UX Researcher

Guidewire Software•San Mateo, CA

1d•$112,000 - $168,000

About The Position

Summary UX Researcher @ Guidewire Software Join Guidewire design! UX @ Guidewire Love solving sticky problems? Excited about crafting innovative solutions for global software? Interested in working on products that touch everyone’s lives? We’re a close-knit and multidisciplinary UX team working to make cloud software that is at the forefront of the insurance industry. We are committed to inclusion and diversity in skills and talent, as diverse as the global clients we serve. Our success is dependent on building teams that include people from divergent backgrounds and experiences who will support and challenge each other's assumptions with fresh perspectives. Our team tackles a variety of domains within Property and Casualty insurance; as a design (UX) researcher you would be in charge of guiding, organizing, and executing research. Working with support from our Lead Design Researcher, you will help our UX designers and product managers across the Americas to determine when and how the research will help them make better business and design decisions. We are looking for someone who is self-motivated, self-directing, and interested in growing as a strategic problem-solver on our friendly, global, customer-centric UX team. How we work at Guidewire Collaboration: We build on each other’s ideas and draw on interdisciplinary approaches to craft impactful experiences. Integrity: We stand behind our words and commitments as part of a global community, respecting and recognizing our interdependence. Curiosity: We are lifelong learners, with a growth mindset, who are passionate about advancing our discipline through entertaining new ideas and unique perspectives. Humility: We leverage our expertise while respecting other viewpoints and challenging our own assumptions. About Guidewire Guidewire serves a global community of more than 350 insurers of all sizes and lines of business in more than 30 countries. Community feedback enables us to stay at the forefront of what is happening all over the world in P&C and to incorporate insights into the design of our platform to be truly customer centric. Guidewire exists to deliver the industry platform that P&C insurers rely upon to adapt and succeed in a time of accelerating change—and to ensure that every customer succeeds in the journey. We provide the software, services, and partner ecosystem to enable our customers to run, differentiate, and grow their business. Guidewire Insurance Platform is the P&C industry platform that unifies software, services, and partner ecosystem to power our customers’ business. Insurance Platform provides the standard upon which insurers can engage their customers, optimize their operations, drive smart decisions, and innovate quickly. We are privileged to serve more than 450 P&C insurers in 32 countries. We invest heavily in R&D to build a technology platform that combines three elements—core processing, data and analytics, and digital engagement—to enhance insurers’ ability to engage and empower their customers and employees. Their primary areas of focus are to ensure alignment of that architecture with business objectives and high-level company technology direction.

Requirements

Proven proficiency in common qualitative and quantitative research methods such as moderated and unmoderated usability studies, customer and user interviews, concept testing, cognitive walkthroughs, surveys, discount methods like heuristic evaluations and expert reviews, and benchmarking.
Experience in conducting both formative and summative research.
Experience working with designers, developers, and product partners to define research objectives, identify and prioritize research
Ability to draw out insights from a variety of design research artifacts.
Demonstrated ability to embrace AI and apply it to your current role as well as data-driven insights to drive innovation, productivity, and continuous improvement.
Experience with crafting UX artifacts like personas, storyboards, and journey maps to illustrate user needs and areas for opportunity.
Ability to communicate results and opportunities in clear, concise, and compelling ways that fuel ideation and elevated designs.
Ability to prioritize and manage numerous projects simultaneously
Flexibility to quickly respond to emerging issues under tight deadlines and lack of available end users
Ability to work well in a team and collaborate with others.
Strong organization and time management skills
Willingness to work across time zones - We have teams from California to Poland, so you should be comfortable working across those time zones.
Bachelor’s, Master’s, or Ph.D. with 3 – 5 years of experience in Human Factors, Human-Computer Interaction, Psychology, Cognitive Science, Design, or related fields or equivalent practical experience.
Passion for research and empathy for the user

Nice To Haves

Experience conducting international research (Ideal but not required)

Responsibilities

Help user experience teams and the business solidify research objectives and identify problems to be explored.
Translate these objectives into key research questions for study and/or exploration.
Work across teams to plan and conduct an array of practical and impactful design research to uncover user attitudes, behaviors, needs, and motivations.
Understand when and which quantitative and qualitative research methods to use and their pros and cons.
Guide teams on which research tradeoffs are acceptable given research questions, business goals, timeline, and resources.
Design and execute end-to-end custom, primary research. This includes but is not limited to building study plans, participant screeners, and discussion guides as well as recruiting study participants, moderation research sessions, and generating reports.
Uncover useful findings and actionable insights that drive tactical and strategic product decisions.
Use third-party, market research, analytics, and user research to generate solid insights to foster solutions that consider a holistic view of people, technology, and business.
Cultivate user empathy by translating research into compelling stories of how users of our solutions think, feel, and behave.
Build artifacts such as personas, journey maps, presentations, reports, etc. to communicate the needs of users and customers to key stakeholders in clear and memorable ways.
Assist with coaching and training developers, designers, product managers, and others on basic research best practices, enabling them to quickly turn-around meaningful, useful insights.
Help to build and maintain an archive of research activities, results, and insights that can easily be shared with product shareholders and the user experience team.
Understand the importance of scaling user research and assist with developing and maturing research at Guidewire.