User Experience Research Intern - Master's or PhD
Burbank, CA
About the Team:
Are you passionate about creating exceptional user experiences for games? Insomniac Games is seeking a dedicated User Experience Research Intern who is eager to learn and grow in the world of UX studies. If you are excited about the iterative development process and collaborating with various departments to refine gameplay, interfaces, and overall user experience, this opportunity is for you!
What You'll Be Doing:
- Assist research teams in defining test goals, including areas of concern, player demographics, and content to be tested.
- Support research studies focused on game content, balance, and usability, including tasks like site layouts, navigation design, and error handling.
- Install the latest builds and collaborate with IT and team members to ensure tests run smoothly without technical issues.
- Help recruit internal employees to participate in early development testing.
- Create surveys using templates and questions from the research and design teams.
- Assist with usability study moderation, including one-on-one sessions, focus groups, and multi-participant playtests.
- Take detailed notes during tests to identify trends, player behaviors, and usability issues.
- Present reports on internal research findings to the development team.
- Use game telemetry data to generate insights that inform stakeholders, research teams, and the development team.
- Identify gameplay issues, including system dynamics and player exploits.
- Develop surveys for studio teams outside of game testing to improve workflow processes.
What We're Looking For:
- Currently pursuing a Master’s or PhD in psychology, human-computer interaction, human factors, or a related field.
- Ability to apply concepts such as fractions, percentages, ratios, and proportions to real-world situations.
- Strong ability to read, analyze, and interpret scientific and technical documents. Capable of writing well-structured reports and presentations for management and public groups.
- Skilled at solving practical problems and working with various types of information where limited standardization exists.
- Proficient in Microsoft Office, Google Spreadsheets, and survey tools such as Qualtrics or Survey Monkey.
- Strong organizational, analytical, and communication skills. A passion for user research and a love for video games are essential!
Eligibility:
- Able to work during one of the following periods: May 19th - August 8th or June 16th - September 5th.
- Must be available for the entire 12-week internship period.
- Relocation assistance is available for eligible candidates.
Our intern positions offer a fixed hourly pay rate. Please note that the pay rate is exclusive to the internship period and may not reflect what pay may look like following the completion of an internship.
Please refer to our Candidate Privacy Notice for more information about how we process your personal information, and your data protection rights.
At SIE, we consider several factors when setting each role’s base pay range, including the competitive benchmarking data for the market and geographic location.
Please note that the base pay range may vary in line with our hybrid working policy and individual base pay will be determined based on job-related factors which may include knowledge, skills, experience, and location.
Intern Pay Range
$39.75—$42.50 USD
What We Do
Insomniac Games has created and developed award-winning video game franchises across multiple platforms for 25 years, selling more than 70 million games along the way. We’re best known for developing the PlayStation®4 smash-hit, Marvel's Spider-Man (2018), and creating iconic PlayStation franchises such as Spyro the Dragon (1998), Ratchet & Clank (2002) and Resistance (2005). With studios in Burbank, Calif. and Durham, NC, Insomniac has earned 20 local, regional, state and national awards for our workplace culture. You can learn more about us at https://insomniac.games
