Senior Design Researcher, Industrial Design at
Amazon

The Design Research charter is to advance our design and product development teams’ understanding and insight of the interaction between users and system elements; bringing scientific theory, principles, data and methods into the design practice with the purpose of optimizing human well-being, enjoyment, and overall system performance in everything we do. Design Researchers (DRs) employ a variety of disciplines including human factors design, concept testing, usability testing, and user research to obtain measurable feedback on Amazon’s digital products. Our insights lead to the development of more innovative, intuitive and compelling user experiences. DRs are expected to work collaboratively with teams and management, to take responsibility for initiating peer reviews of work and make time to give feedback on others’ deliverables when requested, and to regularly look outward to identify opportunities for improvement and to incorporate advancements in research methods and tools.

The Senior Design Researcher role is responsible for defining and evaluating the customer experience for our products from the Industrial Design perspective. You will work closely with the designers, so along with your design research experience your experience as a designer, or working with designers, is required. You work with the design team to help create and evaluate concepts by prioritizing research questions based on analysis of current knowledge, project goals, and identified risks. You identify the best methods with consideration for timeline and resources, and you should be able to take a creative and nimble approach while weighing potential impact to data quality. You will need to understand the importance of ensuring conclusions from Design Research are reliably and adequately supported by evidence. Your data analysis will determine key findings and recommendations and when required may point to the need for additional data. You will run a broad range of research programs to help align design and experience with user needs. These programs will range in scope from large contextual investigations to focused technology evaluations. You will be expected to work on multiple or overlapping projects that could require challenging methodologies, often in multiple or international locations, and often working with outside suppliers of research.

 

Key job responsibilities
The ideal candidate has excellent communication skills and the ability to translate data and findings into compelling written presentations and useful design inspiration. You act as a liaison to the Product Management, Digital User Experience, and Marketing groups in order to collaborate and coordinate our design research with the research other groups are doing. The goal is to leverage ours and other group’s findings in combining design research, traditional market research, and business requirements into defining compelling and successful digital hardware product experiences.

 

BASIC QUALIFICATIONS

• Bachelor’s degree in design, ergonomics, social science, or related field
• 6+ years of experience practicing as a dedicated design researcher

 

PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS

• Experience in Human Factor/Ergonomic design and test methodologies
• Human-Computer Interaction (HCI, or equivalent) research expertise in Social and Cognitive Sciences, applied to studying how people interact through and with computers and new devices.
• Expert in User-Centered Design methodologies, including need finding interviews, contextual inquiry, heuristic analyses, user testing, and iterative design cycles.
• Proven experience scoping and leading research programs, teams and vendors.
• Experience working closely with Industrial Design and Interaction Design disciplines.
• Comfortable working across Quantitative and Qualitative research areas and methods.
• Exceptional presentation, communication and collaboration skills including proficiency in Microsoft Office products Power Point and Word