Reddit mentions of Handbook of Usability Testing: How to Plan, Design, and Conduct Effective Tests

First, define who you need to interview. Do you need a mix of ages and genders? Do you need people who are early adopters? Do you need people who are in the VR/AR space? What sort of target market do you need to test the waters for?

Second, you need to recruit. Talk to participant recruiting agencies in advance - usually they need ~2 weeks to secure and schedule participants. $150 would be a reasonable honorarium per participant for 3 hours, but you will have to pay the agencies above and beyond what you give participants. Otherwise, you can go the cheaper Craigslist route and send out a screener questionnaire (to screen out the people you don't want), then call or email the people who you want to talk to. Follow up 2 days in advance with each participant to confirm attendance. As a last resort, you can use the "friends and family" recruit method. But since you have time, I would highly discourage that.

Third, you need someone to conduct the studies: drop $40 on the Handbook of Usability Testing if you are going to try conducting the interviews yourself. (Be wary of leading questions - it doesn't matter how much money you throw at a study if the interviewer / moderator is not able to collect good data.) Or, hire a contract UX Researcher; you would need a much higher budget for that, but it is well worth the money.

Source: am a UX Researcher

I started in market research as well before transitioning to a UX Researcher. These are the standouts from the reading list I started with:

The Elements of User Experience - A great intro to the whole field of UX. In-depth and covers the user centered design process.

Don't Make Me Think Short but comprehensive book on usability.

Handbook of Usability Testing Everything you need to know about usability testing.

Interviewing Users This book is great and is one I go back to regularly. The author Steve Portigal, also has a podcast on user research, "Dollars to Donuts" which is worth checking out.

Another comment mentioned the Jeff Sauro book which is very good, and also the Userfocus blog and newsletter. I've done David Travis' courses as well and would recommend them to people new to the field.

https://www.usability.gov/ is a great resource for templates, methods, definitions etc.

NN/g and UIE are my two most read blogs/newsletters.

Suggestions to learn and develop your usability testing and UX research skills:

• Coursera has an HCI course that is probably worth checking out.
  
  
• See if you can find any local UXPA or relevant Meetup.com meetings. Network, ask for informational interviews, see if you can shadow, etc. Hopefully people are doing presentations or doing round tables you can learn from. Maybe you can find someone you can pay to mentor you? The national UXPA conference is May 31st in Seattle, probably a good place to go.
  
  
• Steve Portigal has a great book. He also has a great podcast interviewing researchers leads. Called dollars to donuts or something. You can probably learn a lot about building a team there.
  
  
• This is another classic
  
  
• The Norman Nielsen Group has a ton of great resources on their site
  
  That should get you started.

Pretty much anything from https://rosenfeldmedia.com/ will get you started. TBH the methodologies for formative research are going to be very similar to what your used to in anthropology. What will come in handy is reading up on usability testing.

A Practical Guide to Usability Testing
https://www.amazon.com/Practical-Guide-Usability-Testing/dp/1841500208

Handbook of Usability Testing: How to Plan, Design, and Conduct Effective Tests
https://www.amazon.com/Handbook-Usability-Testing-Conduct-Effective/dp/0470185481/ref=pd_lpo_sbs_14_img_0?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=MHNVG7XHCDRDF3859YRW