User Experience Researcher - Mountain View  

This position is based in Mountain View, CA.

The area: User Experience

We follow a simple but vital premise in the User Experience group: "Focus on the user and all else will follow." We're ardently interested in our users and strive to learn everything we can about their behaviors, attitudes and emotions to help define the products and experiences we create. The User Experience team is a critical driving force behind gathering these insights and then using them to inspire and inform design. We are a multi-disciplinary team of interaction designers, visual designers, user researchers, copywriters and Web developers who collaborate closely with each other and with engineering and product management to create innovative, usable, great-looking products that people love to use.

The role: User Experience Researcher

The User Experience Research team is a critical driving force behind design. Researchers are skilled in a wide range of quantitative and qualitative methodologies, such as design and analysis of live experiments, remote usability benchmarking, field studies, and other traditional user experience research methods. You will be responsible for all phases of the research process, from project conception, to implementation, to development of recommendations and evangelism. You will work closely with design, product, and engineering teams, and your findings will lead directly to making our users happier, the key to Google's success.

Responsibilities:

• Conduct independent research on multiple aspects of how users experience online search.
• Collect and analyze user behavior through server logs, online experiments (A/B testing), benchmark studies, lab studies, and surveys.
• Work with designers, product managers, engineers, and research managers to prioritize research opportunities in a fast-paced, rapidly changing environment.
• Understand and incorporate complex technical and business requirements into research.
• Evangelize research findings to diverse audiences through written reports and oral presentations.

Requirements:

• An advanced degree preferred in computer science, human computer interaction, cognitive science, experimental psychology, anthropology, information science or related field.
• At least 3 years of work experience in an applied research setting. Internet, search, and advertising experiences are a plus.
• Experience integrating user research into product designs and design practices
• Experience with SQL, Python, SPSS and remote usability testing tools, such as Keynote or UserZoom, is a plus.
• Excellent interpersonal, communication, negotiation, and collaborate skills.
• Strong understanding of strengths and shortcomings of different research methods, including when and how to apply them during each product phase.
• Excellent working knowledge of statistics and the principles of experiment design.