Lead Researcher Details

Lead Researcher

IHG - Atlanta, GA

Employment Type : Full-Time

About us

Bringing True Hospitality to the world.

We want to welcome you to a world of bringing True Hospitality to everyone. When you join us at IHG®, you become part of our global family. A welcoming culture of warmth, honesty and a passion for providing True Hospitality.

We pride ourselves on letting your personality and passions shine, recognizing the individual contribution you make and supporting your ambition to learn and create your own career path. In making a difference to our guests and owners, colleagues and communities, every day is a chance to create great and unique experiences, in your own way.

With over 370,000 colleagues in nearly 100 countries sharing our values, there’s countless opportunities at your fingertips.

We’re growing; grow with us.

Job Summary – (Role Summary)

The Lead Researcher role is one of a collaborative nature; the Lead Researcher facilitates the collection of consumer experience metrics in the course of collaboration with product teams. Conducting qualitative and quantitative research including script generation, conducting guided and un-moderated usability studies. Partnering with design leadership to synthesize results in a dynamic product environment. You would be able to impact consumer products and drive innovation through discovery and validation of concepts.

Customer centricity is a part of our DNA at IHG. The Lead Researcher devises and executes qualitative research studies that ensure successful business outcomes and delighted customers. We employ a variety of qualitative and quantitative methods to accomplish our goals. We value a diverse range of perspectives that stem from many different backgrounds—geographically, culturally, educationally, philosophically.

What makes a good candidate? To thrive in this role, you are the #1 advocate for the customer, offering clear insights about the customer needs, behaviors, and product experience while enabling your team to do the same. You are a curious, active listener who is self-directed, proactive, inventive, and comfortable with fluid workdays. You’re someone who has exceptional research skills and who also understands the balance between scrappy and rigor, helping translate research into design and product decisions. It's not enough to answer interesting questions about user behavior; we focus on impact and outcomes.

Essential Duties and Responsibilities – (Key Activities)

• Collaborate with the UX Designers and Product Owners and Marketing
• Research on a daily basis
• Plan and lead research initiatives to understand user need and intent
• Define and refine UX research processes and influence higher levels in the company to promote the value of UX Research
• Provide thought leadership in planning and leveraging research to inform initial product decisions long-term roadmaps
• Responsibly and effectively advocate for the customer in a corporate environment
• Distill research into actionable insights and opportunities that create value for our customers and guidance for our team
• Develop end-to-end usability and development testing for products, concepts, in-progress designs, explorations
• You will be the interface to our customers and the customers voice in our organization
• You will set the standards for user experience research and testing with a wide variety of methods

Education –

Bachelors or Masters Degree in Human Factors Psychology, Communication or a relevant field of work, or an equivalent combination of education and work-related experience.

Experience –

5-7 years of progressive work-related experience, with demonstrated mastery of technical and business knowledge and understanding of multiple disciplines/processes related to the position.

Technical Skills and Knowledge –

• Experience working on digital products. This role sits within the user experience design organization, so a foundational knowledge of what goes into product design is key.
• Ability to clearly communicate outcomes and recommendations
• Develops priority and execution plan in conjunction with partners
• Understand and can execute modern research practices including usability and discovery to identify latest needs
• Supports junior members with direct feedback

Number of employees supervised: Direct 0 Indirect 0

Internal Key Relationships

• Proactively build and maintain relationships with Internal brand, marketing, sales, hotel, analytic and technology stakeholders, for the purpose of designing web and application interfaces according to specifications and/or communicating design direction and project deliverable status.

External Key Relationships

• Will have direct contact and manage outside vendors, design firms and contractors.

Physical Requirements

• Majority of work is performed in a normal office environment.
• Some travel required as needed (generally less than 10%).

The statements in this job description are intended to represent the key duties, essential nature and level of work being performed. They are not intended to be all responsibilities or qualifications of the job.

We’ll reward all your hard work with a great salary and benefits – including great room discount and superb training.

Join us and you’ll become part of the global IHG family – and like all families, all our individual team members share some winning characteristics. As a team, we work better together – we trust and support each other, we do the right thing and we welcome different perspectives. You need to show us you care, that you notice the little things that make a difference to guests as well as always looking for ways to improve - click here to find out more about us.

At IHG Hotels & Resorts, we are proud to be an equal opportunity employer. IHG Hotels & Resorts provides equal employment opportunities to applicants and employees without regard to an individual’s, race, color, ethnicity, national origin, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, age, disability, marital or familial status, veteran status or any other characteristic protected by law.

IHG is committed to promoting a culture of inclusion where everyone feels safe, respected and valued. We seek talent from all backgrounds to join our teams, and encourage our colleagues to bring their authentic and best selves to work.

Not Applicable for Colorado Applicants.

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