UX Research Manager

Job Description

About Foreground

Foreground is a platform of products that connects families and individuals with world-class photographers. The Foreground family of brands helps photographers and photo consumers create memories that last a lifetime by giving them access to tremendous software, professional services, supportive education and high quality photo products and custom gifts.

The Role

We believe our work should have a profound impact on our customers daily lives. We always start with the “Why” and use that as the foundation for the experiences we craft. It is our job to challenge the status quo and constantly find ways to expand our sphere of influence and expectations of what we can achieve.

As Manager of UX Research, your purpose in life is to find ways to pursue what matters most while marrying your approach with achieving business outcomes. We are starting on a journey to bring several different business lines together into a cohesive ecosystem of apps, and we need a research leader to help define and drive this future ecosystem experience while mitigating complexity. This role would ensure that both near term goals and longer term strategy are informed by learning and understanding user needs, behaviors, and emotions they experience while using our products.

A “typical” day as the Research Team Manager might include:

• Conduct regular 1:1 meetings with direct reports to support their career development, including making sure each have an individual growth plan to realize their full potential.
• Define and drive the UX research team’s initiatives and roadmap across an ecosystem of products.
• Forecast resource needs and provide justification for growing the team to provide necessary capabilities and expertise.
• Define/manage OKRs and KPIs for the UX Research team with the guidance from UX leadership.
• Hire, evaluate, and supervise a team of passionate and engaged UX researchers, developing individuals skillsets through guidance, mentorship, and training as necessary.
• Identify opportunities for marrying qualitative and quantitative methodologies to tell a deeper, more complete story.
• Improve team efficiency by actively seeking out impediments, be it tools/process/other, and implementing solutions to unblock the team.
• Provide clear, direct feedback to their direct reports, their own manager, and others in the company when needed.
• Set the standard for execution and operational excellence by constantly looking for ways to improve our methods, techniques, deliverables, and evaluation criteria.
• Learn from our users by establishing an effective and continuous user engagement process to gain valuable insights to share and educate others in the organization allowing user needs to drive roadmaps.
• Actively advocate and find creative, compelling ways to share research and customer insights so the company has awareness of what UX Research does, how they do it, how to get involved, and the impact of the insights research has delivered.
• Provide guidance on research design and execution of qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods studies, helping drive understanding of the balance and trade-offs between scrappy vs rigor approaches.
• Explore opportunities for leveling-up others in the company on research practices and methodologies to accommodate lower priority research needs while continuing to build out the UX research team.
• Build a relationship with leaders across the organization to identify and prioritize foundational and evaluative research needs ensuring that UX Researchers have clearly prioritized deliverables.

This job might be a great fit for you if:

• You are a clear communicator. You can command the attention of a room, not by being the loudest voice, but by others valuing and seeking your objective insights. You have excellent communication, presentation, interpersonal, and analytical skills allowing you to communicate complex concepts clearly and persuasively across different audiences and varying levels of the organization.
• You believe in solving the right problem. You have a strong desire to understand a problem space. Your favorite word is “why”. You always dig deeper into a problem to ensure we’re not solutioning for a symptom of a different problem.
• You inspire innovation. You know good ideas can come from anywhere and have an interest cultivating them. You’re enthusiastic about collaboration, have a vision for the future, inspire others to have the courage to pursue forward-thinking, strategic UX solutions.
• You keep an eye on the big picture. You grasp the need to deliver on near term needs, while planning for and informing longer term strategy. You know how to set goals and motivate others to reach them while tracking to the “north star”.
• You lead by respect and trust . You’re not a “bull in a china shop” and you don’t lead by using your title to make things happen. You listen to others, dig for information, make informed decisions and that is why people consider you a leader and follow your direction.
• You make decisions with data. Your gut takes a backseat in your decision making process because you’re always looking for ways to ensure your decisions, and others around you, are based on data. You also have the ability to realize when teams are getting stuck in “analysis paralysis” and have the ability to help them overcome it.
• You desire to develop leaders. You approach talent development, for yourself and your team, with a growth mindset. You believe no one is perfect, mistakes offer a learning experience, and everyone has the capacity to grow and exhibit mastery of challenges in their career.

We’d love to hear from you if you have:

• 5+ years of hands on UX research experience as an effective, successful individual contributor executing research studies with a cross-organizational scope
• 2+ years managing, leading, or supervising researchers with the ability to provide mentorship, thought leadership, and guidance
• Proven ability to to succeed in lean or agile environments
• Knowledge of statistics and the principles of experiment design
• Strong understanding of the strengths/shortcomings of different research methods and the ability to articulate when and how to apply each to accomplish research goals.
• Ability to understand and incorporate complex business requirements into various mixed methods research.

Things that would put you over the top:

• You’re a photographer, either professional or amateur, or have experience in the photography industry.
• Experience creating and managing a knowledge management platform for gathered user/customer insights.
• Business acumen showing a strong understanding of business goals, strategies and competitive pressures as a driver for UX Research Team practice and management.
• HFI or equivalent UX Certification

How the interview process will work:

• Intro call with our technical recruiter
• 1:1 interview with the Director of User Experience
• 1:1 interview with the Chief Product Officer
• 1-2 interviews with members of the UX Research Team
• Cultural interview with our People team
• 1:1 interview with a couple other members of the executive team

Benefits

• Highly competitive compensation package
• Benefits include comprehensive medical, dental, and vision insurance, and 401K with 4% company match
• A culture that promotes a healthy work-life balance including a flexible PTO plan
• This position is 100% remote