what are some jobs (entry level) similar to quant ux research? I’m doing a math+stats undergrad and found uxr really interesting, but I also saw that the job market is pretty bad. Are there any alternative positions for people with a quantitative background but interested in cogsci/behavioral science/psych?

Hey, I need some tips.

I have a final UXR interview in a few days. During the interview I'll be reviewing a case study together with a team. They want to see how I'd approach it.

Do you know how such case study could look like? Do you have any tips?

It's banking btw

What role did you take next? How’d you get it?

I worked in UXR for 3 years, and I’m curious about pivots

Estou iniciando nesse universo de UXR e estou tendo muita dificuldade para recrutar pessoas para entrevistar. Já publiquei em comunidades e grupos específicos do tema, mas estou tendo baixa adesão. Para essa etapa é ideal utilizar ferramentas pagas para encontrar essas pessoas? Como vocês fazem?

I'm interested in UX Audit approaches and prioritisation - what tips and advice do you have?

I’ve written up plenty of ecommerce audits that end with a very long list of things to fix. The problem is that the list doesn’t always help anyone decide what to do on Monday.

I wrote about prioritisation on my own blog a while back, so I enjoyed reading Baymard’s take on it today. One thing I particularly liked was recording “not tested” separately from “pass”. It sounds obvious, but if you haven’t checked a journey properly on mobile, a green tick gives everyone the wrong impression.

Then, for each issue, I’d want to know what happened, how to reproduce it, who it affects and whether it actually stops someone doing what they came to do.

That gives the team something they can prioritise and retest. It also makes the CRO conversation a lot more useful than debating which part of the page we should redesign first.

https://baymard.com/blog/ux-audit-checklist-template

For those who have been in the full-time google interview process what was that like?

I recently just finished the interview panel and the recruiter told me that if I pass and the hiring manager doesn't offer me the position they can match me else where, is that true? If so, do you know what that process looks like??

Additionally, how difficult is it to get a pass for the panel interviews? All three conversations went very well and conversation just flowed. Just curious!

I'm currently a junior majoring in design, but I'm interested in going into UX research. I learned that I need hard skills like qualitative methods and statistics.

Should I take a minor in psychology or cognitive science? Or is it possible to pursue this career just with a design major and a UX research-heavy portfolio?

If I don't take any minors, how should I start building my portfolio? My current portfolio is mostly visual work.

Context: I go to USC, and I'm planning to take a gap year after my junior year to work on my portfolio and get internship experience (then returning for senior year for the 2028-2029 academic year). I have a lot of experience in graphic design, and I have gained real experience with some companies/startups through a consulting club as a design consultant and project manager.

I was let go from my role in February. I have 5 years of experience across market and UX research. I’ve done research on both B2B and B2C products with experience working at FAANG companies and startups.

I’ve only been able to land 1 interview in 8 months.

When I experienced my 1st layoff in 2024, I was able to land a role in less than 3 months.

I’m not sure what to do at this point. I’ve had mentors read over my resume, my portfolio and nothing seems to be working.

I’m not even sure what to pivot into. Everything I look at seems to be very crowded: service design, product design, product management, sales engineering, etc. I’ve been applying and tailoring my resume nonetheless.

I guess I’m just venting but I just see no light at the end of the tunnel.

Everyone says I have great experience with range but so does all of us in this field.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated 🙏

I recently just got added to a new team that's launching a new product in 3.5 months and already have ongoing beta-testing (very very low usages). It's sort of an extension of the product we already have but for a completely different customer base. They've never ran user researcher so the target customers are all based on assumptions, so are the use cases for each feature.

There aren't business KPIs so far as the company kind of just want to launch something for brand exposure to a new customer base that's not familiar with our product.

Our Designer does have many questions on the direction of the design flow and UI, but what's the point of doing prototype testing if they are not the right users? My instinct is to still run discovery anyway to at least set some expectations in case the target customers aren't the right fit. What would you guys do in this case?

I'm a FY Psychology student and I'm heavily interested in UX Researching/Designing, I've watched countless videos on this topic but despite everything, I cannot for the life of mine understand where tf to start learning. I don't understand what the baseline is.

so please help me understand what to do. Explain me like I'm 5, thank you!

Hey everyone,

I'm a Senior user researcher with a FT job (UK based) and I am currently job hunting like alot of people. I got into UR just before the pandemic with the aim to eventually freelance but life got ahead of me.

