What skills do user researchers need?

In this video, user researchers discuss the essential skills needed for the role.

User researchers come from a variety of backgrounds.

They may have other research experience, such as market research, social research, or academic research, and can come from fields such as anthropology or psychology.

User researchers can also come from design and development backgrounds and may also have experience with human factors (or ‘ergonomics’), which is the study of how people interact with products and systems and how to apply that knowledge to design.

User research can happen on many different things.

In government, we do user research for different types of products and services, both digital and non-digital, and in policy. These services can have a really specific function, like the systems used when someone leaves prison, or can be something broad, like navigation and search on GOV.UK, the UK government website.

This diversity makes it a rich and varied profession with many opportunities to explore and develop new skills.

Some user researchers will join the profession as juniors, some will join straight from academia, and some will make the switch from other research fields.

Skills needed for user researchers

The Government Digital and Data Profession Capability Framework outlines the following skills for user researchers:

• Agile research practices
• Analysis and synthesis
• Inclusive research
• Research management, leadership and assurance
• Stakeholder relationship management
• User research methods
• User-centred practice and advocacy

Knowing about agile research practices is essential for a user researcher in government. You need to understand and explain the benefits and limitations of agile working so that you can adapt how you design and conduct research to respond to the complexity of the product environment.

At a lower level, you need to be able to understand and work with the different roles in a multidisciplinary digital team to plan and do user research. More senior researchers must understand the strategic decisions the team needs to make so they can design appropriate research and influence decisions about priorities and agile processes in the team.

We will learn more about agile in Week 2.

Analysis and synthesis as a skillset is about knowing how to analyse your research and effectively communicate your findings. It is also important that you are able to help your team and your organisation to continually improve, iterate and refine their practices to generate clear and valuable results.

Inclusive research means understanding the diversity of users of government services so that you can help teams understand the barriers people using the service might face.

You should be an advocate for inclusivity so that you can help teams to design inclusive and accessible services and guide your organisation towards more inclusive practices.

Good research management, leadership and assurance means that you can explain what good user research practice involves and evaluate the quality of research against accepted professional standards for user research.

At a higher level, you should be able to give constructive feedback to other user researchers to ensure work meets good practice standards and set the standards for your organisation, especially for important things like ethics and safeguarding.

Stakeholder relationship management means identifying and working effectively with stakeholders. Stakeholders are people who have an interest in your product or service. Some of them may be very high level, like the senior management of your department or organisation.

As a user researcher, you need to be able to communicate clearly and regularly, working towards building long-term strategic relationships.

You should be aware of a wide range of user research methods so you can plan user research for services with challenging user needs and complex user journeys. More senior user researchers should be able to advise colleagues on the choice and application of methods to assure best practice, as well as help teams and organisations implement new methods.

User-centred practice and advocacy means advocating for the user by sharing research insights on user needs and changing user behaviour with your team. You should be able to evaluate and choose the correct approach to build your team’s understanding of the user.

You also need to advocate for doing user research if your team or organisation is resistant to it, so you can help teams adopt user-centred practices.

Transferable skills

There are also a number of transferable skills that user researchers develop that are useful in other situations:

• qualitative research – interviewing, focus groups, mapping workshops
• quantitative research – surveys, statistics
• negotiation, persuasion and influencing
• ability to listen and build relationships with teams and stakeholders
• curiosity and the ability to ask the right questions
• digital delivery methods

Task

Which of the user researcher skill areas are the most relevant or important to you in the context of your work? This can include the transferable skills that are not specific to government user research.

Share your top 3 and explain why they are important to you in the comments below.