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Director of User Research at Hearst Communications Inc.

Posted in Art 30+ days ago.

Type: Full-Time
Location: Atlanta, Georgia





Job Description:

Why Hearst Digital Media?

At Hearst Magazines Digital Media you will join a diverse, supportive community of creatives building new experiences in digital media. You will have the opportunity to work with an end-to-end product design team that includes visual design, user experience, user research, prototyping, and presentation/interaction coding for our proprietary media platform. Our designers contribute to an end-to-end design process that allows them to understand and own their work. You will work with diverse editorial brands such as ELLE, Cosmopolitan, Men’s Health, Women’s Health, Runner’s World, Esquire, House Beautiful, and more. 

Project Context

We are the product design team that creates the content management system that powers all of Hearst Magazines’ websites. We also create and maintain the technology platform that powers that CMS and a number of B2B services. We are in the midst of scaling our design team from 13 to 25 people and building out specialized teams: Storytelling, Commerce, Design Systems, User Research, End-to-End Product Design, and Tools. We are looking for a User Researcher Director to work with our teams on incorporating research into all of our work and “shifting left” in our digital accessibility practice. With a vision of Innovation through research, our mission is to develop an accessible research practice that aims to understand the needs of real users and create products that will surprise, delight, and drive business impact.

Who you are & what you will do

Be a Key part of our Design Operations & Management Leadership Team


  • Work with the SVP of Product Design, our Design Operations & Strategy Manager, and our Commerce, Storytelling, End-to-End, and Design Systems Design Managers on strategy, leadership, and management of our design and research teams. 

  • Work with the Management and Operations team to develop strategies and tactics to mature our UX practice through the development of user-centered practices and frameworks 

Be a Key part of our Cross-Functional Leadership Team


  • Be a part of our Product, Design, and Engineering leadership team, working closely with counterparts across disciplines to craft the strategy, OKRs, and roadmaps for research and discovery

Lead our User Research Initiative


  • You will evangelize the importance of user research to our stakeholders, designers, product managers, engineers, and operations

  • You will lead the development of a strategy for how to approach research at Hearst for our three user categories: The Reader, The Editor, and PDE (Product, Design, and Engineering)

  • Develop a strategy for conducting research across our diverse brands (luxury, cooking, enthusiast, service, shopping, etc.) 

  • Advise cross-functional teams on incorporating research into roadmaps and how to plan ongoing research and discovery

  • Help train our product designers in best practices in user research, guiding teams on determining goals, writing research questions, and planning and conducting research

  • Partner with our innovation and experimentation team to evangelize best practices for experimentation and testing

  • Work to include people with disabilities in your user research and testing, resulting in more inclusive tools and experiences

Lead Building Out our User Research Operations Practice


  • Help the organization bring the best experience to users by being the resident user experts, creating accessible processes and training, publishing and circulating user insights regularly and clearly communicating the correlation between our user’s needs and business opportunity.

  • Provide practical resources and training to help all teams better understand user needs and build better products.

  • Centralize and socialize user insights at a regular cadence. Ingest information gathered by other teams that also hold valuable knowledge about our users.

  • Tie the needs of our users to business outcomes and get ahead of valuable opportunities.

Build Out a Team


  • Create a plan and business case for hiring and managing a team of researchers who are aligned to key initiatives such as acquisition, engagement, shopping, cooking, multimedia, memberships and emerging technologies. 

  • Mentor our current user researcher, helping her advance her practice and career at Hearst

  • Create an inclusive hiring process in order to build a strong user-centered design team with diverse backgrounds and perspectives—and to support all team members to succeed through processes, training, and mentorship. 

  • Create a career framework for future user researchers

Requirements


  • You have end-to-end experience with all aspects of user research in the product design process

  • You have case studies that show the impact of your work, including examples of generative and evaluative research, and the ability to manage large research projects from start to finish

  • You are committed to including diverse candidates in your user research, including people with disabilities

  • You have knowledge of accessibility standards (Section 508 Refresh/WCAG 2.0 Level A and AA)—and/or an interest to learn more

  • Experience with implementing accessibility standards into design is strongly preferred

The base salary for this role is between $184,000 and $200,000.  The actual base pay offered is dependent upon many factors, such as: transferable skills, work experience, business needs and market demands. The base pay range is subject to change and may be modified in the future.

As part of its continued efforts to maintain a safe workplace for employees, Hearst Magazines requires that all employees who receive a written offer of employment be fully vaccinated (as defined by the CDC) against the coronavirus by the first day of employment as a condition of employment, to the extent permitted by applicable law.  Hearst Magazines will consider requests for reasonable accommodations on an individual basis in accordance with applicable legal requirements. 

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