Hire Design Researcher

[amenity]

Primary role

• Perform preliminary user research and requirements gathering for new DTS products and features
• Conduct usability testing to inform iterative product development
• Collect and analyze qualitative and quantitative user data to identify pain points and areas for improvement in existing applications
• Heuristic evaluations of in-house, off-the-shelf, and vendor-built software usability

Nice to have skills

• Information architecture
• Design thinking and facilitation
• User interface design
• Content strategy

Specific projects/products

• Evaluation of the out-of-the-box Knack user interface and DTS' Knack design patterns to recommend areas of improvement, design and document best-practices for Knack UI designs, collaborate with app builders and developers to identify and prioritize opportunities to enhance usability with custom code
• ROWMAN Ph 4, specifically the planned 'My Closures' portal feature that permit holders will utilize to interact with their road closure data.

See: Past DTS job descriptions

[amenity]

@TracyLinder @dianamartin @JaceDeloney @mateoclarke @johnclary @jaime-mckeown - would love your eyes on and edits to this quick stab at describing the role and potential projects/products for a UX Researcher.

[amenity]

Feedback from UX Designer friend:

• This feels too surface: "Heuristic evaluations of in-house, off-the-shelf, and vendor-built software usability" You want them to evaluate, identifying opportunities for improving software
• Woah! This is a lot of branches! "Information architecture, Design thinking and facilitation, User interface design, Content strategy"
• I think you could say you're hiring a designer/researcher and ask for someone with the ability to research, conceptualize, test, and refine apps and services etc. It's less about specific skills and more about the job to be done
• Specific projects sounds great
• You don't want a hard researcher. You need someone who can move into prototyping and product. (AA: This is true, but there are, for the time being, a lot of constraints and limitation to our toolset, few immediate opportunities for greenfield design work.) That's just my opinion. I understand your limitations. I think most people that apply for a researcher position are aiming to conduct research and do less design or they lack that transformational skillset. Name the role Design Researcher and you'll find someone via interviews who makes sense.

[TracyLinder]

@amenity what is our deadline for providing feedback?