As a User Research Specialist with proven experience of providing advice to UX and production teams coupled with an understanding of, and experience of employing, HCI you will be in your element in our User Experience and Design (UX&D) team within BBC Future Media (FM) division.
The UX&D team delivers the design for world-class interactive sites and services on the internet, mobile and interactive TV platforms. The team is responsible for the user experience of a wide range of products and services including; BBC iPlayer, News, Weather, bbc.co.uk Homepage, BBC Radio sites, BBC Mobile sites as well as iPhone and Android applications.
As part of the UX&D team you will have the unique opportunity to contribute and represent our users through research and advocacy across multiple products and platforms whilst working in multi-disciplinary teams.
Our focus is to be the most creative organisation in the world. To help us reach that goal we need experienced usability and accessibility professionals with talent and flair, a real understanding of working with disabled and non-disabled test participants, and a passion for interactive media.
You will be the specialist in UX&D for assuring BBC digital products and services are usable our audiences and define and manage all aspects of the user testing process and ensure all significant findings are fed back to Creative Directors and other key stakeholders.
You will work with the Product Managers, Creative Directors and the Head of Accessibility and Usability on a daily basis to (more depth for each point can be found on the job description on our careers site):
• Manage all aspects of mixed ability user testing:
o Designing & Briefing
o Recruitment of Resourcing
o Scripting
o Organisation
o Feedback/Results
• Establish and Manage a User Research knowledge repository:
o Work with the rest of the U&A team as well as BBC R&D to ensure all research reports and assets are catalogued for future reference.
o Catalogue any pertinent research papers or articles found by the team that could supplement the internal research and catalogue them appropriately
• In General:
o Work to the BBC’s policy on Health and Safety and best practice on engagement with users (CRB checks, DPA etc.)
o Be aware of personal financial authority limits and to ensure that this authority is exercised in accordance with BBC financial arrangements
o Provide holiday/sickness cover for other U&A Specialists, as and when needed
o Maintain regular contact with other BBC U&A Specialists and share experience and research findings with them
• Provide expertise backed-up with research findings on user behaviour to the design teams
• Capture and share best-practice/user research findings in usability which could be applied more widely across BBC products. These will need to be documented and archived along with any related or otherwise interesting papers or articles
• Work collaboratively with HCI researchers in BBC R&D and Marketeers in BBC Audiences on internal or collaborative research projects.
Required skills and experience:
• Proven experience of providing advice to UX and production teams
• Understanding of HCI expertise - this includes lab studies, expert evaluations, participatory design sessions, rapid prototyping, ethnographic research methods and persona development
• Experience of employing HCI based methods and tools such as user modelling, task analysis, scenarios, use cases, wire frames, paper prototypes, labelling schemes, flow diagrams, site maps and comparative analyses
• Experience of analysing the navigation structure and interaction design of user interfaces, creating interaction design diagrams and documentation and working with other disciplines
• Proven experience in designing and conducting usability testing in a consumer-facing environment
• Achieved a Masters Degree in HCI (or 2 years minimum experience)
• Excellent written, verbal communication and presentation skills - the ability to communicate the reasoning behind your preferred results, methods, and approaches (orally and in writing) with internal clients
• The ability to make effective presentations
• The ability to perform well under pressure and work to tight deadlines.
To apply, please click on the Apply button to be redirected to the BBC website.
Closing date: 26 January 2012.
