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Facebook is seeking an experienced User Experience Researcher to help drive customer experience research at Facebook and create our usability lab. This is a full-time position based in our main office in downtown Palo Alto.

Responsibilities:

• Plan and build out the Facebook Usability Lab
• Manage budgets and a busy usability testing schedule as well as prioritize the usability roadmap
• Define Facebook research strategies and methodologies
• Create a research and usability plan/process in partnership with product management, marketing and product engineering
• Plan, design and conduct high quality user experience research projects for the website, and related products (platform, advertising, etc)
• Work closely with engineers, product managers, and designers to provide user insights
• Advocate for the user by building consensus with designers, engineers, and leadership

Requirements:

• At least 2 years of experience leading user experience research activities, including, contextual inquiry, RITE and standard usability testing, benchmark testing, heuristic evaluation, card sorting, focus groups and survey design
• Bachelor, Master or PhD in Anthropology, Cognitive or Experimental Psychology, Cognitive Science, Human Factors, Human-Computer Interaction, Computer Science, or related area
• Experience with a variety of research methods and proven ability at articulating the value and ROI on research efforts
• Strong project management and decision-making skills
• Excellent oral and written communications skills
• Able to use insights from user research to drive product strategy and innovation by facilitating cross-functional participation in analysis and brainstorming

To apply:
http://www.facebook.com/jobs/position.php?st=User%20Experience%20Researcher

Our Palo Alto office is looking for a variety of people to fill Human Factors (HF) Specialist positions. The role involves working collaboratively with interdisciplinary teams and with our clients to create innovative products, services, spaces, interactions and experiences. Human Factors people play a key role in the IDEO process. HF people lead the team through the user research which uncovers the insights that guide design and innovation.

In addition to your resume, please send us examples of your work. Please do not send text only versions of your work. It is helpful to see how you communicate with design teams. For example, please send:

A description of a project in which you had the chance to develop your field-based discoveries to the point of design outcomes or actionable design principles

or

A response to the exercise below:

1. Find an environment (such as a park, a school, a beach, a restaurant, store or mall, etc.) where you can spend a couple of hours observing children with adults.
2. Document what you notice about the activities and interactions there (in photos or sketches for instance) and share with us your thoughts about how experiences there could be enhanced through design.

Additional Skills Required:

• Individuals who are naturally empathetic and passionate about people – We look for those who have a natural skill to engage with people at a deep level. They should be passionate about representing a human and humane perspective and should have skills in bringing this passion to life for the team.
• User research/field work skills – HF team members must be prepared to plan and lead user research to discover insights first hand. We are looking for people who can keep up a high degree of rigor throughout.
• Deep insights – They must have deep insights that help the team read between the lines and discover latent needs.
• Ability to lead synthesis – HF specialists must be able to lead the team and often the clients through analysis and synthesis processes, helping to distill the most important insights and linking them together in frameworks or principles for design.
• Ability to connect insights to design – The insights and information drawn from research must be translated into an inspirational and useful foundation for design.
• The ideal candidate will have three or more years of directly related experience.

While we are looking for all people to show experience with design research and HF methodologies, within this group we are also looking to maintain our diverse community.

• A variety of business experiences – Within the domain of Human Factors we are looking for people who have worked with software, health care, designing for children and teenagers, service design, industrial design, interaction design, brand strategy, communications design, and environmental design.
• Designers coming to research and researchers coming to design – We are open to people who have an academic background in design but who have moved through their experiences in to the world of research. And we are also open to researchers (sociologists, anthropologists, psychologists, etc.) who have made their way to the world of design.
• Qualitative but also open to quantitative research – While our approach is mainly qualitative, we are more closely linking with quantitative data all the time. We are intrigued by people who can bring these skills to the table as well but we look for people who are very experimental and open in their approach.
• Strategic perspective – In the variety of work that we do, many of our projects involve HF leads in strategic thinking based upon the insights gathered from the field. Business degrees and experiences are intriguing in the mix.

To apply:
http://www.ideo.com/culture/career/human-factors-specialist/ or email HR