and interviews, synthesizing qualitative and quantitative findings, and turning insights into actionable recommendations that influence product design and strategy. The ideal candidate is curious, methodologically flexible, detail-oriented, and experienced with modern research tools and processes.

📈 Career Progression

Typical Career Path

Entry Point From:

Research Assistant / Research Intern supporting UX or product teams.
Junior UX Designer with strong interest in user research and testing.
Academic research assistant (psychology, HCI, anthropology) transitioning to industry.

Advancement To:

UX Researcher / Product Researcher
Senior UX Researcher / Lead Researcher
Research Operations Manager / UX Research Manager

Lateral Moves:

UX Designer (with user-centered design focus)
Product Management (research-driven PM)
Data Analyst (with emphasis on product analytics)

Core Responsibilities

Primary Functions

Plan, recruit, and coordinate participants for user research studies across multiple channels (panel vendors, social outreach, in-product recruitment, and internal stakeholders), including screening, scheduling, compensation logistics, and maintaining participant privacy and consent records.
Run moderated remote and in-person usability tests, including script facilitation, think-aloud prompting, facilitator calibration with senior researchers, and real-time note-taking to capture user behavior and quotes.
Conduct and assist with semi-structured user interviews to surface user needs, pain points, workflows, and motivations; probe for contextual details and synthesize interview data into actionable findings.
Execute unmoderated usability studies and prototype tests using platforms like UserTesting, Lookback, PlaybookUX, or Optimal Workshop; configure tasks, test flows, and success metrics, and monitor live sessions for quality control.
Assist with survey design, setup, deployment, and basic statistical analysis (descriptive statistics, cross-tabs) using tools such as Google Forms, Typeform, Qualtrics, or SurveyMonkey to collect broad user sentiment and quantifiable measures.
Perform qualitative coding and thematic analysis of interviews and usability sessions, using affinity mapping and coding frameworks to surface patterns, user archetypes, and experience gaps.
Synthesize research findings into concise deliverables (research briefs, highlight reels, slide decks, journey maps, and annotated recordings) that clearly explain implications and recommended actions for product and design teams.
Maintain and update the research repository (Dovetail, Notion, Airtable, or Confluence), tagging transcripts, highlights, and artifacts so insights are discoverable and re-usable across teams.
Create highlight videos and quote libraries that capture key user moments for asynchronous stakeholder consumption and to influence design decisions.
Support recruitment and participant management workflows including building screener surveys, verifying eligibility, conducting pre-session checks, and ensuring consistent compensation and follow-up.
Assist in experimental design for A/B tests and product experiments; work with product analytics to align user-centered metrics with quantitative outcome measures and track impact.
Conduct heuristic evaluations and assist with accessibility audits (WCAG basics), flagging obvious usability and compliance issues and recommending remediation approaches.
Prepare research operations documentation, including templates (test plans, consent forms, recruitment scripts), best-practice playbooks, and checklists to standardize study quality and ethical compliance.
Coordinate scheduling across distributed teams and time zones, manage research calendars, book labs or remote platforms, and ensure session recordings and backups are organized and stored securely.
Transcribe interviews and sessions (automated and manual cleanup), create structured notes, and produce highlight summaries within 24–72 hours to accelerate decision-making.
Perform basic quantitative analyses with Excel, Google Sheets, or platform dashboards to summarize survey responses, SAS/CSV exports, or event logs and visualize results for non-technical stakeholders.
Collaborate closely with product managers, designers, engineers, and senior researchers to refine research questions, prioritize study goals, and ensure studies are scoped to answer high-impact product decisions.
Support diary studies, longitudinal studies, and remote ethnography by coordinating participant touchpoints, compiling daily logs, and summarizing behavior trends over time.
Assist with participant debriefs and follow-up, including sending thank you notes, incentives, and brief updates to maintain a healthy participant panel and long-term recruitment pipeline.
Monitor and apply ethical best practices, including informed consent, anonymization, secure storage of PII, and compliance with institutional or company research policies and legal requirements (GDPR, CCPA considerations).
Help run workshops and collaborative synthesis sessions with stakeholders (affinity mapping, persona refinement, and journey mapping) to co-create problem definitions and design opportunities.
Track research impact and outcomes by documenting decisions influenced by research, recording follow-up actions, and contributing to quarterly research impact reports that show ROI.
Assist with competitor benchmarking and quick market scans that provide context and help prioritize features or usability improvements relative to market trends.
Continuously improve research operations by recommending tooling, automations, and workflow improvements (e.g., optimized screener logic, automated reminders, or transcription pipelines) to reduce friction and increase throughput.
Support localization testing and internationalization considerations by coordinating cross-language sessions, translations, and culturally-informed probing to ensure global product fit.

