Key Responsibilities and Required Skills for UX Research Evangelist

🎯 Role Definition

The UX Research Evangelist is a senior practitioner and internal advocate responsible for elevating research maturity across an organization. You will design and run mixed-method research programs, mentor product and design teams, build repeatable research practices and repositories, and drive measurable product and business outcomes through empathetic, evidence-based insights. This role requires subject-matter expertise in generative and evaluative research, strong stakeholder influence, and a passion for teaching and scaling research operations.

📈 Career Progression

Typical Career Path

Entry Point From:

Senior UX Researcher with cross-functional leadership experience
Design Researcher or Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) researcher transitioning into an advocacy role
Product Research Manager or Research Ops lead seeking a broader evangelism remit

Advancement To:

Head of UX Research / Director of User Research
VP of Product Experience / Chief Experience Officer (CXO)
Head of Research Operations & Strategy

Lateral Moves:

Product Management (Director of Product)
Design Leadership (Head of UX / Design Director)
Research Operations & Enablement Manager

Core Responsibilities

Primary Functions

Act as the primary evangelist for user research across product teams, executives, and stakeholders, articulating the strategic value of research in shaping product direction, reducing risk, and increasing engagement and retention.
Design, execute, and synthesize large-scale mixed-method research programs (generative, formative, evaluative) that inform product strategy, roadmap prioritization, feature design, and go-to-market decisions.
Lead and moderate complex usability testing sessions, prototype evaluations, and remote unmoderated studies; convert observations into prioritized, actionable recommendations for designers, PMs, and engineers.
Build and maintain a centralized research repository and knowledge base (e.g., Dovetail, Confluence, Notion) to make user insights discoverable, reusable, and accountable across teams.
Coach and mentor product managers, designers, and junior researchers in research methods, question design, participant recruitment, moderation skills, and insight synthesis to raise overall organizational research literacy.
Translate qualitative findings into quantitative hypotheses and partner with analytics or data science teams to design A/B tests or cohort analyses that validate behavioral patterns and product impact.
Create repeatable research playbooks, templates, and tooling that scale end-to-end research workflows while ensuring high methodological rigor and ethical standards for user data and privacy.
Advocate for user-centered KPIs (e.g., task success, SUS, NPS, time-on-task, retention) and build dashboards or reporting cadences that connect research insights to product metrics and business outcomes.
Lead stakeholder workshops, design sprints, and synthesis sessions to align cross-functional teams on user needs, journey maps, personas, and prioritized problem statements.
Conduct ethnographic and contextual inquiry studies, including in-person fieldwork when needed, to surface unmet user needs, pain points, and cultural nuances that inform product opportunities.
Own recruitment strategies and participant pipelines to ensure diverse, representative sampling and to reduce bias in insights—partnering with vendors or building internal panels when appropriate.
Manage research budgets, vendor relationships, and procurement for specialized research services, remote testing platforms, and accessibility testing tools.
Partner closely with Product and Design leadership to integrate research deliverables into the product development lifecycle and ensure timely handoffs that accelerate implementation.
Create compelling, executive-ready artifacts—research briefs, strategic presentations, and ROI-focused reports—that influence senior leadership and secure continued investment in research.
Evangelize best practices for inclusive and accessible research, leading initiatives that ensure accessibility testing and inclusive design considerations are embedded into product development.
Establish and govern research ethics, consent processes, secure storage, and PII minimization practices to maintain compliance with legal and regulatory requirements across markets.
Facilitate cross-company learning through lunch-and-learns, office hours, and internal training programs to democratize research skills and foster a research-driven culture.
Rapidly synthesize and communicate insights in writing and visually (journey maps, evidence walls, themes, opportunity areas) to enable fast decision-making and execution by product teams.
Drive continuous improvement of research operations (recruitment, incentives, tooling, tagging taxonomy) to improve throughput, quality, and impact of research initiatives.
Act as a subject matter expert and external-facing representative for the company at conferences, podcasts, webinars, or industry events to attract talent, partners, and research community engagement.
Work with legal, security, and privacy teams to ensure research activities meet corporate policies and international data protection standards (e.g., GDPR), adapting methods for remote and international studies.
Measure and report on the impact of research initiatives (e.g., feature adoption, reduced rework, time-to-insight) and iterate on approaches to maximize ROI and influence.