I'm now at a point where I'm actually quite underpaid and with growing responsibilities and would like more money coming in - and hopefully one day just jump into contracting but I know its not the the right time due to the economy and the tough job market.

My question is are their any UX peeps who freelance on the side? How? upwork and contra haven't proved to be fruitful. I would like to do a contract (outside ir35) on the side but its that even possible? How is the freelance market?

Saw this job (Don't sign up for it, haha) where they're paying UX Researchers to interview other UX Researchers about our jobs to train AI to replace us, including defending results and stakeholder management. So crazy.

I'm curious why our role, out of so many tech jobs, is one everyone seems to want to replace with AI. I mean, maybe they're doing this with every job...

https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/heymilo/ffa11856-ddfd-4a18-98ef-fa2e07e2d074

I have fallen upward on the corporate ladder and have been promoted to be a UXR manager for the first time in my life. I will likely have between 1-3 independent contributor UXRs reporting to me soon. If you believe in any higher diety, please pray for me and those hired to work under me in the corporate ladder as I get my bearings, oh internet stranger.

I’ve had a few different UXR managers/directors over the years and I’ve learned vastly different lessons from each one. Each took drastically different approaches to leadership, research craft, and mentoring others. I figure I’ll also develop my own unique approach over time, but until then I need to start somewhere! My company is small and is offering no training, no professional development, or anything other than a “We believe in you! You can do it!”. Additionally, I’m still expected to maintain my IC workload while being a manager, which I expect to be a challenge I need to work through, albeit definitely not a unique one.

What would YOU say makes a good UXR manager? A bad one? Any standout amazing things your manager did for you that built confidence or propelled your growth as a researcher (or even just growth as a human)? Or anything a manager has done that I should definitely avoid?

I am part of a small health tech startup doing at-home blood testing. A clinician comes to your home for the draw, and results arrive in an app.

We want to understand two things:

- How the service itself felt (booking, the home visit, wait time for results)

- Whether people actually understood their results and felt they could act on them

So far we've tried offering Amazon gift card in exchange of feedback but response rates have been really low.

For anyone who's built something where the customer experience is personal or sensitive:

- What methods actually got people to respond? (in-app prompts, calls, texts, something else?)

- Did product-based rewards (discounts, free add-ons) work better than cash or gift cards?

-Any tips for checking whether people understood something, beyond just asking if they liked it?

Thanks for all the help!

I’m a principal level researcher but I’m constantly getting tripped up at portfolio review stage. I’m a great researcher but I just really struggle to sell myself during that part of the hiring process. If you’re a hiring manager or have successfully gotten an offer after the portfolio round, please let me know what advice you have for me.

Has anyone worked in an organisation where marketing-led, needs-based segmentation coexists with UX-led segmentation?

I’d love to hear how you aligned the two and how this worked in practice, particularly for targeted content initiatives

Keep seeing synthetic users pushed as a way to cut research time. Skeptical, but I don't want to dismiss it if it actually works.

For anyone who's used them, where do they genuinely help and where have they burned you?

I’ve been job searching for 8+ months and finally got an offer, but I genuinely can’t tell if taking it is smart or a mistake, so I’d love some outside perspective.

Quick background: PhD in HCI from CMU (applied/product-ish research), two UXR internships at Google (the return offer vanished when the managers who would’ve hired me got laid off), and about a year at a startup. So I’m entry or mid level depending on who’s counting. I applied pretty much everywhere geographically because I knew the market was rough.

The offer is 90k at a state agency. Very flat org, tiny UX team, not much room to grow internally. It would mean moving to a HCOL area and they’re not offering relocation. I tried negotiating and they didn’t move at all.

The problem is the math. I have two kids and my husband works as a consultant. Our current housing is really affordable, and once we factor in the move and the cost of living there, we’d basically come out even financially. So I’d be uprooting the family mostly to get full time UXR experience on my resume, and honestly I’m not even sure that’s a great investment given where the field is right now.

At this point I don’t have much hope of a better UXR offer showing up. So it feels like I either take this and treat it as a 1-2 year stepping stone, or I turn it down and pivot to something else (PM? design? contract work?).

