Do you need a PhD to become a UX researcher?

There are many paths to starting a career in UX research.

Noor Ali-Hasan
UX Research Journal
9 min readApr 24, 2021

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The University of Michigan. Photo by author.

Several weeks ago, a reader left a comment asking for advice. They wanted my perspective on whether they needed to get a PhD to pursue a career in UX research.

The short answer is: No.

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Noor Ali-Hasan
UX Research Journal

I’m a UX research lead at Google, where I help teams design and build desirable and easy to use products. Outside of work, I love art, Peloton, and Lego.