UX Researcher
You find out what people actually do, rather than what everyone assumes they do.
No degree needed Moderate, and unusually dependent on people skills rather than tooling.
Can I actually do this?
Open without a degree, though social-science backgrounds are common and do help. Portfolio-led like design: five well-run sessions written up honestly beat any qualification.
Who it suits. People who can sit quietly while someone struggles, and resist explaining. That restraint is the whole job.
Runway. Months of running real sessions. The method is learnable; the discipline of not leading the witness takes practice.
Coming from design, support, teaching or any research-adjacent field? All transfer — the core skill is asking without leading. UX Designer
Also advertised as
The route
Four stations, in order. Each one is a thing you finish before the next matters.
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Station one
Learn it free
Only the best few, deliberately. Every one of these is free to use — the pill on each card says exactly what is and isn't free.
Which UX research methods to use, and when (NN/g)
Free to learn · no certificate
The map of the field: which method answers which question. Free to read; NN/g's own courses are separately and expensively paid.
Verified 2026-07-27
Usability 101 (NN/g)
Free to learn · no certificate
The plain-English foundation. Start here if the vocabulary is new.
Verified 2026-07-27
ARIA Authoring Practices Guide (W3C)
Free to learn · no certificate
Research that ignores assistive technology users misses the people most affected by bad design. Free and open.
Verified 2026-07-27
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Station two
Attest strategically
Nothing worth buying. Research is hired on studies you have run and written up. Certification schemes exist in this field and are not asked for — a well-written study report is the credential.
Nothing here is worth paying for
No credential needed
Nothing worth buying. Research is hired on studies you have run and written up. Certification schemes exist in this field and are not asked for — a well-written study report is the credential.
Checked 2026-07-27
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Station three
Prove it
A certificate says you passed a test. These say you can do the job.
A study with a finding you did not expect
Run sessions, and report the result that contradicted your own assumption. Reporting the inconvenient finding is the professional signal.
A research plan someone else could run
Write the questions, the method and the recruitment criteria clearly enough to hand over.
A session with an assistive-technology user
Run and write up one session with someone using a screen reader. Rare, and disproportionately valuable.
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Station four
Get hired
Search these exact titles
Who hires for this. Product companies large enough to separate research from design, agencies, government digital services, and health tech.
Reports are read for whether you avoided leading the participant, so an honest write-up of a study that went sideways is stronger than a tidy one. That is our reading of the field, not a verified statistic.
On salaryWe don't publish salary estimates. Numbers copied between blogs drift from reality, and a wrong number costs you real negotiating power. When we have a verified public source, it goes here with its date.
Where this route continues
- UX Designer — many move between the two
- UX Designer — sideways move
This page last verified 2026-07-27 · How we verify
Both NN/g articles and the W3C ARIA guide fetched and READ 2026-07-27 (18,529 / 10,419 / 3,623 chars visible).