University of the Arts London (UAL) is a world-leading creative university for teaching and research in art, design, fashion, communication and performing arts. UAL is made up of six renowned colleges and hosts several institutes that further the university’s mission and social purpose. Under the leadership of our new President and Vice-Chancellor, we are designing the University around social purpose; through the students and ideas we send out into the world, and the partnerships we build to achieve social, environmental, and economic progress.

As a Senior User Researcher, you will plan, design and carry out user research activities within key services and products. Through primary research with users, you will help our teams to get a deep understanding of our current and potential students and staff members’ needs and behaviours.

Your research will inform the development and improvement of products, services and processes from discovery stage (exploratory, formative research) onwards. You’ll work on developing insights, but also using evidence to move from ‘what is’ to ‘what if’ and then into implementation in proposition, product and service design. Some initiatives are big and ambitious, some are small and yet meaningful, all are focused on helping services and systems work better for our students and staff.

In this recruitment round, we are seeking a Senior User Researchers to work across our Student Experience service teams as we focus on creating and enhancing a seamless and reliable digital experience.

This is a new role for the university, and you will develop and lead on our user research practice, setting standards and taking responsibility for embedding them with our teams. We welcome applications from experienced User Researchers who want to work for an organisation that is committed to social purpose and is growing to face new opportunities and challenges.

Experience

• Demonstrable experience of and a passion for, holistic, insightful, people-focused research
• Deep understanding of the end-to-end service design process and how research contributes to this in shaping concept development, continuous iterative development and championship of user needs
• Experience balancing exceptional understanding of people’s needs and service requirements with organisational expectations, and translating insights into actionable recommendations.
• Demonstrable experience of designing, facilitating and analysing a wide range of qualitative and quantitative user research methods (and an understanding of the strengths and limitations of different research methods) including for complex user journeys
• Excellent communication, collaboration, storytelling and influencing skills, in addition to strong stakeholder management skills
• Confident operating in a multidisciplinary team, working with change in an agile product and service development environment