Secondary Functions

Support ad-hoc research requests from product and design teams by scoping quick discovery tests, guerrilla research, or feature validation checks.
Maintain participant databases, tracking metadata like demographics, usage patterns, and prior participation to improve match rates and reduce screening time.
Contribute to the development and maintenance of research metrics (ease-of-use scores, task completion rates, time-on-task, SUS) and dashboards that track UX health metrics over time.
Participate in sprint planning and agile ceremonies to align research activities with product delivery cycles and ensure timely insights for upcoming releases.
Help troubleshoot research tools and coordinate with IT/security to ensure recording platforms and storage meet company policies and security standards.
Prepare executive-ready summaries and one-page briefs for leadership reviews and product steering committees.
Mentor interns and junior research assistants on best practices in recruitment, note-taking, and ethical research conduct.

Required Skills & Competencies

Hard Skills (Technical)

Moderated and unmoderated usability testing — planning, facilitation, and analysis.
User interviews and contextual inquiry — semi-structured interviewing and probing techniques.
Qualitative analysis — affinity mapping, thematic coding, persona and journey synthesis.
Survey design and basic quantitative analysis — descriptive stats, cross-tabs, and visual summaries.
Research tools experience — Dovetail, UserTesting, Lookback, PlaybookUX, Optimal Workshop, or similar platforms.
Prototyping and design tooling familiarity — Figma, Sketch, InVision for rapid test setups and annotations.
Data handling and basic analytics — Excel, Google Sheets, and familiarity with analytics dashboards (Google Analytics, Mixpanel, Amplitude).
Transcription and media processing — automated transcription cleanup, timestamping, and video clip production.
Research ops tooling — Airtable, Notion, Confluence for participant tracking, study templates, and repositories.
Accessibility awareness — basic WCAG knowledge and experience flagging accessibility issues during testing.
Participant recruitment & screening — building screeners, panels, and vendor coordination.
Basic statistics knowledge — t-tests, chi-square familiarity is a plus for validation of quantitative results.
Security and privacy best practices — managing consent, PII, secure storage and anonymization processes.

Soft Skills

Strong verbal and written communication — translating technical findings into clear, persuasive recommendations.
Empathy and active listening — building rapport with participants and understanding user contexts.
Collaboration and stakeholder management — working cross-functionally with PMs, designers, engineers, and marketing.
Attention to detail — accurate note-taking, transcription checks, and clear documentation of study artifacts.
Time management and prioritization — balancing multiple studies, fast-turnaround requests, and research sprints.
Critical thinking and pattern recognition — synthesizing disparate data points into coherent stories and hypotheses.
Curiosity and intellectual humility — asking the right questions and recognizing research limitations.
Presentation and storytelling — creating compelling narratives and artifacts to drive product decisions.
Adaptability — comfortable with both rapid guerrilla testing and longer-form longitudinal studies.
Ethical judgment — ensuring participant welfare, confidentiality, and unbiased research conduct.

Education & Experience

Educational Background

Minimum Education:

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

Preferred Education:

Master's degree in HCI, Human Factors, Cognitive Psychology, Social Sciences, or related applied research discipline; or equivalent professional experience in industry research.

Relevant Fields of Study:

Human-Computer Interaction (HCI)
Psychology (cognitive, social, experimental)
Anthropology / Sociology / Ethnography
Human Factors / Ergonomics
Interaction Design / Product Design
Information Science / Cognitive Science

Experience Requirements

Typical Experience Range: 0–3 years of hands-on experience in user research, usability testing, or applied social science research; internships and academic research experience count.

Preferred: 1–3+ years supporting product or UX research in a technology or product-driven environment, with demonstrable experience running participant recruitment, moderating sessions, synthesizing findings, and producing stakeholder-facing deliverables.