Senior UX Researcher - Emerging Experiences

About Us 

Working at Target means helping all families discover the joy of everyday life. We bring that vision to life through our values and culture. Learn more about Target here. 

Target UX is a group of design, content, research, and accessibility practitioners and experts, with a passion for improving and innovating our digital experiences for Target’s guests, team members, and partners. Here, we pride ourselves on designing tangible, inspiring, and impactful solutions that serve all aspects of our business, and being a part of the team means you will play a critical role for Target’s digital experience by increasing ease, simplicity, value, and delight for every touchpoint. 

About the team 

The Emerging Experiences team focuses on future-forward guest experiences that are seamless, inspiring, and full of possibility. We imagine what’s next for Target’s digital and physical touchpoints and bring those ideas to life through immersive, high-fidelity storytelling. 

This team works across the ecosystem, collaborating with product, engineering, brand, stores, and enterprise strategy to prototype the future and make it real. We're here to create clarity in complexity. At Target, design isn’t just how something works, it’s how it feels. It’s how we bring joy to everyday life through moments of clarity, emotion, and care. 

About the role 

As a Senior UX Researcher embedded within our Emerging Experiences team, you’ll be at the forefront of Target’s evolving guest experience, helping define what’s next across digital and physical touchpoints while contributing to business growth. You will work in collaboration with other researchers and UX partners to prototype the future and make it real. You will support research that informs concept development, prototyping, and storytelling, helping teams create clarity in complexity, explore what’s possible, and align around what matters. 

In this role, you will evaluate assumptions, uncover guest needs and expectations, and support the development of best-in-class experiences for our guests. You will help teams understand not only how something works, but how it feels for our guests, bringing a lens of clarity, emotion, and care to future-visioning efforts and UX sprints. Success in this role requires comfort navigating ambiguity and working in a fast-paced, iterative team environment where experimentation is valued, and concepts, prototypes, and priorities may evolve as teams learn. 

As a member of the Guest UX Research Team, you will contribute to advancing the broader practice of UX at Target through influence, impact, and craft. We are an engaged, supportive, and diverse team focused on elevating the impact of our discipline. 

Responsibilities: 

• Use your skills, experience, and talents to contribute to groundbreaking thinking and visionary goals 

• Conduct research using qualitative and quantitative methods, including moderated and unmoderated testing, surveys, heuristic reviews, benchmark studies, concept testing, longitudinal research, intercepts, ethnographies, and shop-alongs 

• Define and evaluate quality for adaptive experiences, assessing not only usability, but also trust, usefulness, clarity, and system behavior 

• Translate research findings into clear evaluation criteria, product direction, and compelling stories that help cross-functional teams make informed decisions 

• Support Principal and Lead Researchers with research requests, from shaping the scope of initiatives to executing studies and synthesizing findings 

• Guide and partner with product teams through the research lifecycle by recommending methods, scoping studies, coordinating execution, and facilitating synthesis and analysis 

• Identify high-impact questions in ambiguous, early-stage problem spaces and adapt research plans as product direction evolves 

• Work effectively with early, incomplete, or rapidly changing prototypes in fast-paced, iterative environments, including design sprints and exploratory workstreams 

• Contribute to the broader Guest UX Research Team by helping keep the research library up to date and comprehensive 

About you:  

• Minimum of 5 years' experience practicing UX design research for digital product teams 

• Experience in UX Research methods, including remote moderated and unmoderated testing, online and in-context (store) intercepts, experimenting with AI  

• Excellent written and verbal communication skills; demonstrated ability to effectively communicate complex concepts to cross functional partners 

• A strong ability to tell compelling stories from data to communicate insights and recommendations  

• Comfortable and confident when faced with ambiguity  

• Demonstrated ability to manage multiple projects (both small and large) and adjust to changing priorities 

• Strong project management skills – experience managing and tracking multiple projects at various stages in the product design life cycle 

• Experience running, recruiting, moderating, and analysis of online panels  

• Experience in a matrixed, agile environment 

• Proficient in research tools for remote testing, surveys, analysis, and reporting (User Testing, Qualtrics, Dscout, ChatGPT, etc.) 

• Preferred 4-year degree in Design Research, Social Science, Psychology, Human Factors, HCI, Anthropology, or related field

This position will operate as a Hybrid/Flex for Your Day work arrangement based on Target’s needs. A Hybrid/Flex for Your Day work arrangement means the team member’s core role will need to be performed both onsite at the Target HQ MN location the role is assigned to and virtually, depending upon what your role, team and tasks require for that day. Work duties cannot be performed outside of the country of the primary work location, unless otherwise prescribed by Target. Click here if you are curious to learn more about Minnesota.