Visiting Researcher, User Experience (PhD)

Employer

Job Description

Facebook's mission is to give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together. Through our family of apps and services, we're building a different kind of company that connects billions of people around the world, gives them ways to share what matters most to them, and helps bring people closer together. Whether we're creating new products or helping a small business expand its reach, people at Facebook are builders at heart. Our global teams are constantly iterating, solving problems, and working together to empower people around the world to build community and connect in meaningful ways. Together, we can help people build stronger communities - we're just getting started.

At Facebook Reality Labs (FRL), our goal is to explore, innovate and design novel interfaces and hardware subsystems for the next generation of virtual, augmented, and mixed reality experiences. We are looking for a highly skilled and motivated Visiting Researcher in user experiences to join our team, whose mission is to solve the XR interaction problem by uncovering user insights and measuring the experience utility of the technologies we build. We are specifically looking for a candidate with experience in wearable computing or haptic and tangible interactions research, and who can work with a team of researchers doing a wide spectrum of UX, HCI, and perception science work on AR and VR interactions. More broadly, the chosen candidate will work with a diverse and highly interdisciplinary team of researchers, engineers, interaction designers, product managers as their cross-functional partner, and will have access to cutting edge technology, resources, and research facilities.

Responsibilities
  • Plan and execute UX-focused research that collects and analyzes objective and subjective measures of wearable hardware experiences to inform the direction of AR/MR/VR interactions and strategies
  • Work with research scientists, designers, engineers and PMs to identify research questions that can yield actionable insights for the team
  • Develop standardized UX metrics as appropriate for repeated use and comparison over time for various projects across the broader team
  • Communicate research insights with appropriate teams and cross-functional partners by proactively identifying opportunities to share, using various communication channels
  • Share best practices & new techniques with the team and the broader organization
Minimum Qualification
  • Currently has, or is in the process of obtaining, a PhD in the field of Human Computer Interaction (HCI), Psychology, Human Factors or a related field
  • 2+ years experience conducting academic research on human interactions with technology applying a wide variety of research methods
  • 1+ years of experience in owning the end-to-end research process of planning, recruiting, executing/facilitating, analyzing, and reporting the insights
  • 1+ years of experience in building prototypes in VR or AR (e.g., Unity, Unreal Engine, or C#)
  • Communication skills
  • Interpersonal skills: cross-group collaboration and cross-culture collaboration
  • Must obtain work authorization in country of employment at the time of hire, and maintain ongoing work authorization during employment

Preferred Qualification
  • Experience in conducting human behavior research for haptic and tangible interactions
  • Knowledge of a set of quantitative (statistical) and qualitative research methods
  • Peer-reviewed publications in related journals (e.g., IEEE Transaction on Haptics, HFES) or conferences (e.g., CHI, IEEE VR)
  • Industry internship experience
Facebook is proud to be an Equal Opportunity and Affirmative Action employer. We do not discriminate based upon race, religion, color, national origin, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions), sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, gender expression, transgender status, sexual stereotypes, age, status as a protected veteran, status as an individual with a disability, or other applicable legally protected characteristics. We also consider qualified applicants with criminal histories, consistent with applicable federal, state and local law. Facebook is committed to providing reasonable accommodations for candidates with disabilities in our recruiting process. If you need any assistance or accommodations due to a disability, please let us know at accommodations-ext@fb.com.