Usability specialist

The Usability Specialist improves the ease of use of intranet and digital workplace tools through structured research, testing, and analysis. Where a UX Architect works at the level of overall experience strategy, this role focuses on specific journeys, pages, and features, with the person running studies, diagnosing problems, and making practical recommendations for improvement.

About the role

This is a research and evaluation-focused role. You'll plan and conduct usability studies, perform expert reviews, analyse findings, and translate them into clear, prioritised recommendations that design and platform teams can act on. The work is empirical: you test, measure, and report rather than design from first principles.

The role sits in the Digital Workplace Team and works alongside UX Architects, product managers, and platform teams. In smaller organisations the usability and UX architecture responsibilities are often held by a single person.

What you'll actually be doing

Most of your time will be spent designing and running usability research through task-based testing, heuristic evaluations, surveys, analytics analysis — and then turning the findings into something actionable. That means producing clear research reports with prioritised recommendations, working with design and platform teams to validate proposed changes, and monitoring ongoing analytics and user feedback to spot emerging problems before they become entrenched.

You'll also be the person who brings evidence into design conversations, advocating for testing before building, and making sure decisions are grounded in what employees actually need and can do.

What we're looking for

Hands-on experience planning and running usability studies: task-based testing, think-aloud protocols, heuristic evaluation, with the ability to design a study, recruit participants, moderate sessions, and communicate findings to non-specialist audiences. Accessibility knowledge is a baseline: you should understand WCAG standards and be able to evaluate platforms against them.

The ability to combine quantitative and qualitative data to build a coherent picture of user experience is important, as is enough design fluency to sketch or wireframe a recommendation clearly.

Typical background

Most people in this role come from UX research, psychology, human factors, or information science backgrounds. Usability or UX research certification is common. Enterprise digital workplace or intranet experience is preferred.

In addition, Usability Specialists, particularly if they are a lone role, can find themselves pulled into contributing all sorts of digital projects, including external-facing solutions. They can even find themselves contributing to areas of digital workplace, digital employee experience and intranet strategy.