Job Description

Ready to turn curiosity into impact?  
Do you want to use research to shape services that make a real impact? Are you ready to bring curiosity and insight to projects that improve people’s lives?  If so, Opencast could be the place for you. We’re a growing tech consultancy that creates user-centred solutions with purpose for our clients in government, healthcare and purpose-driven businesses. As a User Researcher, you’ll uncover the needs and voices of people, work in multi-disciplinary teams to feed these needs into design decisions shape impactful services, and bring curiosity, pragmatism and insight to projects. You’ll enjoy, a supportive community whilst working across public sector clients, to solve real problems that impact people's lives.

What you'll do within our teams

• Plan research approaches for complex projects that might have multiple research activities running at the same time whilst being delivered by other researchers 
• Offer oversight of research conducted by other people, either formally or informally, to improve research practices 
• Identify where research points to areas that need more investigation and, where necessary, help to re-define the project scope and priorities in response to this 
• Produce the required documentation and materials for research activity, including discussion guides and consent forms 
• Recruit participants in line with GDPR and MRS guidelines 
• Use your excellent communication skills to clearly explain your approach to your team and stakeholders 

You'll suit this role if you:

• Use a wide range of quantitative and qualitative research methods, including things like interviews, surveys, workshops, focus groups, shadowing, diary studies, usability testing, eye tracking, A/B testing, and analytics  
• Have a strong understanding of GDS and designing to government service standards, preferably on projects that passed assessment(s) 
• Can identify key themes, user needs, business needs, and personas through analysis  
• Can explain findings to a range of audiences and translate these into areas of the service that need design focus 
• Can produce user research deliverables like personas and journey maps  
• Make sure your research is inclusive and includes people with disabilities and those who need support to use digital services 
• Can build strong relationships with clients and persuade stakeholders of the importance of research to a project  
• Thrive in a multidisciplinary team and encourage teammates to shadow and take part in research  
• Understand agile processes  
• Enjoy working with clients as they evolve and adapt 
• Are naturally curious and able to champion your own learning and development  
• Are an advocate for user-centred design  
• Are respectful and tactful in your approach to clients who perhaps aren’t as familiar with user-centred design  
• Are proactive and will take the initiative to solve a problem rather than seeing it and ignoring it  
• Are keen to share your knowledge and experience

If you have any of this experience, please show it on your CV and in the interview.

Bonus nice-to-haves

• Experience in another UCD specialism (interaction design, content design or strategy, service design)