The “Ultimate UX Research Skill Matrix” to advance your ux career.

The UX Research Skill Matrix is designed to assess and develop skills that a User Experience Researcher (UXR) can obtain (Download the pdf here).

Extract of the UX Research Skill Matrix

Usage of the UXR Skill Matrix. You can use the matrix to:

• Assess your current skills and develop them
• Develop the colleagues who you mentor​
• Assess the combined skills of your team​ to identify which skills your team lacks and you want to gain (through learning or hiring)

Credibility. The Skill Matrix has been compiled of +10 sources and input from​ several ux research experts. The MVP was then tested and improved with several ux researchers at different seniority levels up to uxr managers.

Elements of the Skill Matrix. The Skill Matrix is comprised of 7 topics: #1 Team strategy | #2 Research planning | #3 Workshops | #4 UX methods | #5 Creation of artefacts | #6 Communication | #7 Collaboration ​|

Each topic contains several skill sets with specific skills:

• #1 Team strategy | Research strategy & management, Impact creation, Team development, Research Ops
• #2 Research planning | Research plan creation, Research prioritisation, Participant sourcing
• #3 Workshops | Workshops creation, Workshop facilitation
• #4 UX methods | General methods, Design evaluation, Testing product offerings and prioritising features, Concept testing, UX measurement, Information architecture, Pricing research, Experiment & prototyping, Data synthesis, Quantitative
• #5 Creation of artefacts | Journeys, Persona & Jobs-to-be-done, Research reports, Design artefacts
• #6 Communication | Effective communication, Feedback, Stakeholder mgmt., Presentation techniques, Customer relationship
• #7 Collaboration ​| Strong & relevant network, Reflection & improvement, Balance of collaboration & independent work

Assessment. Each of the skill sets can be assessed according to your preferences. We used the following 4 experience levels (horizontally):

1. Basic | Knows about and supports the mentioned aspects
2. Practitioner | Can drive some of the mentioned aspects with guidance
3. Advanced Practitioner | Can drive some of the aspects independently
4. Expert | Can lead and drive all of the mentioned aspects

Entire UXR Skill Matrix. Example of how to use the content.

How to use the UXR Skill Matrix

Review each skill set and colour code your experience level to visualise your status. You can also highlight which of the skills you want to develop next and how. I did also add link learning content for each skill set (basic level), so that our team members have a kick-start.

Copy-paste the content of the UXR Skill Matrix into any medium you prefer to use in order to assess and track your progress.

#1 Team strategy

Research strategy & management:

1. Ensures UXR strategically impacts the Product Roadmap and company decisions.
2. Sets-up and manages a research program (incl. research roadmap and strategy)
3. Creates organisational UXR awareness
4. Develops and measures team goals (OKRs)
5. Ensures that approved budgets are tracked and managed appropriately

Impact creation:

1. Influence product strategy and product decisions
2. Measures impact of research projects
3. Identifies stakeholders that can benefit from research results, involve them in the share-out and make it visible where the parties can add value

Team development:

1. Creates and executes a hiring strategy (i.a team requirements and interviews)
2. Promotes and supports the team’s ongoing professional development
3. Identifies and implements opportunities for improving team processes
4. Can coach or mentor others (designer, UX advocates, PM, PO, working students)

Research ops:

1. Develops and manages a well-structured and easy to use research repository
2. Identifies relevant research tools and guides others how to use them (incl. recruiting, research panel, thematic analysis, etc.)

#2 Research planning

Research plan creation

1. Aligns with and involves stakeholders in the planning
2. Outlines the research rational, assumptions, questions and goals clearly
3. Identifies appropriate research methods and estimates a realistic time line (incl. offering time- and cost efficient research alternatives if needed)
4. Ensures that goals and milestones are met

Research prioritisation

1. Can prioritise research request against several factors (importance, urgency, customer and business value, costs of failure, research need, strategic value,…)
2. Identifies next steps of research needs

Participant sourcing

1. Can source and screen relevant research participant
2. Manages GDPR compliance (NDA and data privacy statement handling, deletion policy)
3. Builds strategic partnerships with customers OR creates a user research panel to source customers from.