For anyone who’s been through something similar: does gov UXR experience actually help you land a better in-house role later, or does it get discounted? And if you pivoted out of UXR, especially with a PhD, how did that go? Would also love to hear from anyone who took a break-even move for the experience and whether it was worth it.

UX researcher (HCI MS, public sector and Comp Sci background) pivoting to climate communications or research and comms — grad school or straight to work?

Early 30s, currently between roles.

Background: BS in Computer Science then ~3 years as a cloud support engineer at AWS. Followed by MS in Information Studies (HCI) → 3 years doing UX research and information architecture at a state government agency (mixed-methods research, website/content governance, analytics). I recently completed an AI for Climate program and will start a climate action training program.

I am contemplating two options. I want to leverage my existing skills in Comp Sci and Research to move into an analytical role. Or potentially move into climate communications and translate research into things the public and policymakers can actually use.

Questions:

1. Are there roles where UX research / IA skills are genuinely valued in climate orgs (research centers, NGOs, climate tech)? What titles should I search for?
2. I’m considering a master’s that combines climate research with communication/journalism (2027 or 2028 start, low-cost programs preferred). Has anyone done this? Was it worth it, or is it better to get into a climate org first?
3. Anyone who pivoted from tech/UX into climate: what actually got you hired?

Thanks a lot in advance!

what is the reality for ux researchers in India with a psychology major

im planning to do msc applied psy and go for ux, is it worth it??

people who have done it let me knowwww

I’m a fourth-year UI/UX student. My thesis is about why players lose track of how much real money they’ve spent in a game. I’ve finished research and written four value propositions across two concepts, and I need help deciding which one to commit to.

Exhibition A: Helps players aged 18 to 24 who spend their own money in games and want to understand why they spend more than they planned, by letting them play the real mechanics with no money at risk and showing what that session would have cost.

Exhibition B: Helps regulators and researchers who want to prove these mechanics change behaviour rather than just claim it, by measuring what people think before and after they play.

Purchase Bar A: Helps players aged 18 to 24 who buy in-game currency and want to know what they’ve spent before buying more, by showing the real cost in dollars instead of gems and letting them set a limit before they play.

Purchase Bar B: Helps players who’ve been shocked by their own bank statement and want to keep enjoying the game without losing track, by giving them control without killing the fun.

Three things I’d like a second opinion on.

First, which of these is weakest and why. I have my own suspicion but I’ve been staring at them too long to trust it.

Second, whether a physical exhibition is a legitimate design outcome for a UX thesis or whether I’m avoiding the harder interface problem by retreating into something more fun to build.

Third, Purchase Bar B claims it gives control “without killing the fun,” and I can’t currently back that up. Is that a fatal flaw in a value proposition, or is it acceptable as something the design then has to prove?

Any feedback on the writing itself is welcome too. I’ve rewritten these several times and I’ve probably lost perspective on whether they’re clear to someone reading them cold.

Honest question about how people actually work now. I work on a voice-form tool, so I spend a lot of time looking at open-ended answers, and I keep going back and forth on this.

When a survey comes back with a few hundred free-text answers, what do you actually do?

• read every single one
• read a sample and code it properly
• let an LLM cluster or summarise, then spot-check
• some mix depending on who's asking

And if you use AI for it: what has it gotten wrong that you only caught because you read the raw answers anyway?

Hi everyone - i am a mom of two with one recently diagnosed with autism - and a senior UX Researcher. After having jobs at top tech companies on AI research, i am still struggling to get an offer. I need to take care of my children. Any guidance would be appreciated.

I’m trying to build an easy to navigate user research repository where I can sort/tag data inputs from a variety of sources into a variety of categories (for example- user persona, workflow step, product). Ideally, it would have integration with Excel and be accessible to other people at the company!

Has anyone had a particularly good experience with any repository tools? I’m looking at Dovetail and Marvin- any others anyone would recommend? Thank you!

Hey everyone,

I worked at a private practice for a few months and left due to low wages and getting an offer at a hospital that paid more. At the hospital I was incredibly stressed, burnt out. I did not pass probation and felt relieved to be terminated.

I don’t believe I want to return full time to a field where I am struggling as a beginner and also later in terms of salary.

As of now, I am learning python on mimo (IOS App) & Kaggle. I will be looking towards programming hub, sololearn.

I am hoping my psychology background helps. Does anyone know the steps when starting out? How to create a portfolio? Places to apply that take beginners? Any tips or anything useful.