Engagement Manager, Studios
Playstation
San Mateo, CA
User Experience Researcher
San Mateo, CA
Sony Interactive Entertainment, PlayStation Studios' Games User Research group is looking for a UX Researcher to join its growing internal user research team in San Mateo. This is an outstanding opportunity for someone with a passion for research and digital entertainment to join PlayStation and support the PlayStation Studios game teams by providing reliable and measurable insights of consumer game experiences.
As the successful candidate, you will collaborate with the development teams responsible for curating outstanding player experiences across titles like Marvel's Spider-Man, Ghost of Tsushima, The Last of Us and Dreams. Using our internal research facility and the latest game research methods, you will gather insights to help improve the quality and consumer relevance of our games. You will contribute to custom research plans and collaborate with multiple business partners. You will organize, co-ordinate, conduct, and deliver research insights for our product testing efforts. You have an expressed interest or passion for video games and enjoy applying scientific methods to help deconstruct the player experience.
Principle Responsibilities:
The User Experience Researcher is responsible for scoping projects, conducting research, and reporting research insights.
• Collaborate with game developers to effectively fit high impact user feedback into their development processes
• Collaborate with the UX Research Manager and team to provide the highest quality research across numerous, simultaneous top-priority game projects
• Collect and identify business partner requirements, production, development, design and research
• Plan, prioritize and moderate user research sessions
• Collate and analyze results, and identify impactful insights
• Prepare and effectively communicate bespoke reporting results
• Work with teams to build and track post-test action plans
• Support senior staff to refine research techniques, processes, and overall philosophy
Responsibilities:
• This opportunity would suit someone with a usability, user centered design, or human factors research background. Our ideal new team member will have a degree in an analytic field that focuses on people and/or product development such as Psychology, Cognitive Science, or Human Factors.
• Demonstrate a strong dedication to quality, be organized, analytical, methodical, and have an interest in improving player experiences and overall quality through user research.
• Proven methodological skills including expert review, usability testing, play-testing, survey design, text & verbal analysis, and observational fieldwork.
• Proven proficiency with descriptive and analytical statistical techniques/tools such as telemetry, SPSS, R, regression and ANOVA
• Organized and capable of leading multiple projects simultaneously in a fast-paced and exciting environment.
• Comfortable interacting and communicating with partners of different backgrounds and responsibilities.
• Strong verbal, numerical and written communication skills required; presenting information concisely and effectively to people at all levels of the organization is critical.
• Strong negotiation skills are important and must work well with cross-functional teams, including producers, engineers, artists and designers.
• Must be forward thinking and actively maintain an interest in your field; keeping up-to-date with developing tools and approaches.
• Must have a passion and interest in video games across a wide variety of genres with an innate curiosity for understanding player motivations and behaviors.
Qualifications:
• Bachelor's Degree in Psychology, Cognitive Science, HCI, Human Factors Engineering, or related field
• 1-2 years practical experience developing study designs, testing, analyzing, reporting, and presenting findings
Desired qualifications:
• Master's Degree/PhD in Psychology, Cognitive Science, HCI, Human Factors Engineering, or related field
• 3-5 years practical experience developing study designs, testing, analyzing, reporting, and communicating findings
Jobcode: Reference SBJ-rv19kn-44-222-231-51-42 in your application.
Recognized as a global leader in interactive and digital entertainment, Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE) is responsible for the PlayStation® brand and family of products and services.