Imint is looking for a user researcher to join the team

What if product development was always grounded in user research? Sounds like a user researcher’s dream, doesn’t it? But this is how we want to conduct our daily business. We have just gotten started.

For the last year or so, we have been learning how to shift to a user-centred way of working. Most of us are engineers, so grounding technical innovation in user needs has been an eye-opening experience for us. We can already see how it has contributed to significantly better products. For this reason, we have decided that we need someone with more experience of user research than we have, someone who can also spend their time relentlessly and ingeniously learning about our end users, their behaviours and their needs.

We have decided that we need someone like you.

So what is it that we do? We work with cutting-edge technology in video and image enhancement and sensor analysis for smartphones, drones, smart glasses and other industrial applications. We currently develop products for some of the biggest tech companies in the world.

At the moment, we are 30 colleagues who sit together in central Uppsala. Friends and clients who drop by our office often remark on the exceptional camaraderie and willingness to lend a helping hand that they experience at Imint. Lunchtime discussions in our canteen are lively and reflect our shared enthusiasm, curiosity and desire to learn. A recent visitor said we possessed bright minds and generous spirits. We take pride in this description of us, acknowledging it as an accurate reflection of our values and ambitions.

When you join our team, you will spend a large chunk of your time coming up with different ways of learning about our users. How do people capture video, when, why, and what do they do with their videos? What types of activities is video capture part of, and what kinds of problems do users run into? The remainder of your time will be spent working with the rest of the team, sharing your insights, and working with sales and engineering to make our solutions a reality.

What are we looking for? We are looking for someone with a few years of experience of working as a user researcher. You are someone who genuinely enjoys conducting research and is curious and relentless in understanding people. You already know some good research methods but can also be inventive and daring in coming up with novel ways of building your understanding of the domain.

You will be responsible for driving, executing and developing how we build our understanding of user needs and behaviours and how we translate those into ideas and requirements for new and improved products. People who have previously worked with you might describe you as having an insatiable curiosity, creativity and drive.

A work permit for the EU and excellent English and/or Swedish language skills are a must. We will not be able, unfortunately, to make any exceptions. You will also be needed in our office in Uppsala for at least a couple of days a week. We have noticed that good things happen when we sit together.

A small task

To help us find a suitable candidate, we require applicants to complete and submit a small task.

The task should take you somewhere between 30 and 60 minutes. You don’t need to write a lot; a brief documentation of your ideas is preferable. 

For the purpose of this task, pretend that Imint is collaborating with an international client in the mobile space. The client is developing a mobile software suite geared towards teenagers and their use of video on social platforms. They have asked Imint to propose some new concepts and to develop demos that showcase technical feasibility. You, in turn, have been tasked internally at Imint with conducting user research to provide insights and inspiration for the rest of the team.

What we would like you to do, as part of your job application, is to come up with a number of different methods and strategies for gaining actionable insights into the client’s target group and area of interest.

We would like to see a breadth and variety of methods, both rigorous (i.e. high validity and reliability) and revelatory (i.e. capable of uncovering surprising behavioural patterns, needs and drives, and/or providing inspiration for new features and solutions).

What we are interested in is the quality, variety and ingenuity of your suggestions. Do not be afraid to speculate and/or to include methods of uncertain effectiveness. If this was a real case, sorting through your proposals is something that we would all do together.

You don’t have to go into great descriptive detail for each of your ideas; it is enough that you describe roughly what you might do, and what kind of data and insights that might potentially yield.

Your application

Please send your application to  emil.westergren@vidhance.com. Be sure to include:

• Your CV.
• A personal letter, which should include a description of your experience of user research and your general approach to research.
• An assurance that you have a work permit for the EU.
• A research portfolio, should you happen to have one (don’t worry if you don’t have one).
• Documentation of “the task” saved as a pdf.