JANINE GALLOWAY
USER RESEARCH LEADER

Head of User Research (Interim) | Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (Defra) | Oct 2023 - Date

Projects

• Leading a community of practice of 80 user researchers working on services across air quality, flood, waste, farming, trade, natural environment and animal and plant health

• Line management of 8 Lead User Researchers

• Development of a UR strategy aligned with Defra Future Strategy, research maturity model and delivering a roadmap for the profession

• Building user research capability across the department

• Managing the research operations team, delivering participant recruitment and knowledge management support

• Working alongside our team of digital Heads of Professions, reporting directly to C-Level leadership across a range of performance and transformation goals

• User research assessor, assessing Defra services against GDS Service Standard

• Supporting the promotion of the Defra brand and employee proposition; raising the profile of the community of practice across Defra, the wider Civil Service and beyond

• Ensuring standards are understood and applied, and support profession leads in driving continuous improvement across Defra

• Defined and embedding performance metrics and KPIs for the profession and ensure they are effectively embedded within Defra teams

• Proactively building close relationships with Defra senior leaders and their teams to understand the needs and challenges to be able to identify areas of community-related interventions and collaboration

• Providing consultation where professional expertise is required, including support for programmes and areas where there are delivery issues

• Representing the UR community at goverance, spend control assurance and project shaping boards

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Lead User Researcher | Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (Defra) | Contract | Sept 2022 - Sept 2023

Projects

• Providing cover for HoUR on a phased return and part time from maternity leave

• Managing 3 Lead User Researchers and 10 contractors, including objective setting and performance management

• Overseeing UR in the Natural England portfolio of work and working strategically with their virtual team

• Provide leadership and expert guidance on user research plans and research activities that are aligned with project / programme objectives and priorities

• Representing the UR community at governance, spend control assurance and project shaping meetings to ensure effective resourcing

• Leading on effective resourcing and recruitment for user research to service teams

• Ensure that teams take a user centred, evidence based approach to service design and delivery

• Quality assuring on all research outputs created across the teams

• Work collaboratively with the UCD Leadership team to support teams, address resourcing needs and maintain consistent standards

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User Research Manager | Onfido | Maternity Contract | March 2022 - September 2022

Projects

• Scaling and maturing the user research practice

• Develop and drive the company's UX research strategy

• Operationalise the user research practice to increase team efficiency and promote user research at scale through development of customer research panel, development of processes, training and documentation and reusable templates

• Manage a team of 5 user researchers (Junior - Senior) including recruitment, onboarding, coaching, day to day line management and career progression

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Principal Design Researcher | Nationwide Building Society (NBS) | FT Contract | Nov 2021 - Mar 2022

Projects

• Working with stakeholder to prioritise & shape the programme research backlog, create research plans and resource researchers to the teams

• Assuring the quality of user research across the programme

• Mentoring and coaching of 3 design researchers 

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Senior User Researcher | OVO Energy | December 2020 - October 2021

Projects

• Setting research strategy for the Customer Experience team 

• Conducting generative and evaluative user research to help the teams mission to help members progress to net carbon living by having a deeper understanding of their users

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Senior User Researcher | Government Digital Service (GDS) | Contract | Aug 2019 - Oct 2020

Projects

• Rapid UX research to support iterative improvement of Brexit services on GOV.UK carrying out both lab and remote user experience testing

• Developed a hypothesis framework to understand user behaviour working with Performance Analysts 

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Senior User Researcher | Citizens Advice | Contract | June 2019 - August 2019

Projects

• Generative research to develop a deep understanding of the users to support the development of a service based on user needs helping first time claimants apply for Universal Credit

• Embedded in an Agile team, I coached the team in user research and mentored a junior researcher

• Made design and product recommendations to influence service design and improvement based on the understanding of the service users

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Senior User Experience Research Consultant | RS Components | Contract | April 2019 - June 2019

Projects

• Discovery research to support RS Components strategic transformation programme; understanding the procurement and customer experience journey, and user needs with corporate customers.

• Led for all the projects end-to-end research within an agile environment

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Senior User Researcher | Department for Work & Pensions (DWP)  | Contract | May 2018 - April 2019

Projects

• Ethnographic discovery research to understand the needs for a digital service for National Insurance Number Applications 

• Insights helped the team and stakeholders and influenced service redesign and help shape the digital solution to meet user needs

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Lead User Researcher | HM Courts & Tribunals Service (HMCTS)  | Contract | Feb 2018 - April 2018

Projects

• Working on a programme of reform of the criminal justice for HMCTS. Providing a user-centred design approach using a range of user research techniques and applying behavioural science application to help feed into service redesign and influence direction to meet user needs

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Senior User Researcher | Government Digital Service (GDS) | Contract | Feb 2017 - Jan 2018

Projects

• EUD/WIndows 10 Discovery: user research with IT professionals across government looking at the deployment of Windows 10 / O365 and creating a common desktop for government

• GovPrint Discovery: user research with end-users including those with accessibility needs and IT Teams consisting of depth interviews and card sorts to understand printing and scanning across government to create the user needs and user stories for a cross-government printing service (GovPrint)

• GovPrint Alpha: lab based user research with end-users to test the user experience of a cloud hosted service for GovPrint

• GovWifi Alpha: Pop up user research with end-users to test sign-up journeys to GovWifi and surveying to assess the digital capabilities of visitors to government buildings ahead of a service assessment to move from Private Beta to a Public Beta Service

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User Research Lead | Department for International Trade (DIT) | Contract | July 2016 - January 2017

