Key Responsibilities and Required Skills for User Experience Research Coordinator

🎯 Role Definition

The User Experience Research Coordinator (UX Research Coordinator) is responsible for running and scaling user research operations that enable product teams to deliver human-centered design. This role focuses on participant recruitment and management, scheduling and logistics, research tooling and documentation, data collection support, and the operationalization of insights across cross-functional teams. The coordinator works closely with researchers, designers, product managers, and vendors to ensure studies run smoothly, ethically, and at scale.

📈 Career Progression

Typical Career Path

Entry Point From:

Research Assistant, User Research Intern, or Customer Insights Intern
UX Coordinator or Product Coordinator with research exposure
Administrative or project coordinator roles supporting product or design teams

Advancement To:

UX Researcher (Generalist) or Product Researcher
Senior UX Researcher or UX Research Manager
Research Operations Manager or Head of Research Ops
Product Manager or UX Design Lead (with lateral skill growth)

Lateral Moves:

UX Designer (with portfolio and design skills)
Product Analyst or Data Analyst (with quantitative focus)
Customer Insights Manager or Market Researcher

Core Responsibilities

Primary Functions

Coordinate end-to-end participant recruitment for usability tests, moderated and unmoderated sessions, field visits, diary studies, and longitudinal research — including screening, scheduling, reminders, follow-ups, and incentive fulfillment to maintain high participation rates and low attrition.
Create and maintain participant panels, recruit pipelines, and external vendor relationships (panels and recruitment agencies), ensuring diversity, representativeness, and compliance with inclusion criteria for each study.
Draft, refine, and manage screener surveys, consent forms, and study-specific communication templates in collaboration with researchers to ensure ethical and effective participant selection and onboarding.
Manage logistics for remote and in-person research sessions: reserve facilities, set up labs, configure recording equipment, coordinate prototype builds, and confirm accessibility accommodations.
Run and troubleshoot research tools and platforms (e.g., UserTesting, Lookback, Dovetail, Optimal Workshop, Zoom, Maze, Qualtrics, Talkdesk), including test accounts, participant links, session recordings, and data exports to minimize technical failures during studies.
Facilitate participant payments and incentives: process gift cards, payments, and accounting reconciliation; maintain budgets and vendor invoices; and ensure timely, accurate compensation consistent with company policy.
Support session moderation and note-taking when needed, including moderating smaller studies, shadowing senior researchers, or running test sessions to validate study flows and recruitment screener accuracy.
Produce high-quality transcripts, verbatims, and time-coded notes from recorded sessions using transcription tools and manual QA to ensure accurate capture of user feedback for analysis.
Organize and maintain a centralized, searchable research repository (knowledge base) including study protocols, raw data, analyzed findings, artifact templates, and synthesis outputs to improve reusability and institutional memory.
Assist researchers with basic qualitative coding, affinity mapping, and tag taxonomy management using tools like Dovetail, Notion, or Confluence to accelerate insight synthesis and discovery.
Run and support quantitative data collection efforts such as surveys and prototype A/B test instrumentation, including exporting data from survey platforms, preliminary cleaning, and preparing datasets for analysts or researchers.
Prepare study materials: consent scripts, moderator guides, stimuli, prototype builds, pre- and post-test surveys, and recruitment copy to ensure consistent, reproducible study execution.
Manage cross-functional scheduling and stakeholder coordination: organize research planning sessions, recruit review checkpoints, and results presentations to align product, design, and engineering teams with research timelines.
Track and report on research operations metrics (e.g., time-to-recruit, show rate, cost-per-participant, study throughput) and recommend process improvements to increase research velocity and ROI.
Ensure compliance with privacy, data protection (GDPR, CCPA), and institutional review requirements by supporting consent processes, data retention policies, and secure storage of recordings and personally identifiable information (PII).
Develop and maintain research ops documentation and playbooks covering recruitment flows, tool configurations, study templates, and best practices to standardize research workflows across teams.
Coordinate vendor evaluations and procurements for labs, transcription services, or recruitment partners; negotiate SLAs and manage vendor relationships to deliver predictable, scalable research capacity.
Assist with onboarding and training of junior research staff and cross-functional partners on research tools, recruitment processes, and participant management to embed research competencies across the organization.
Conduct operational QA and dry-runs for complex or high-stakes studies — including device compatibility checks, prototype readiness, and contingency planning — to reduce failed sessions and protect data quality.
Aggregate and prepare slide decks, one-pagers, executive summaries, and raw data deliverables for researchers and stakeholders, ensuring findings are presented in actionable formats tailored to audience needs.
Maintain lab and equipment inventory, schedule maintenance, and ensure test environments (physical and virtual) are prepared and secure before research sessions.
Support continuous improvement initiatives by collecting feedback from participants and stakeholders on the recruitment and study experience and implementing iterative changes.
Collaborate with product analytics, data science, and UX teams to align operational research outputs with broader measurement plans and product KPIs.

