All Things Urban

The new Connected Places Catapult accelerates smarter living and travelling in and between the places of tomorrow. We focus on growing businesses with innovations in mobility services and the built environment that enable new levels of physical, digital and social connectedness. The Connected Places Catapult operates at the intersection between public and private sectors and between local government and transport authorities. We convene the disparate parts of the market to help innovators navigate the complexity of doing business, creating new commercial opportunities and improving productivity, socio-economic and environmental benefits for places.

As a senior member of the team you will be responsible for leading multiple projects, providing critical insight and strategy for our urban innovation work and mentoring junior members of the team.

- Set-up and deliver high quality qualitative user research to support a design and innovation process, including discussion guides, participant recruitment, release forms and incentives. - Translate user research into actionable and relevant insights and opportunities for innovation projects. - Provide content leadership for human-centred design for the organisation and for our external clients and partners. - Scope projects and plan programmes of work and support our business development and project management colleagues. - Identify opportunities to improve and enhance our research methodology. - You may be required to undertake any other reasonable duties to support the Catapult in achieving its strategic outcomes and ensure effective business operations.

- Demonstrable experience of leading research projects with user-centred and qualitative research. - Working knowledge of technologies, services and innovations within cities context is highly desirable. - Experience of research tools and practice, such as video ethnography, written/photo/video diaries, card sorts and Adobe software suite. - Excellent facilitation skills for undertaking co-design workshops, and usability testing. - Strong consulting skills with experience in setting client expectations communicating project ideas and presenting research findings. - Experience in designing presentations and facilitating workshops with diverse groups of stakeholders. - Experience of scoping projects and planning programmes of work. - Calm under pressure, with a good sense of humour. Required skills: - At least 5 years of experience in user-centred, qualitative research, including 2 years of leading research for innovation projects. - Experience in working across different sectors (public/private) and on a wide range of topics (e.g. from physical products to digital apps to public sector services), ideally with particular experience in one or more of the following: Behaviour Change, Urban/City/Local Authority work, Working with Big Data or merging Quantitative/Qualitative approaches - Excellent communication skills to engage people in a design process (citizen engagement, co-design workshops, usability testing, prototype refinements, etc.) - Experience in presenting insights, designing presentations and facilitating workshops. - Application of ethical and legal requirements and practices in qualitative research. - Knowledge and experience with a variety of research tools and practice, such as video ethnography, written/photo/video diaries, card sorts, to capture experiences and enhance insight. - Willing to travel for work, within the UK and internationally. Desirable: - Experience helping organisations become more user-centred with their own tools, processes and cultures. - Be passionate about working on citizen and city challenges - Comfortable navigating and producing documents with the Adobe software suite.

Unfortunately, it seems like this job is not available for international candidates. Unless you’re eligible for a work visa otherwise, please double-check with the company.