Your Role and Responsibilities
Strategic Responsibilities

• Demonstrate deep domain knowledge and understanding of key users and the market.
• Demonstrate fluency in your portfolio’s business strategy and the value proposition of the product(s) within your scope.
• Help align the design work of your team with product strategies and user experience insights/requirements.
• Influence decisions tied to the business strategy and processes of your products.
• Establish and own research goals for your Product (aligned with business strategy) and measure progress towards those goals.
• Participate in portfolio Commitment pitches, MMT, OMT, Lean Governance, etc. meetings.
• Be an SME that acts as the voice of the customers.

Cross-Functional Responsibilities

• Lead research efforts for a product(s) / project(s).
• Help drive the execution of an experience roadmap based on awareness of user and business needs.
• Advocate for end user experience, steer design and development in a different direction when needed.
• Closely partner with Product management and development to cultivate, manage, and administer sponsor user relationships.
• Work with Agile product team leaders to measure progress and review design outcomes against user insights (via playbacks).
• Be an active member of Product squad(s) by attending and presenting playbacks, coaching designers, providing input in the prioritization of Product backlog.
• When applicable, participate in planning and other product delivery processes.
• Champion research as a driving force for innovation.
• Participate in cross-disciplinary collaboration to facilitate innovation.

Functional Responsibilities

• Acquire skills in specialized research techniques.
• Determine types of research needed on individual initiatives and develop research goals and plans.
• Evaluate early ideas for products, workflows or features to determine viability.
• Execute product/project research deliverables in alignment with project timeline and roadmap milestones.
• Develop and engage network of sponsor users.
• Explore, document and socialize what matters most to customers.
• Run sponsor user efforts throughout the lifecycle (recruiting, sessions, synthesis playbacks).
• Build your eminence with our customer base and the external business industry you engage with.
• Identify cross-disciplinary partners who will champion research.
• Define user experience goals and design principles.
• Help align 3-in-a-box teams to research insights, utilize research insights to drive prioritization of product backlog and roadmap.
• Develop strong storytelling capabilities.
• Build your eminence in the design world outside of IBM and contribute to IBM and IBM Design to grow your presence internally.
• Support and guide individual designers through leadership, coaching, and mentoring.
• Engage with broader IBM Z Research community.
• Actively lead efforts benefiting the design community (e.g., innovation processes, community building, etc)
• Share expertise at studio-wide events.

Required Technical and Professional Expertise

• A minimum of 3 years of experience in executing research deliverables on design projects.
• A minimum of 4 years of experience in product or service design.
• A minimum of 2 years of experience working with product managers and engineers.
• A minimum of 4 years of experience in a hands-on design research role.
• A minimum of 4 years of experience with design research tools, including analytics tools.
• Demonstrated experience conducting design research and familiarity with research practices.
• Exposure to Agile processes (e.g., SAFe), enterprise design thinking, managing allocation and prioritization discussions, and the IBM Universal Experiences.
• Portfolio of projects that demonstrate your skills as a design researcher.

Required Technical Expertise

• Expert-level design research skills
• Experience with IBM-preferred research tools, including Alchemer, UserInterviews and AirTable.
• Extensive experience in defining and executing UX Metrics assessments.
• Competency with standard presentation programs Powerpoint & Keynote.
• Strong portfolio showing a breadth of complex, technically-oriented projects.