This internship is a collaboration between the Alexandria project, based at Microsoft Research Cambridge, UK, and the Modern Work Transformation (MWT) team, which is responsible for Microsoft products such as Microsoft Teams. Teams is increasingly targeting and catering for frontline work, which presents a distinct set of needs from knowledge and information work.  

The intern will undertake qualitative user research to develop a rich understanding of workflows in frontline work, which will ground new collaborative applications on the Microsoft Teams platform. This will additionally contribute to the Alexandria team’s understanding of workflow and will inform the ML and HCI research agendas for this project. The intern will work with the wider team to develop insights for further research and product development. 

This is a JEM internship, which means that the intern will be co-mentored by a member of MSR (Siân Lindley) and a Product Manager from Microsoft Teams. The intern must begin the internship before July 2022, and ideally will start during May 2022.  

“We are anticipating this will be  a virtual internship and the intern must be physically located in UK at the time of their application and during the duration of their internship"

Responsibilities

• Design and run a study to conduct qualitative user research into frontline workflows; 
• Analyse data and communicate results and insights through presentations and papers; 

• Collaborate with ML and HCI researchers to inform further research in Alexandria; 
• Collaborate with product team members to inform product development.  

Qualifications

• PhD candidate in the field of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), drawing on social science (e.g. sociology, psychology) in their research program; 

• Significant experience in designing and running qualitative user research studies, analysing qualitative data, and developing insights; 
• Experience of working in multi-disciplinary teams and ability to communicate to a multi-disciplinary audience; 
• Excellent organisation skills; 
• Interest and ideally experience in researching technologies for the workplace and human-AI systems; 
• Desirable: papers in academic journals and conferences such as CHI, CSCW, ECSCW, DIS. 

Microsoft is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, ancestry, color, family or medical care leave, gender identity or expression, genetic information, marital status, medical condition, national origin, physical or mental disability, political affiliation, protected veteran status, race, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, or any other characteristic protected by applicable laws, regulations and ordinances. If you need assistance and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application or the recruiting process, please send a request via the Accommodation request form.