UX Researcher

Job Title: UX Researcher
Job Location: Lansing, MI
The State of Michigan is working to transform how our community interacts with state government. As a UX researcher, you will join the Office of Continuous Improvement, Human- Centered Design program working on enhancing the customer journey of high-impact projects across all of state government. You will collaborate closely with business stakeholders, developers, and designers and be a voice for our users. You will be involved in conducting up-front user research and sharing feedback with the agency program.
Job Description:
As a UX researcher, you will be responsible for helping define and drive the design of state services or applications. You will reveal what our users need from our services by conducting research, working with cross-functional teams, and performing usability studies. These responsibilities also include inspiring change, delivering oral and written presentations, evaluating qualitative and quantitative data, and helping the UX team better understand what would make a user's experience more intuitive and seamless.
Responsibilities:

• Lead and co-lead primary and secondary user research by facilitating workshops, interviews, focus groups, and usability testing.
• Plan and implement user research strategies and methodologies.
• Organize and evaluate quantitative and qualitative research.
• Conduct market and ethnographic research.
• Work with cross-functional teams to identify and evaluate research topics and approaches.
• Challenge the "status quo" and propose innovative solutions to complex business problems.
• Present and promote research findings to program owners and business stakeholders.
• Ask questions, gather data, and analyze data
• Use a diverse set of UX research tools.

Skills/Requirements:
- Five or more years of UX research experience.
- Strong understanding of UI Design.
- Experience with:
o Creating wireframes and prototypes and using various tools (Figma, Sketch, or equivalent).
o Creating user personas and user journey maps.
o Empathy mapping development.
o Leading user workshops and facilitating sessions.
o Generating insights from data and effectively sharing research results.
o Planning and conducting usability testing.
o Research-related tasks including research, planning, evaluating, and iteration.
o Formulating specific, answerable, and practical questions.
o Collaborating effectively with stakeholders and acting as a strategic partner in decisions.
o Remote testing tools.
- Creating formal presentations and user finding reports
- Presenting findings and recommendations to executive sponsors and business stakeholders