How to Become a UX Researcher: Skills, Requirements, and Career Guide

Academia meets tech with the UX Researcher.

User Experience (UX) Research is a field that focuses on understanding users' needs, expectations, and behaviors to create products and services that are more efficient, effective, and enjoyable. As businesses increasingly prioritize user-centered design, UX researchers have become integral to the development process and are more in-demand than ever.

If you're interested in a career in UX research, this guide will provide you with an overview of the skills and requirements necessary for success in the field, as well as the career paths available to UX researchers. Whether you're just starting out or looking to transition into UX research, we'll help you understand what it takes to become a successful UX researcher.

Much like scientists you learn about in school, UX researchers study interactions of real people with the real world through websites and experiences. UX is short for “user experience,” which indicates the field around how people interact with the specific technology.

A UX researcher will spend about half the time planning and executing traditional qualitative research, and the other half planning and presenting the findings to their broader teams to inform decisions around strategy and features. They usually sit on a user experience or design team, and work closely with UX designers to implement the best possible experience for users on the website.

UX researchers often will find a question to tackle, then tease out answers from real people in a methodical way using research tactics like user interviews, tree tests and surveys. UX researchers are experts at developing hypotheses and asking unbiased questions to dig deeper into a users’ mindset.

What does a UX Researcher do?

The day will vary greatly, but a typical UX researcher will stay busy by writing out research plans to deliver a study, conduct said study, then present the findings and recommendations to their broader or leadership teams. This cycle could take anywhere from a couple days to 3 months or more depending on the complexity of the study. A research plan outlines how/when/and where the research study will be conducted.

Check out Sprig for some great out-of-the-box research studies to get familiar with the types of studies and questions you may need to know. A plan can take all kinds of formats, but most common is a document style with the primary question/hypothesis, study description and style, and expected learnings. This is to keep on track and inform teams of your activities. Next is actually completing the study. This can take many forms, but most common is by utilizing interviews or studying heat maps. Check out this article if you’re interested in learning more.

Finally, a UX researcher will present these findings. There is a systematic approach to this that ties directly to the initial research plan. The findings will answer the questions outlined in the plan, and present insights and recommendations to the team.

UX Researcher Team Members

If you're unsure that UXR is right for you, but still into the idea of building a product, check out the role of a Product Analyst, UX Designer, Product Manager, Project Manager, and maybe even get a little freaky and look at a frontend engineer.

UX Researcher is a great role for academics. Some of the best researchers have liberal arts, journalism, philosophy, psychology or business degrees.

Do I need a degree to be a UX Researcher?

UX Researcher is a great role for academics. Some of the best researchers have liberal arts, journalism, philosophy, psychology or business degrees.
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Psychology majors in particular do well in these positions because they’re able to understand the “why” behind user interactions and enjoy the act of research. They're also aware of the different types and a bit ahead of the learning curve.

Some experiences we've seen do really well in UX Research:

• Education professionals - teachers, physical therapists, social workers
• Academia - psychology or sociology degrees
• Liberal arts degrees

If you're new here to bridged, we're glad to meet you! We are huge fans of alternate forms of education, and recommend specific certifications to target skills. While this job works great with degrees, you have other options. Learn more here.

Our Favorite UX Researcher Certifications

Popular Job Requirements for a UX Researcher

We've used AI to aggregate the top job descriptions used by hiring managers looking for UX researchers. When putting your resume together, try to mimic these listings. To learn more about this process, check out our partner Jobscan for a comprehensive resume review.

• Plan and conduct user research studies, including usability testing, interviews, surveys, and focus groups
• Analyze user behavior and feedback to identify user needs, pain points, and opportunities for improvement
• Work with designers, product managers, and developers to develop user-centered designs and features
• Develop research reports and presentations to communicate research findings to cross-functional teams and stakeholders
• Advocate for user needs and ensure that product decisions are grounded in user research and data
• Stay up-to-date with industry trends and best practices in user research and design

Top Technical Skills of a UX Researcher

We've broken down the top technical skills of a UX Researcher

• Conduct User Interviews to Identify Points of Friction
• Create and Analyze User Surveys
• Presentation and Visualization of Data
• Qualitative Data Analysis
• Demonstrated Empathy for User Needs
• Planning and Execution of User Research Studies
• Identifying Top User Problems
• Prototyping and Multimedia Creation Skills
• Moderated Prototype Evaluation
• Thematic Analysis of Feedback
• Generating Clear Narratives of User Interviews
• Prioritization of studies and problems

Top Functional Skills of a UX Researcher

We recommend getting familiar with different types of customer questions if you plan to pursue a career in UX research. If finding these answers seems interesting to you, read on!

• Conduct User Interviews to Identify Points of Friction
• Create and Analyze User Surveys
• Presentation and Visualization of Data
• Qualitative Data Analysis
• Demonstrated Empathy for User Needs
• Planning and Execution of User Research Studies
• Identifying Top User Problems
• Prototyping and Multimedia Creation Skills
• Moderated Prototype Evaluation
• Thematic Analysis of Feedback
• Generating Clear Narratives of User Interviews
• Prioritization of studies and problems

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Top Tools of a UX Researcher

We've also compiled the most common tools listed in job description. If you're serious about becoming an UX Researcher, get familiar with these and be ready to talk about them.

UX Research is a great career to pursue if you love digging deep into problems of regular people. This is an exploding career field in tech, and a great one to break into some of the more advanced roles.
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We recommend getting familiar with different types of customer questions if you plan to pursue a career in UX research. Practice asking people around you these questions, and framing and theming their responses.

Some popular research questions:

• How can we encourage more users to sign up for our service?
• Is our website what users want to see when they’re in the market?
• Is our product/good/service priced appropriately?
• Do customers really want this feature?

