Principal and Lead Experience Researchers

Interested in solving meaningful problems and transforming the journeys and experiences of millions of diverse constituents interacting with the Commonwealth of Massachusetts government services? We’re looking for collaborative, creative, and purpose driven Principal and Lead Experience Researchers to join our Experience Design and Research team at Massachusetts Digital Services. We need empathic, deeply curious experience researchers who thrive on deeply understanding people to inform, guide, and inspire the design and optimization of peoples’ experiences and outcomes when engaging with government services. We appreciate and need specialists with deep expertise in quantitative and qualitative research– while also needing our experience researchers to creatively select, adapt and apply a range of methods to guide our iterative human centered experience design, development, and innovation life cycle.

The Massachusetts Digital Service (Mass Digital), a division of The MA Executive Office of Technology Services and Security (EOTSS), partners with organizations across state government to transform how residents, visitors, businesses, and government agencies interact with the Commonwealth of Massachusetts government. Our mission is to design and deliver accessible, inclusive, equitable, seamless, effective, and secure digitally enabled end-to-end experiences that adapt to a person’s needs, so that every time they engage with any part of their government, they're getting the most and best of the Commonwealth. In this full-time contract role, you’ll play a critical role on several key initiatives in the Commonwealth Digital Roadmap including:

• Supporting constituent life events and experiences (i.e. helping people navigate across state services and channels to get their needs met as part of a holistic life experience)
• Enabling omni-channel constituent engagement, discovery, and communications (i.e., helping people seamlessly and successfully engage across channels and touchpoints as needed to communicate, exchange information, answer questions, and get help navigating state services)
• Helping to evolve our experience research practice including creating and implementing an Experience Measurement and Assessment Framework

You’ll skillfully plan and collaboratively execute qualitative and qualitative research to build an actionable understanding of and insights about diverse constituents’ experiences, goals, needs, journeys, and associated service interactions and workflows. You’ll measure and assess the experiential quality and impact of digital and omni-channels services to inform strategy and opportunity mapping, and to seamlessly guide and inspire iterative digital experience and service design, development, and continuous improvement.

You’ll collaborate with Experience Design and Research team members, cross-functional teams, agency stakeholders, service providers, and constituents to design, deliver, and optimize inclusive, equitable, and impactful digitally enabled end-to-end services and experiences. You’ll help identify and prioritize opportunities to improve experiences and help prototype, and assess solutions in collaboration with colleagues, partners, and constituents. You’ll also help us grow our experience research practice and serve as an advocate, coach, and change agent to facilitate learning and successful adoption of a people centered approach guided by inclusive experience research with constituents across the Commonwealth of Massachusetts government agencies.

This position is a full-time contract opportunity. The work schedule for this position is Monday through Friday, 9:00AM to 5:00PM EST, in a hybrid remote arrangement with 2-4 days per month spent at the primary work location: One Ashburton Place, Boston, Massachusetts 02108. Applicants should be located within reasonable commuting distance from the primary work location.

Key Responsibilities:

• Help lead and/or contribute to the growth of our Experience Research practice by defining/refining our playbook, and best practices, coaching/mentoring others, and facilitating learning (within Mass Digital and across the government)
• (For Quantitatively oriented specialists) Lead and/or contribute to the development and application of a robust and useful Experience Assessment & Measurement Framework (defining experience and impact metrics, selecting and apply quantitative data collection and analytics tools, etc.)
• Effectively integrate iterative experience research within a people centered, agile, collaborative, cross functional environment to inform and guide strategic experience design and development initiatives
• Skillfully select, adapt, and apply quantitative and qualitative research methods to: explore and understand constituents’ experiences and complex service contexts; support a collaborative, generative design process; and evaluate the value and effectiveness of concepts, prototypes, and working solutions for constituents
• Synthesize and effectively communicate research based actionable insights, models, and experience frameworks that connect the dots to grow cross-functional teams’ understanding of people’s experiences, needs, and behaviors
• Engage and collaborate closely with interaction designers, service designers, content designers, engineers, product managers, agency service providers, diverse stakeholders, and Mass Commonwealth constituents
• Create & refine experience research related artifacts (e.g. experience models, personas, journey maps, scenarios, narratives, behavioral/impact analytics summaries, etc.) to memorialize and grow the team’s actionable understanding of constituents and help identify and prioritize opportunities to improve digital and omnichannel service experiences
• Identify, learn from, synthesize, and apply relevant secondary research literature from relevant domains (e.g., psychology and behavior change; socio-cultural-contextual research, etc.)
• Contribute to the development of our Experience Research program and knowledgebase
• Contribute to Mass Digital enablement initiatives by facilitate learning and adoption of a people centered approach guided by experience research with constituents by partner agencies across the Commonwealth of Massachusetts government

Preferred Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities:

• Five (5) plus years of professional experience in quantitative and qualitative experience research to inform digital product design and service design as a senior, lead, or principal experience researcher
• Three (3) plus years of experience as an experience researcher in agile, collaborative digital product development environments
• Three (3) plus years of experience in government, healthcare, human delivery services, or comparable service and organizational environments leveraging both offline and digital research methodology
• Demonstrated advanced expertise in multiple methods of experience research (e.g., behavioral/usage analytics, survey research, impact/outcome analytics, qualitative interviews, scenario-based assessments, ethnographic/observational research, service evaluation research, etc.)
• Enthusiastic about solving problems facing public-sector agencies and promoting equitable constituent access to public services using modern technology and human centered design and research practices
• (For Quantitative specialists) Experience and fluency using digital/data analytic tools to support experience research execution, analysis, and synthesis (e.g., Web Analytics, SQL Databases, Survey Design and Analysis, Impact/Outcome Analysis, Statistical Analysis, etc.)
• Familiarity, experience with and fluency using digital tools to support experience research execution, analysis, and synthesis (e.g., Foresee/Verint, Maze, User Testing, Condens, etc.)
• Extremely strong system thinking skills
• Outstanding verbal and written communication and storytelling skills
• Extremely strong facilitation and consultation skills, with the ability to converse with cross-functional stakeholders and teams
• Outstanding communication and storytelling skills
• Extremely strong coaching skills
• A strong understanding of all facets of accessible, inclusive and equitable human centered design and digital/omnichannel service design and development
• Strong expertise in and commitment to inclusive, equitable and trauma informed research

About EOTSS:

The Executive Office of Technology Services and Security (EOTSS) is the state’s lead office for information technology. We provide enterprise level information technology services and infrastructure, including network management and security; computer operations; application hosting; desktop provisioning and management; and modern and responsive digital services to 40,000 internal stakeholders plus the residents, business owners and visitors to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

An Equal Opportunity / Affirmative Action Employer. Females, minorities, veterans, and persons with disabilities are strongly encouraged to apply.