Projects

• Discovery user research for the IT Transformation Programme which was tasked with delivering technology to users across the department that is "at least as good as users have at home" via User Centred Research & Design 

• Led the user research programme managing 3 other user researchers in the team to ensure that user needs were understood and fed into potential solutions

• Led and designed discovery research which helped deliver a technology transformation for a new Government Department

• Created user needs library and insights repository, user personas and journey maps to create empathy for the user and highlight pain points and opportunities to progress into Alpha

• Pilot evaluation of a technology solution deployed to 130 users across DIT 

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Lead UX Researcher | Which? | Contract | April 2016 - July 2016

Projects

• User testing to understand the user experience and make improvements to the design of the following Which? websites

  • Which? Birth Choices

  • Which? Campaigns

• User testing on a new section of Which? University using a pre-production environment to make improvements to the design of the new section

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User Researcher | Valuations Office Agency (VOA) | Contract | November 2015 - March 2016

Projects

• Discovery user research and user testing of proposed solution for Customer Channel Shift to move users from traditional channels (post and telephones) to digital channels

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User Research Manager | Christian Aid | Maternity Contract | July 2015 - November 2015

Projects

• Establishing user research protocols across the organisation and within the newly formed digital team

• Discovery user research for redesign of Christian Aid's website

Achievements​

• Embedded a culture of user research within the organisation to support their Digital Acceleration Programme through the use of coaching and training sessions

• Conducted qualitative user with internal and external users in the discovery phase of their website redesign to support the development of online personas 

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Senior Social Research Officer | Department of Energy & Climate Change (DECC) | Contract | August 2014 - July 2015

Projects

• Social research to inform design of policy initiatives to encourage Industry to recover more Waste Surplus Heat 

Achievements​

• Development and sign off on business case and ITT for research programme

• Engagement and commissioning of joint technical and research suppliers

• Management of suppliers to support the qualitative research programme to support the Strategic Business Case for Recoverable Heat and policy incentives for industry

• Developing research questions and designing appropriate methodologies to answer them

• Delivered full reporting for evidence on policy incentives

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Market & Customer Insight Manager | Allianz | Contract | May 2014 - August 2014

Projects

• NPS Tracking programme

• Customer Satisfaction trackers

• New Product Development research for a new Telematics product 

Achievements​

• Scoped, designed and commissioned a collaborative corporate partner project with Allianz and BMW to understand customer requirements for a new Telematics product

• Managed research programmes of qualitative and quantitative research to support the business and ensure customer focused delivery and enable representation of the customer in all commercial decision-making

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Research Consultant | Chartered Institute of Management Accountants (CIMA) | Contract | April 2014

Projects

• Employee Engagement Programme

Achievements​

• Carried out a qualitative, ‘deep-dive’ investigation into some of CIMA’s key metrics with employees globally and provided full reporting and recommendations

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Senior Research Officer | London Borough of Newham (LBN) | May 2009 - December 2013

Projects

• Council Consultations

• Employee Engagement & Staff Survey 

• Policy research

• Tracking surveys (resident satisfaction, brand tracking)

• Website and Intranet redesign

Achievements​

• Managed high risk Council Consultations with robust research methods that provided evidence to Councils that avoid legal challenge

• Changing the way that consultation was undertaken by the Council by develop new research and consultation processes and guidance and producing a publicly accessible Council Consultation Strategy.  This helped that best practice was followed, and that there was an audit trail and that stakeholders are told what has happened as a result of their feedback, leading to an improvement in residents taking part in consultation and research

• Managed the Staff Survey, improving employee engagement with increase response rates (54% to 61%) and better action planning to ensure key feedback was acted upon

• Produced the Council Consultation Strategy and developed new research and consultation processes and procedures and a research and consultation toolkit for public consultations

• Developed research training programmes and introduced a research training academy to delivery to council colleagues

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Senior Research & Consultation Analyst | London Borough of Lambeth (LBL) |  August 2008 - May 2009

Projects

• Council Consultations

• Employee Engagement & Staff Survey 

• Policy research

• Tracking surveys (resident satisfaction, brand tracking)

Achievements​

• Supported the customer access programme for the Council by providing evidence of the customer journeys in key service areas.  This involved working across the Lambeth Strategic Partnership with partner organisations (PCT, Policy, Fire, etc) conducting a number of workshops and depth interviews with hard to reach audiences (homeless, workless, victim of crime, etc)

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Senior Research Executive | AOL Broadband | May 2008 - August 2008

• Responsible for identifying, designing and managing continuous and ad-hoc consumer insight programmes for AOL Broadband products and services

• Identified, managed and evaluated suppliers for the delivery of insights based on appropriate methodology and technique

• Provided a clear view of trends in customer’s perception of the product, service, delivery and image through surveys, customer satisfaction and brand tracking

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Market Research Manager | Wolters Kluwer UK Limited | June 2001 - February 2008

Projects

• NPD Research

• Digital Research using ethnography, contextual interviewing, paper prototyping and usability testing

• Strategy research

• Tracking surveys (customer satisfaction, brand tracking)

Achievements​

• Worked with design and product development teams to carry out user testing of online platforms to migrate the core organisations product from hard-copy to web-based products and to drive digital audience and revenue growth.  This included carrying out ethnographic research, in-depth interviews, expert reviews and user testing.

• Developed an array of in-house research techniques to support editorial and brand development

• Planned and managed a budget of £300,000 per annum

• Continuing programmes of research for key business categories of Employment Law, Health & Safety and Education (print and online)