Types of UX Research to Learn and Practice

• Usability testing: Participants try to complete a task with a product while you watch them struggle. This lets you measure how successful users are at completing a task, how quickly they complete it, what problems they encounter, and how satisfied they felt with the process. It's like watching a live-action movie of a user's frustration!
• User interviews: Talking to people is like opening a piñata full of insights into what users want from your product. By chatting with users, you can get quick and easy insight into what they're looking for, or find out what they don't like about an existing product. Just don't forget to bring the chips and salsa!
• Surveys and questionnaires: With surveys and questionnaires, you can get both quantitative and qualitative data. By using the same questions and conducting multiple surveys, you can track the improvement of a product throughout its development and lifecycle. Think of it like a progress bar, but for your product's success!
• First click testing: First click testing lets you see what a target user clicks on first when trying to complete a task. You can do a first click test on a live site, prototype, or wireframe. It's like playing "I Spy" with your users, except you're the one who's spying on them!
• Contextual observation: Observe users in their natural habitats, like Jane Goodall but for UX design. This lets you understand how and why users do what they do, and can help you design products that fit into their lives seamlessly.

Get Experience as a Volunteer

While it's tough to get 0-1 experience, there are organizations out there to help. Some of our favorites include Catchafire and UX Rescue. Both of these organizations exist to help connect newbie tech folks to real work for their portfolios.

• Volunteer organizations: Someone way smarter than us came up with the idea to connect newbie designers with non-profit organizations who could use the help. Some of our favorites include Catchafire and UX Rescue. This is also a plus because it's a tax writeoff... but we aren't qualified to be giving financial advice!
• Hackathon teams: If you live in a city, odds are there are tech hackathon groups you can find with a quick google search. Even better if you're a student and near a university. If you live somewhere without a lot of tech folks, peruse hackathon.io apply for jobs!
• Spec work (that turns to real work): A popular term in the freelance industry is "Spec work often turns into real work." This is true for lots of different areas, but especially in UX. Go to local businesses and ask if you can help them solve some digital problems on their website. This can be a win-win-- you can get meaty projects for your portfolio, and maybe even get paid for some of it. Good luck! 

Craft a Memorable UX Research Portfolio

Spec work is a great transition into portfolio-making. Arguably the #1 skill a UX researcher needs is the ability to clearly communicate their work to peers, leadership, and hiring managers. This is a skill that can be learned, and we've tested out some courses for you. Our favorite was this one on Udemy by Joe Natoli. Something to keep in mind-- UX research is a wildly popular bootcamp course (you know how we feel about these), and you're competing with a lot of cookie-cutter portfolios for jobs. The best thing you can do is make your portfolio memorable.

Listen to that course (or do your own research), showcase your problem-solving skills, and don't be afraid to let a little bit of personal funkiness show through. That's what makes you great!

My Experience Acting as a UX Researcher

The most dangerous folks in tech are those who can visualize the intersection of qualitative and quantitative data.

At smaller companies, UX Research is often a role picked up by those in adjacent roles who are interested in the field. This often falls to non-research related jobs like product analysts, product managers, or ux designers. As a data-centric person, I reserved UX research for when my team couldn't explain a user issue using data from marketing or product analytics. When this happened, which was fairly often, I did not have a dedicated researcher to solve my problems (this is why we need more of them!!). UX research is often completed on a project basis to answer specific questions and solve targeted problems.

To get UX research experience, I used Sprig to narrow in on the specific questions and thought-processes that would solve the problem I was working on. For an example, once-upon-a-real-time I was trying to test messaging on a homepage for one of my freelance clients. We were not sure the messaging related directly to their target audience. I used my free Sprig account (seriously, it's free if you're not a huge company) to find the best questions to generate insights from how users reacted to the messaging. After finding my favorite 5 prompts, I went about crafting the study.

Some of the questions from the Sprig template that I've added to my testing repository: 

• 1-5 rating: How easy or difficult is it to understand statement A?
• What's difficult to understand about statement A?
• 1-5 rating: How relevant does statement A feel to you?
• Why is this relevant to you?

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To run the research on a budget-- we're always balling on a budget here-- I utilized Userbrain to run unmoderated studies with the questions from Sprig. Userbrain is only $30/study, which seems expensive, but surveys can run up to $100-200 per participant depending on the criteria. Your company will pay for this, of course. After running 6-10 unmoderated studies on Userbrain, I'd watch and complete a Thematic Analysis of the concepts.

I'm not going to pretend that every UX research project is that cut-and-dry. But if that story peaked your interest, and sounds like something you'd enjoy doing on the daily, we recommend pursuing a career in UX research.

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UX research is a fascinating field that blends creativity and empathy with cutting-edge technology. As a UX researcher, you'll get to dive deep into the minds and behaviors of users, solving complex problems and creating digital products that make people's lives easier and more enjoyable. With the right skills and passion, anyone can break into this exciting field, regardless of their academic background. So if you're looking for a challenging and rewarding career that makes a difference in people's lives, UX research may be just the ticket.

Here at Bridged we are huge fans of stacking micro-certifications to achieve desired career results. We're building a product to make your career planning fun and affordable, and we'd love to talk to YOU! Was this article helpful? Did you land an interview for a ux research role?

Let us know at hello@getbridged.co

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Check out our sources!

Glassdoor Team. “Salary: User Experience Researcher (February, 2023) | Glassdoor.” Glassdoor, Glassdoor, 1 Feb. 2023.

Sprig Research Team. “There's a Sprig Survey Template for That.” Sprig, 1 Jan. 2023, https://sprig.com/templates.