Key Responsibilities and Required Skills for User Experience Research Officer

🎯 Role Definition

The User Experience Research Officer leads and executes user-centered research programs that inform product strategy, design decisions, and business outcomes. This role combines qualitative and quantitative research methods, stakeholder collaboration, and research operations to surface actionable insights, reduce product risk, and drive a measurable improvement in user satisfaction and usability. The Research Officer serves as both practitioner and advisor — designing research studies, recruiting participants, synthesizing findings into clear recommendations, and evangelizing a research-driven culture across product, design, and engineering teams.

📈 Career Progression

Typical Career Path

Entry Point From:

UX Researcher / Product Researcher
Design Researcher / Usability Specialist
Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) researcher, behavioural researcher, or UX analyst

Advancement To:

Lead User Experience Researcher / Senior UX Researcher
Head of UX Research / Research Manager
Director of User Experience / Director of Product Research

Lateral Moves:

Product Management (Product Lead focused on research-driven product strategy)
Design Leadership (Design Manager / Head of Design)
Research Operations / Insights Program Manager

Core Responsibilities

Primary Functions

Plan, design, and lead end-to-end user research studies (qualitative and quantitative) that align with product strategy, business objectives, and user needs, ensuring research questions, sample frames, and success criteria are well-defined and actionable.
Conduct generative research (interviews, contextual inquiry, ethnography) to discover user motivations, pain points, workflows, and unmet needs; synthesize findings into patterns, personas, and strategic opportunities.
Run evaluative research including usability testing (remote and in-person), A/B test support, eye tracking, and heuristic reviews to validate design decisions, measure task success and identify usability regressions.
Design and analyze surveys, card sorts, tree tests, and choice modeling to quantify user preferences, prioritize features, and measure changes in user sentiment over time.
Apply mixed-methods approaches by integrating qualitative insights with quantitative analytics, telemetry, and product metrics to provide robust evidence that informs roadmap decisions.
Create clear, persuasive deliverables — research reports, executive summaries, journey maps, personas, and prioritized recommendations — that translate research findings into business and design action.
Influence product and design roadmaps by partnering closely with product managers, designers, engineers and leadership, presenting research outcomes, and advocating for user-centered trade-offs.
Establish and maintain participant recruitment pipelines and panels, handling screening, scheduling, incentives, and data privacy compliance to ensure representative and ethical sampling.
Run longitudinal studies and cohorts to track user behavior and experience changes over time and to measure the impact of product changes or interventions.
Develop and implement UX metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs) — such as SUS, NPS, task success rate, time-on-task, and engagement metrics — and report on these to stakeholders and leadership.
Lead accessibility research and testing (WCAG conformance, screen reader testing, keyboard navigation, & inclusive design) to ensure products meet legal, ethical and usability standards for all users.
Mentor and coach junior researchers and cross-functional team members on research methodologies, interview techniques, analysis best practices and ethical research conduct.
Manage research operations and tooling — selecting and overseeing platforms like Dovetail, UserTesting, Lookback, Optimal Workshop, Hotjar, and participant-recruitment vendors to streamline research delivery.
Partner with data science and analytics teams to design experiments, instrument analytics events, and create dashboards that connect user behavior to business metrics.
Translate research insights into prioritized product requirements, user stories, acceptance criteria and design briefs; collaborate in sprint planning and product discovery cycles.
Manage end-to-end research budgets, timelines and vendor relationships, ensuring cost-effective delivery without compromising sample quality or ethical standards.
Advocate for research-driven decision-making by building stakeholder buy-in, running research “show-and-tell” sessions, and embedding research processes into product development workflows.
Drive cross-functional synthesis workshops (affinity mapping, sense-making, co-creation sessions) to convert raw data into shared insights and aligned next steps with teams.
Ensure compliance with ethical guidelines and privacy regulations (GDPR, CCPA), including informed consent, secure handling of PII, and anonymization of research data.
Create experiment design and hypothesis frameworks to support rapid discovery and validation during early product discovery phases and post-launch optimization.
Provide expert input on information architecture, content strategy, and interaction patterns using research evidence; partner with UX designers to prototype and iterate on solutions.
Execute competitive and landscape research to benchmark experiences, map market gaps, and support product positioning and differentiation strategies.
Measure and report on the ROI of research activities by tracking changes in adoption, retention, support tickets, conversion rates, and overall customer satisfaction tied to research-informed changes.
Drive continuous improvement of research processes, playbooks and templates to scale research across the organization and improve time-to-insight.

