Are you able to write thorough and engaging UX research findings?
Would you like to join a team of dedicated usability research writers, who analyze and write about cutting-edge User Experience research? Producing UX research findings that will be used by thousands of web professionals, including some of the biggest brands in the world (including Nike, Sears, Lenovo, Etsy)? Are you excellent at presenting complex research findings on web user behavior through the written word?
Then apply for the following remote full-time position at Baymard Institute.
About Your Job at Baymard
In this position, you will join Baymard’s team of usability researchers and primarily work with analyzing our raw annotated usability test data and writing the insights from this into usability guidelines. The guidelines go directly into our subscription platform
Baymard Premium.
Our Baymard Premium customers are eagerly waiting for your UX research insights, be it the UI designer at Nike or the e-commerce director at Lenovo, as they use it as direct input for their UX and UI design decisions.
In this role, you’ll need to enjoy writing, since writing and articulating usability test findings will be at least 80% of what you’ll be doing all year round.
Besides writing, the job involves analyzing web user behavior, identifying themes and issues across multiple sites, and coming up with proposals for design patterns that can alleviate the identified problems. The test data primarily come from qualitative moderated think-aloud usability tests (experience with usability testing is a plus, but not a requirement).
In this job, you’ll be directly shaping the future of e-commerce, become a published usability research author within your first couple of months on the job, and should expect to join the ranks of the absolute top experts within e-commerce usability within a few years (if you aren’t already).
Along with analyzing and writing duties, you’ll also contribute to peer reviewing (helping colleagues craft their own writing) and quality assurance of writing across the team for content and consistency. Previous experience editing with developmental editing or copyediting, is therefore an advantage.
We want to work with the smartest and most dedicated people around the world, and the position is therefore open to full-time remote work. All of Baymard’s current team is already working remotely, so the entire company is structured around remote work. In other words, you are welcome to work with us from any location you prefer — as long as there’s a stable internet connection.
Job Qualifications
While we will train you in Baymard’s methodology and analysis process, we expect that you have the following qualifications. The numbers in brackets indicate the weighted importance of each on a 7-point scale (higher = more important). These weights reflect how candidates are evaluated, so make sure your application illustrates your prowess in the highest-weighted skills and traits.
- [7/7] Requirement: Substantial experience with technical or professional writing. This experience can come from many paths, e.g. a background in journalism, technical writing, research, etc.
- [4/7] Strong reasoning and logical deduction skills. Specifically in relation to your ability to deconstruct user behavior and understand what can and cannot be concluded from our usability research data (typically this is qualitative think-aloud test session data).
- [3/7] Editor experience, by helping other writers craft and improve their own written work.
- [3/7] Experience at some level of usability research (e.g., conducting think-aloud usability test sessions, analyzing data, writing findings).
- [3/7] Ability to propose web design recommendations for the usability issues we identify.
- [3/7] Familiarity with the ‘web industry’ and especially its jargon (can be from experience with web development, design, research, writing, etc.).
- [2/7] Experience using a style manual (e.g. Chicago Manual of Style, APA, AP, or similar substantial style manual).
We furthermore expect that you are comfortable working remotely via digital platforms. However, as most of our team is either based in the eastern USA or western Europe, you must have at least 2 hours of daily scheduled work overlap with those timezones.
Salary: in accordance with qualifications.
Start date: as soon as possible.
How to Apply
If you’re interested in this position, please send the following:
- One long-form writing sample (1,000+ words) or a series of samples that collectively demonstrate your writing. Ideally, these are on a web-related topic (e.g., information architecture, UX, or documentation). Samples can be both published or unpublished works, all materials are kept confidential. (Note: slide decks and samples with multiple authors are not considered. You may submit samples that had external/peer editing, but then explain the scope of it.)
- A cover letter and a resume/CV.
- Other information you find relevant (hobbies, interests, ..).
Deadline is April 6th, 2020 - but apply as soon as possible.
Note: Based on the applications, a few selected candidates will be assigned a paid writing and analysis test, which will be the main evaluation criterion for the position. This will also be a good way for you to get a feel for the primary task of this job. (The test will be performed remotely. You’ll be given a real usability test dataset to analyze and describe within a 10-day deadline.)
Sincerely,
Edward Scott, senior UX researcher at the Baymard Institute
Referral Bonus: If this job isn’t you, but you know someone who’ll be the perfect fit, please send them the link to this page. If we end up hiring the person you referred, we’ll give you one year of access to a Baymard Premium ‘Medium’ plan (a $1,560 value).