In one way or another, I get asked almost the same question on how a product manager or a startup founder can qualify a good UX researcher. I like the term UX researcher because research activities are the most critical to any successful UX design.

So what are the main qualities of our researcher?

• Should be able to research comparables and design the best for your product from what people are used to. For example, researching amazon search, car website search, e-commerce search if you want to create a search page for your spare parts e-commerce site
• Understands what simplicity in design really means. Does it come from just keeping things simple or from her understanding to the problem in hand and therefore the confidence to keep only what matters in its simplest form
• Understands the importance and how to do exploratory and assessment usability tests prior to validating the usability to save development effort and cost
• Should be able to go through the steps of user cognition to really dig deep and understand the interactions the user is having with your product. For example, in a contact us form, you might show this message on submission “Your message has been submitted successfully”. But what if your users are contacting you to speak at a conference and they need to plan its schedule? Wouldn’t it be better to show a message like “I received your message and I will respond within 2–3 days”? This message gives them greater details that they might decide to contact you in a different way if they don’t have enough time to wait