Secondary Functions

Develop and manage a rolling research roadmap that aligns with product strategy, balancing generative discovery work with evaluative and validation studies.
Support ad-hoc product questions and fast-cycle discovery research to unblock design and engineering teams, including lightning studies and rapid interviews.
Serve as liaison to analytics, data science, and customer success teams to triangulate qualitative insights with quantitative signals and customer feedback loops.
Help recruit and build a scalable research function—contributing to hiring, interviewing, onboarding, and career development frameworks for researchers.
Establish and monitor research quality metrics and SLAs (time-to-insight, participant turnaround, synthesis coverage) to enable predictable delivery and impact.
Curate a public and internal showcase of research impact stories and case studies that demonstrate measurable business outcomes and inform prioritization.

Required Skills & Competencies

Hard Skills (Technical)

Expert-level proficiency in qualitative methods: in-depth interviews, contextual inquiry, ethnography, diary studies, and thematic synthesis.
Strong quantitative literacy: experimental design, basic statistics, survey design and analysis, and the ability to partner with data teams on A/B testing and cohort analysis.
Hands-on experience with usability testing tools and platforms (e.g., UserTesting, Lookback, Validately, Maze) and remote unmoderated testing.
Familiarity with research repository and synthesis tools (e.g., Dovetail, EnjoyHQ, Notion, Airtable) and best practices for tagging and taxonomy.
Proficiency in research ops and participant recruitment strategies, including building panels and managing vendor relationships for global research coverage.
Ability to create high-quality research artifacts: journey maps, personas, evidence walls, affinity diagrams, and executive summaries that drive decisions.
Experience with accessibility testing methods and standards (WCAG), and tools for testing assistive technology interactions.
Comfortable working with basic data analysis and visualization tools (Excel, Tableau, Looker, R, Python or equivalent) to quantify and communicate findings.
Knowledge of product development lifecycles (Agile/Scrum) and experience integrating research into iterative design and delivery processes.
Familiarity with privacy and compliance considerations for research (GDPR, CCPA) and secure data handling practices.

Soft Skills

Exceptional storytelling and communication skills, able to translate complex research findings into concise, persuasive narratives for executives and product teams.
Strong stakeholder management and influencing skills with a proven track record of driving cross-functional alignment and adoption of research recommendations.
Coaching and mentorship capabilities to grow research literacy and capability across designers, PMs, and engineers.
Demonstrated strategic thinking and business acumen—able to prioritize research that delivers measurable product and business impact.
High emotional intelligence and empathy for users and internal partners, enabling trust-based relationships and constructive critique.
Facilitation skills for running workshops, synthesis sessions, and collaborative problem-framing activities.
Curiosity, intellectual rigor, and a bias for action—comfortable operating in ambiguity and fast-paced environments.
Cultural sensitivity and adaptability to conduct research across diverse user populations and international markets.

Education & Experience

Educational Background

Minimum Education:

Bachelor's degree in HCI, Cognitive Psychology, Anthropology, Human Factors, Design, Sociology, or related field.

Preferred Education:

Master's or PhD in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), Cognitive Psychology, Anthropology, Human Factors, Interaction Design, or equivalent applied research program.

Relevant Fields of Study:

Human-Computer Interaction (HCI)
Cognitive Psychology / Behavioral Science
Anthropology or Sociology
Industrial Design / Interaction Design
Human Factors / Ergonomics

Experience Requirements

Typical Experience Range:

5–10+ years of professional UX/design research experience with demonstrated leadership, cross-functional influence, and hands-on delivery of high-impact research across product lifecycles.

Preferred:

7+ years including experience evangelizing research, building research practices and repositories, mentoring teams, and demonstrating measurable impact on product outcomes. Proven portfolio of case studies showing mixed-method projects, stakeholder influence, and research-to-product translation.