User Experience Research Operations

The Center for Academic Innovation (CAI) is offering a Summer 2022 fellowship opportunity in UX research operations available to University of Michigan undergraduate and graduate students. You can read more about CAI and its guiding principles by visiting ai.umich.edu.

Who we’re looking for

The UX Research Operations fellow will assist in the UX Research team’s efforts to increase the efficiency, scale, and impact of UX research at CAI. We’re looking for a fellow who is innovative; comfortable with ambiguity; practices systems thinking; and is knowledgeable in one or more of these areas: user experience (UX), lean product development (LPD), knowledge management, or research operations (ReOps).  

General Requirements:

• Current undergraduate or graduate student (or winter 2022 graduate) 
• Work well independently and as part of a multicultural and collaborative environment (with a hybrid mode of work planned for this summer)
• Able to quickly adapt to changing requirements and priorities
• Excellent organizational and communication skills
• Strong attention to detail 

Core Responsibilities:

• Think broadly about systems, software/tools, patterns, and processes to innovate and improve the UX research team’s operational effectiveness
• Update, organize, and continuously improve a research repository to store and communicate research insights
• Research and document best practices for UX research knowledge management 
• Identify opportunities to make the impact of UX research within CAI more widely known
• Visualize systems and processes to clarify and analyze research workflows 
• Assist in standardizing research methods and supporting documentation (e.g., protocols, templates, and consent forms)

Additional Responsibilities:

• Coordinate research participant recruitment and incentives
• Conduct a contextual inquiry to uncover opportunities for alignment among cross-functional stakeholders and identify gaps in information flows
• Read and edit interview transcripts to produce clean verbatim transcriptions for analysis 

Job Function

User Experience Research Operations

Required Qualifications:

• Ability to work both independently and collaboratively in applying strategic, systems thinking to solve problems
• Ability to disambiguate sociotechnical systems, clarify stakeholders’ perspectives, gather requirements, set measurable goals, and develop action plans 

Desired Qualifications:

• Familiarity with agile or lean principles and project management methodologies and tools
• Familiarity with methods, processes, and concepts used by user experience professionals (e.g., usability studies, surveys, log data, empathy maps, affinity maps, contextual inquiries, the “Double Diamond model”)  
• Working knowledge of tools commonly used in research operations (e.g., Airtable, Google Sheets, Miro, Lucidchart, Microsoft Visio, Asana, Trello, Dovetail, Condens, EnjoyHQ, Productboard)    
• Experience as a UX research practitioner or operations expert
• Experience with contextual inquiry
• Experience with data management
• Interest in educational technologies and research practices in higher education 

Hours:

40 hr/wk 

Start Date:

Flexible starting in May or June

End Date:

August with the possibility of continuing into the fall semester (at reduced hours)

Deadline for Applications:

May 6, 2022

Contact:

If you are interested, please contact cai-student-hiring@umich.edu and provide a copy of your resume and any other materials you would like us to consider.