Secondary Functions

Support ad-hoc stakeholder requests for quick research sprints, rapid usability checks, or lightning interviews to unblock product decisions.
Maintain and curate the research repository and knowledge base to make insights discoverable and reusable across teams.
Provide training and best-practice workshops for non-researchers (PMs, designers, engineers) on conducting basic user interviews and interpreting research outputs.
Participate in product discovery rituals (e.g., design sprints, discovery workshops) as the primary representative for user evidence and customer voice.
Contribute to organizational strategy around user insights by building research roadmaps, capacity plans, and knowledge-sharing initiatives.
Coordinate with legal/compliance and information security teams to build templates and processes that protect participants and company data.
Help scope and prioritize the research backlog in partnership with product and design leadership to focus on the highest-impact questions.
Monitor and incorporate technological trends (AI/ML, conversational interfaces, LLMs) into research plans when evaluating new features that leverage these technologies.
Act as a public-facing ambassador for user research when appropriate — presenting at conferences, publishing case studies, and contributing to company thought leadership.
Facilitate cross-team alignment by ensuring research insights are translated into measurable outcomes and integrated into team OKRs.

Required Skills & Competencies

Hard Skills (Technical)

Proficiency in mixed-methods research: in-depth interviewing, contextual inquiry, usability testing, surveys, card sorting, tree testing, and diary studies.
Strong quantitative analysis skills: experience designing surveys, analyzing A/B tests and cohorts, calculating statistical significance, and using tools like Excel, R, Python, or SPSS for analysis.
Experience with UX research and collaboration tools such as Dovetail, Airtable, Notion, Lookback, UserTesting, Optimal Workshop, Hotjar, FullStory, and similar platforms.
Familiarity with analytics and experimentation platforms: Google Analytics / GA4, Mixpanel, Amplitude, Optimizely and instrumenting events to link behavior to insights.
Competency in research ops: participant recruitment, consent workflows, incentive management, vendor selection and research repository maintenance.
Accessibility testing knowledge: WCAG standards, screen reader testing, keyboard navigation checks and inclusive research practices.
Strong synthesis and visualization skills: affinity mapping, journey mapping, persona creation, and data visualization to communicate insights clearly.
Experience designing and interpreting usability metrics and UX KPIs (SUS, NPS, task success, completion time, error rate).
Basic prototyping and familiarity with design tools (Figma, Sketch, Adobe XD) to collaborate on testable prototypes and communicate findings to designers.
Knowledge of privacy and compliance regulations (GDPR, CCPA) and best practices for secure handling of participant data.

Soft Skills

Exceptional storytelling and presentation skills with experience translating complex research findings into clear, persuasive recommendations for executives and cross-functional teams.
Strong stakeholder management and influencing skills; ability to build trust and align diverse teams around user-centered priorities.
Critical thinking and curiosity with a strong bias toward evidence-based decision making and hypothesis-driven research.
Excellent time-management and project-management skills; capable of juggling multiple research streams and delivering on tight timelines.
Empathy and active listening to connect with users, understand context, and represent user needs accurately within the product organization.
Collaborative mindset and facilitation skills to run workshops and co-design sessions with product, design and engineering stakeholders.
Adaptability and comfort with ambiguity; able to design lean research approaches for early-stage discovery and rigorous studies for validation.
Attention to detail and strong ethical judgment when handling sensitive participant information and research outputs.
Coaching and mentorship skills to upskill teammates and grow research capability across the organization.
Business acumen and the ability to tie user insights directly to business outcomes and product metrics.

Education & Experience

Educational Background

Minimum Education:

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

Preferred Education:

Master’s degree or higher in HCI, Human Factors, Cognitive Psychology, Social Science, Interaction Design, or Research Methods preferred.

Relevant Fields of Study:

Human-Computer Interaction (HCI)
Cognitive Psychology / Behavioral Science
Anthropology / Ethnography
Interaction Design / UX Design
Human Factors / Ergonomics
Information Science / Data Science

Experience Requirements

Typical Experience Range: 3–7 years of applied user research experience for a mid-level Officer; 5+ years for senior-level positions.

Preferred:

Demonstrated track record leading end-to-end research initiatives in digital products (web, mobile, SaaS).
Experience working cross-functionally with product managers, designers and engineering teams to deliver measurable impact.
Portfolio or case studies showing rigorous research design, synthesis, and clear business or product outcomes.
Prior experience operationalizing research at scale (research repository, participant panels, tooling and process improvements).
Experience with accessibility research and inclusive design practices and working knowledge of legal/privacy frameworks.