Freelance Design Researcher

Responsibilities

Your role is essential in helping inform and shape the human-centered design of potential digital products and services, through:

• Vision: You ask the right questions early to be able capture, rationalise and articulate the mission, goals and desired outcomes of each client project.
  
• Research: You recruit, plan and conduct qualitative and quantitative research with users and business stakeholders.
• Analysis: You interrogate each client's industry or domain, including the market landscape & competitors.
• Insight: You confidently diagnose crucial opportunities by synthesising evidence efficiently and effectively, including any provided by primary or secondary research.
• Empathy: You establish genuine empathy and appetite amongst colleagues and clients for the needs of the users, customers or audiences of the products and services being designed.
  
• Validation: You rigorously measure the impact of design work by facilitating lab-based & remote usability testing, and other validation methods, that produces a high standard of research findings and design recommendations.
  

You’ll have proven digital experience within the industry.

What you value

We’re looking for self-driven, adaptable and bold individuals who thrive on the freedom and trust to do the work they love in the way they like. If you strive to do some of the most fulfilling work of your career, in a culture free from bureaucratic constraints, Clearleft may be the ideal place for you.

You get under the skin of problems

You're a big–picture thinker who insists on a deeper understanding of the problem before rushing into solutions. You intuitively focus on the needs of the people using your products and services, but are able to understand the complexity involved and pragmatism required in balancing them with the client’s organisational goals or technical constraints.

You're a natural communicator

You understand that success can often rest on the quality of communication and the effort of making complex ideas simple through diagrams, concept maps, sketches or other techniques. You prefer discussion over emails and documents and pride yourself on expressing yourself clearly and with a strong sense of purpose that encourages trust from your colleagues and clients, whether that’s a conversation around a whiteboard, an interactive design concept or a strategy presentation.

You collaborate

You enjoy working through problems and challenges with clients and colleagues, and workshops are second nature to you. You do your best work collaborating within cross–functional teams and know that shared understanding and stakeholder alignment are the critical factors in achieving successful outcomes. You instinctively share your findings and ideas with colleagues, peers and the community, and love to see them adapt and evolve as a result of constructive criticism.

You value outputs, but not as much as outcomes

You know the best way to tackle complex problems is by remaining adaptable. You understand and respect the differences between the various research, design or development methodologies (such as JTBD or Agile), while not following any practice dogmatically. You have an array of techniques to draw upon, but focus on the outcomes of your work, rather than fetishise the way it looks or how it’s delivered.

What we value

We look for culture add, not culture fit, encouraging everyone to bring their own unique character to the team. Working with people from diverse backgrounds enriches the team's values and the work we do, helping make us greater than the sum of our parts.

If the above resonates with you, we should get together for a chat.