Research Insights Co-Op

Are you fascinated by what makes people tick? Are you able to get people to open up and share? Do you see patterns that other people don’t? Does research data “pop” for you, making it easy to separate what’s important and get to the bottom of what people are really saying? If your answer is yes, this is a role where you can positively impact millions of patients.

The Insights Co-Op assists with patient-centric research studies and workshops for medical device development. They engage directly with patient and healthcare worker study participants, bringing creativity and empathy to their work. The Co-op has frequent interactions with the cross-functional Matchstick team of engineers, clinicians, and designers.  Based on the project assigned, there is the opportunity to participate in pharmaceutical client meetings. This role is designed for a 5-8 month duration.

We are a consultancy working in chronic disease, specialty pharmaceuticals, and digital health. Much of our work focuses on combination products (medicine in a delivery device) like inhalers and injectors. Our work is diverse – from user research to understand what people need their devices to do, to creatively thinking about new designs and features, to helping our clients build business cases for development projects. Our clients are pharma and medical device manufacturers of all sizes. We invent, test, refine, and commercialize better solutions to help patients and health care practitioners.

Our team is intentionally small and recognized by our pharma clients as being the best at what we do. Small but mighty, we dominate the early concept phase of this work. We are engineers, clinicians, designers, and businesspeople. Each project is at the forefront of chronic disease treatment – we get given the very toughest questions, and there is no “right” answer or cookie-cutter process.

We are based in Boonton, NJ in the center of town at the former Boonton Opera House. Team members are generally in-person 3 days per week and to support occasional events (workshops, client visits, etc.).

• Help facilitate qualitative study interviews including prototype handling, session recording, and data collection.
• Create research materials (study stimuli, kits, surveys, screeners, etc.).
• Analyze and organize results to extract findings. Use qualitative techniques including task analysis, thematic analysis, and similar. Perform and interpret quantitative statistical analyses.
• Contribute to narrative around research results. Help present results that communicate insights and implications for our clients.
• Present regular updates to internal team and the client to ensure client needs are met and changes are incorporated. 
• Participate in creative brainstorms for new medical devices, features, or functionality.
• Research topics of interest to us (e.g. rare disease states, new pharmaceuticals, etc. ) using academic research, blogs, and social media. Teach the team what you've learned, and extract a clear "so what".
• Practice core consulting skills that will enable you to frame problems effectively, write clearly, present confidently, and facilitate fast and effective team meetings.
• Get regular feedback and coaching around your work (the "what") as well as your style (the "how").

We encourage you to bring your unique talents to this role. As a small team, we find enthusiasm, mindset, and experience to be more important than degrees. Based on our experience, you are a good candidate if:

• You are currently pursuing a Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in one of the following fields: Biochemistry/Biophysics, Biology, Biomedical Engineering, Chemical Engineering, Industrial Engineering, Biotechnology, Cognitive Science, Psychology, or Design Innovation. Minimum status of Sophomore in a Bachelor's degree program.
• You are naturally curious. You're a quick learner and you enjoy doing so.
• You are a problem solver. You are energized by complex challenges and are solutions focused.
• You love working directly with patients, caregivers, and clinicians. You find passion in empowering people to manage disease. You could not imagine working on anything more important.
• You're interested in other people and what makes them tick. You quickly understand where others are coming from. You make people feel heard, valued, and respected in every interaction.
• You love the details, but don't get bogged down in them. You know that 20% of the information you discover is really important, and know how to focus on and communicate what matters.
• You are entirely comfortable with ambiguity and not having a clear answer. You have no problem walking into an unfamiliar situation, getting your bearings quickly, and working with others to find a solution.
• You are honest and forthright. We work in a regulated industry and we despise passive aggressiveness and other bad corporate behavior.
• You are available to work full time (40 hours per week), during standard business hours.
• You are authorized to work in the US. We cannot sponsor any authorizations.

These are not requirements for the role, but we’re always interested in specific skill sets and experiences that are a good fit for our work. 

• Medical device or healthcare experience.
• Hands-on experience with creating study designs and design of experiments (DoE).
• Experience with human-subjects research in social science fields.
• Familiarity with usability assessments, contextual inquiry, human factors, or other formal research techniques.
• Familiarity with journey mapping, co-creation, and other human-centered design approaches.
• Demonstrated experience with secondary research and synthesis.
• Interest in sustainable design and manufacturing.
• Published writing in academic papers, school newspapers, or similar.
• Familiarity with quantitative data analysis tools e.g. R, python, SPSS, Prism