Hackajob is a matching platform partnering with UCAS helping them to hire the best talent and build the future. To get the chance to get matched to this role and other similar roles, click on Apply to set up your free profile. UCAS, the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service, is an independent charity, and the UK's shared admissions service for higher education. UCAS helps to inspire and empower people to make aspirational choices about higher education and learning. Their services support young people making post-18 choices, as well as mature learners, by providing information, advice, and guidance to inspire and facilitate educational progression to university, college, or a degree apprenticeship. Job purpose: They are looking for a Senior UX researcher with proven experience of working with complex products, across a vast ecosystem with multiple customer groups. You will be leading product development from a UX perspective, setting the UX vision based on discovery research, user needs, customer insights and feedback. You will need to be confident at presenting user research and promoting UX principals and championing the voice of the customer. You will challenge design solutions and product objectives to ensure they're meeting and exceeding their project objectives, including driving revenue streams, increasing customer registrations, and delivering products that customers want to use. Key accountabilities: • Manage research activities and define UX goals and requirements; working with product manages to define product objectives. • Accountable for maintaining their personas and working with data and insights teams to build evidence-based and data-driven personas. • Develop and own the UX research strategy, developing channels for communication and establishing an active voice of the customer that is embedded in their digital strategy and product roadmaps. • Facilitate workshops involving customer experience representatives, customer insight and data teams to establish working groups focused on improving customer journeys and personas. • Manage stakeholder and develop a culture of storytelling to embed the user voice in strategic planning and scoping sessions. • Develop ecosystem maps and take ownership of the information architecture to improve their content and increase registrations. • Build prototypes and wireframes to share ideas with stakeholders and development teams, which can also be tested with users. • Mentor other researchers and designers and offer support and guidance to improve their understanding of customer needs and various research methods. • Confidently lead UX presentations and report on UX activities and research findings. • Build and maintain a central repository of feedback, insights, user testing videos and other research activities to support agile development teams. • Contribute to UX pattern libraries and Design Framework by designing Ui elements to promote best practice and improve accessibility. • Manage your time and other researchers to ensure they are conducting the right research activities. This includes managing and planning travel around the country to lead one to one testing at UCAS exhibitions and education providers such as schools, colleges, and universities. • Take ownership of user testing recruitment, building a community of users around the country to help test future products. • Work closely with analytical teams to build an understanding of customer behavior to measure the performance of their products. Skills, qualifications, and experience: • Understanding of agile approaches to development and experience of leading UX research activities within agile teams. • Confidence in presenting and demoing ideas to large teams of people and be able to quickly answer questions regarding your approach. • Degree in a human behaviour related field (human-computer interaction, psychology, social science, information science, etc), or a degree in marketing and content strategy, or demonstrated experience at an equivalent level. • Strong understanding and experience of a range of user research methods, when to use them, and how to apply them correctly. This includes both qualitative and quantitative methods such as usability testing, user interviews, and surveys. • Confident explaining user needs to senior stakeholders and acting as a persuasive advocate for users. • Passion for data with experience of using statistical methods to find digital trends and understanding user behaviour. • Experience of recruiting, screening, and scheduling participants for research and testing. • Practical experience of discovery methods including gathering requirements, evaluating user needs, running workshops and user interviews. • Experience of defining project goals and deliverables through personas, journey maps, experience maps, service blueprints and strategic design deliverables. • Experience in measuring products for success against KPIs and applying the appropriate marketing lens to measure content performance. • A strong appreciation for design aesthetics, with the ability to suggest improvements and contribute innovative design patterns to their UI pattern library. • Experienced producing wireframes prototypes and using software like Axure RP, Adobe XD, Figma or Sketch. • Knowledge of development languages like HTML and CSS with the ability to communicate with developers to ensure their products are accessible and intuitive.