Secondary Functions

Support ad-hoc analysis requests and preliminary data pulls for UX research needs, including exporting survey results and preparing summary tables.
Contribute to the organization's research ops strategy and roadmap by proposing automation, tooling upgrades, and process improvements to reduce manual work and scale research capacity.
Translate product and design team timelines into research ops deliverables, creating recruitment plans and milestone schedules that align with product sprints and release cycles.
Participate in sprint planning, retrospectives, and other agile ceremonies to advocate for research dependencies and ensure studies are resourced appropriately.
Maintain vendor contracts, manage procurement paperwork, and liaise with finance for research ops budgeting and cost tracking.
Act as a subject-matter expert for research tools and platforms, creating training materials, knowledge base articles, and internal workshops to increase tool adoption and consistency.

Required Skills & Competencies

Hard Skills (Technical)

Participant Recruitment & Screening — designing screeners, managing panels, vetting participants for representativeness and bias control.
Moderation & Note-taking — experience supporting or conducting moderated usability studies, remote interviews, and contextual inquiries.
Research Tools & Platforms — hands-on with UserTesting, Lookback, Dovetail, Optimal Workshop, Maze, Hotjar, or similar platforms.
Survey Design & Survey Tools — experience building surveys in Qualtrics, SurveyMonkey, or Google Forms and interpreting basic survey outputs.
Data Management & Transcription — proficiency with transcription tools and managing audio/video artifacts, plus basic QA of transcripts.
Research Repository Management — expertise organizing research artifacts in Notion, Confluence, Airtable, or shared drives with tagging and metadata.
Quantitative Basics — familiarity with exporting and preparing CSV/Excel data, basic pivots, and simple descriptive statistics.
Prototyping & Collaboration Tools — working knowledge of Figma, InVision, Miro, or similar for setting up prototype sessions and sharing artifacts.
Accessibility & Compliance — knowledge of consent workflows, GDPR/CCPA considerations, and secure handling of PII.
Vendor Management & Budget Tracking — experience managing recruitment vendors, lab vendors, and tracking incentive budgets and invoices.
Lab & Technical Setup — ability to configure recording devices, virtual session links, and remote research tool integrations.
Project Management Tools — familiarity with Jira, Asana, or Trello for tracking research tasks and study status.

Soft Skills

Strong stakeholder management — communicate timelines, constraints, and deliverables with product, design, and engineering partners.
Excellent written and verbal communication — craft clear recruitment copy, consent language, and study documentation.
Attention to detail — ensure accurate scheduling, incentive fulfillment, and artifact management for high-quality studies.
Empathy and ethical judgment — handle sensitive participant information with care and facilitate respectful participant experiences.
Time management and prioritization — juggle multiple concurrent studies, deadlines, and ad-hoc requests efficiently.
Problem solving and troubleshooting — quickly resolve technical issues during sessions and adapt to last-minute changes.
Collaboration and facilitation — work cross-functionally to surface research needs and improve processes.
Analytical curiosity — translate operational signals into opportunities for process optimization and improved research quality.
Initiative and continuous improvement mindset — document learnings, propose efficiencies, and iterate on research ops playbooks.
Cultural sensitivity and inclusivity — recruit and engage participants respectfully across diverse backgrounds and accessibility needs.

Education & Experience

Educational Background

Minimum Education:

Bachelor's degree or equivalent experience in Psychology, Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), Anthropology, Sociology, Communications, Information Science, or a related field.

Preferred Education:

BA/BS or MS in HCI, Cognitive Science, Human Factors, Sociology, Anthropology, Psychology, or related discipline; certificates or coursework in UX research or research methods are a plus.

Relevant Fields of Study:

Human-Computer Interaction (HCI)
Psychology (Cognitive, Experimental, Social)
Anthropology or Sociology
Human Factors / Ergonomics
Information Science / Data Science

Experience Requirements

Typical Experience Range:

2–5 years of experience in user research operations, UX research coordination, research assistance, market research operations, or a related role supporting product/design research at a tech company, agency, or research lab.

Preferred:

3+ years supporting end-to-end research programs in a product-driven environment, including direct experience with recruitment, lab management, research tooling, and stakeholder-facing deliverables. Prior experience with remote usability platforms, vendor management, and working on cross-functional product teams is highly desirable.