User Experience Researcher and Usability Tester at MIND Research Institute

Are you passionate about user research and the potential for game-based learning?

MIND Research Institute is utilizing gamification and neuroscientific research to push the boundaries of education, and we need a user experience researcher to raise our game.

Over a million students played our math games this year. ST Math already the most innovative and effective educational experiences on the market, but we’re not satisfied.  We’re exploring ambitious changes to our student experience, educator experience, and parent experience.  We need an awesome user experience researcher on our team to make it happen.

We’re looking for someone who breaths user research.

Someone who can think like a scientist, equally excited to prove or to disprove a hypothesis.

Someone who can think like a child or an adult.

Someone who can think like a gamer, who knows in their gut what flow really feels like.

Someone eager to test, test, test!  As often as possible and in as many places as possible.

Someone willing to say that the Big Idea didn’t work as planned.

Someone willing to promote awareness of the surprising little things that did work.

Responsibilities:

• Plan, coordinate, and conduct user research, including interviews, focus groups, surveys, card sorts, and persona creation and maintenance.
• Plan, coordinate, and conduct in-person usability testing, including think-aloud playtests.
• Carry out research based on analytics, server logs, and screen recordings, including difficulty analysis and heuristic evaluations.
• Perform competitive analysis.
• Provide summarized research results directly to the innovation teams for discussion and future implementation.
• Provide design suggestions based on observation, research, and expertise.
• Liaise with various teams to collaborate and coordinate test efforts.
• Analyze online experiments (A/B testing).

Minimum qualifications:

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, HCI, Cognitive Science, Experimental Psychology, Anthropology, Information Science, Psychology, Human Factors, related field, or equivalent practical experience.
• 2 years of work experience in a usability, user research testing, or applied research setting.
• Familiarity with game play mechanics, including incentives and social pressures
• Excellent interpersonal communication (both written and verbal)
• Excellent organizational and analytical skills
• Proven ability to translate research findings into actionable product improvements
• Passion for user centered design testing in video games and educational applications

Preferred qualifications:

• Master’s degree in related field
• Experience as a formal educator
• 4 years of relevant work experience, including experience integrating user research into product designs and design practices.
• Experience with SQL, Python, SPSS and remote usability testing tools, such as Keynote or UserZoom.
• Extensive knowledge of data analytics tools such as Tableau Software, Google Analytics, Excel PowerPivot or similar.
• Excellent working knowledge of statistics and the principles of experiment design.
• Strong understanding of strengths and shortcomings of different research methods, including when and how to apply them during each product phase.