#3 Workshops​

Creates Workshops

1. Creates several types of workshops according to the project stage (Discovery, Scoping, Research preparation, Synthesis, Ideation, Idea prioritisation, Conceptualisation Prototyping, or Design sprints

Facilitates Workshops

1. Ensures the workshop’s outline and outcomes are understood and that next steps are planned
2. Handles and engages all participants
3. Manages time by facilitating/ focussing the discussions and team decisions

#4 UX methods

General methods

1. Interviews (i.a. Jobs-to-be-done interviews) or focus groups
2. Observation, job shadowing, diary or camera studies, Student-teacher method
3. Immersion/ ‘one day in the life of___’
4. Surveys incl. True intent study (intercept surveys) and in-product feedback
5. Thematic Analysis (Voice of the Customer)
6. 5-second tests

Design evaluation

1. Cognitive Walkthrough and Heuristics Evaluation
2. Un- and Moderated usability tests (incl. benchmarking, RITE or other quantitative form of measurements)
3. Design comparison/ preference tests

Concept testing

1. User acceptance testing
2. Prototype testing
3. Concept testing
4. Value proposition testing

UX Measurement & user-product behaviour

1. Satisfaction surveys such as NPS or CSAT, PSAT
2. Usability surveys such as UMUXLITE, UX-Lite, SUS or SEQ
3. UX benchmarking, UEQ, Web-CLIC
4. A/B testing
5. Traffic analysis, session duration
6. Heat map or clickstream analysis

Information Architecture research:

1. Card sorting (qual/ quant)
2. Tree testing
3. First-click test

Pricing research

1. Van Westendorp-Price Sensitivity Meter, Monadic Testing, Gabor Granger, etc.

Experiment and prototyping

1. Identifies Leap-of-Faith assumptions of an idea or concept and the right ‘prototypes’/ artefacts/ measures to test these assumptions
2. Creates (low-fi) prototypes to test identified (critical) assumptions

Data synthesis

1. Triangulates: synthesises and interprets qual./quant. data from various sources (analytics, interviews, survey, customer support records, product usage observation,…) into actionable insights, How Might Wes, solutions, product changes, use cases or other action items.
2. Involves other stakeholders to help interpret research data, if domain knowledge is insufficient.
3. Pairs quantitative metrics with qualitative data to understand users’ behaviour.

Quantitative

1. Descriptive statistics
2. Inferential statistics

#5 Creation of research artefacts

Journeys

1. Creates customer journey maps (can incl. i.a. user task flows or story boards)
2. Creates service blueprints

Persona and JTBD

1. Creates assumption- and research-based personas.
2. Develops Jobs-to-be-done statements.
3. Creates Empathy Maps

Research reports

1. Identifies the ‘best’ format to report research findings considering the time available, needs of the audience and the types of insights.
2. Creates a concise and easy-to-understand research report.

Design artefacts

1. Adjusts prototypes for usability testing
2. Creates prototypes (low-fidelity or high-fi with an available design system)

#6 Communication

Effective communication:

1. Listens actively and reacts to input constructively
2. Communicates in a structured, efficient, compelling and easy to understand storyline

Feedback

1. Gives clear and constructive feedback
2. Reflects on received feedback and takes actions

Stakeholder Management

1. Engages and aligns with relevant stakeholders and manages their expectations
2. Negotiating with stakeholders and challenging them
3. Defending research plan incl. sampling choices

Presentation techniques

1. Is able to effectively communicate research results and actions (story telling)
2. Tailors the presentation for different audiences
3. Defends the validity of research findings

Customers

1. Represents the company externally on specific subject matters
2. Represents the company to customers’ — is responsible for delivery of quality outcomes of projects of high volume or high risk

#7 Collaboration ​

Strong & relevant network:

1. Collaborates and strengthens relationships, also with other departments
2. Cultivates a team with strong interpersonal relationships

Balances collaboration and independent work:

1. Know when to ask for help
2. Takes ownership

Balances collaboration and independent work:

1. Know when to ask for help
2. Takes ownership