Job: UI/UX Designer at Canon Innovation Lab

Location: Waterloo, Ontario

Who are we?

Canon is the leader in digital imaging. Since 1973 Canon Canada has demonstrated a commitment to enhancing our contribution to society through technological innovation and excellence and we’re proud and excited to be recruiting a brand new team to push us to forward towards these goals.

Launched in November, Canon’s new Innovation Lab @ Communitech is a focal point of innovation within the entire global Canon organization. We are building a brand new team, in a newly renovated space, along side organizations like Google, BlackBerry, Christie Digital, Manulife, TD Canada Trust, and Canadian Tire.

We are currently seeking a Full-Time UI/UX Designer to design brand new prototypes based on ideas generated within the innovation team or in response to business problems outlined by the company.

What will you be responsible for?

• Working with the internal team, company stakeholders, and partners to understand, refine and develop their idea
• Defining user personas and documenting user workflows
• Creating wireframe interfaces for multiple platforms

What traits do you need to be successful?

• Curiosity. You must enjoy learning new tools, technologies and concepts.
• Self-Reliance. An ability to learn, work, investigate and solve problems, all with minimal
  guidance is vital.
• Platform agnosticism. We develop web-based and native mobile applications using the
  appropriate tool for each project.
• Flexibility. This is an experiment. We don’t have all the answers, and need your help to figure it out!

What skills would be an asset?

• Experience with Photoshop, Illustrator, Sketch and Adobe Creative Suite/In Design
• Comfortable with an iterative design process, sweat the details and enjoy working through
  numerous options before committing to one
• Familiarity with front-end programming. You should know which parts of your design require
  HTML, CSS, or JavaScript (being able to code is a asset, but not a requirement)
• The ability to interact with almost anyone, and to guide their thoughts into meaningful decisions about the nature of their ideas and products
• An understanding of the business drivers that influence a product’s life cycle
• Extensive portfolio highlighting thoughtful and creative design

If you are interested in joining Canon in our new innovation lab, please submit your resume and cover letter to the opportunity below. Please submit links to portfolios or samples of application work if available. Canon is committed to employment equity and is an equal opportunity employer. A criminal check will be completed for the successful candidate.

To apply, send directly to Matt Scobel at mscobel@canada.canon.com

Job: User Experience Designer at Clearpath Robotics

Position: User Experience Designer
Company: Clearpath Robotics
Location: Kitchener, Ontario
Experience: 3 + Years
Education: Undergraduate degree or college diploma in CS, Software Engineering, Graphics Design, Visual Arts, Industrial Design with coursework in HCI and/or user-centered design methods (or equivalent experience)
Duration: Full-Time

About Us

Clearpath Robotics Inc. specializes in the design and manufacture of unmanned vehicle systems for research and development and a variety of commercial applications. Our clients range from small local businesses to some of the best known technical institutions on the planet. Based in Kitchener, Clearpath Robotics employs highly talented people who live and breathe robotics. We believe that work must have a high ìcoolî factor, and weíre looking for people who share in our passion to create remarkable products and change the world.

About the Job

Clearpath has been developing software to make our robots smarter and better able to solve real-world problems– the capabilities of our robots are reaching the point where we risk overwhelming our users. We need someone who loves the idea of having their work affect the real world in very dramatic ways to take on defining the look and feel of usersí interaction with our systems.

As our first User Experience Designer, you will be responsible for putting yourself in the shoes of our users and making sure that our systems are as easy to use as possible. You will also help our robots integrate seamlessly with how the world has been traditionally doing business so far, including when robots get lost or damaged. On top of this, the novelty of some of our systems means that you will have opportunities to develop new ways for users to interact with technology in general.

Your primary responsibilities will be:

• Designing the user experience for robots, from user stories to sketches
• Developing design prototypes in a variety of fidelities
• Conducting user testing and focus groups
• Evaluating possible technical frameworks for implementation of your ideas
• Ensuring that the company brands and product values are clearly expressed
• Emotional support of lost or confused robots

About You

You want to work for a fast-paced growing company that thinks big and dreams huge. You are driven, view work as more than just a job, and are never satisfied with less than 100% effort. You want to be surrounded by people like you; creative, fun-loving, and passionate about their work. You are motivated by making an impact on your workplace and you thrive on challenging and rewarding problems. You aren’t afraid of field testing the results of your work in a blizzard, demonstrating it to a Fortune 500 boardroom, or working with the fact that sometimes, robots just aren’t smart enough for what youíd like them to do (yet).

Required Experience/Skills:

• 3+ years professional experience with user experience design
• 1+ years professional experience with accessibility and usability testing
• Has shipped products used by real people and refined designs after shipping
• Excellent visual communication skills
• Capable of independently developing basic UI prototypes
• Ability to communicate designs with Adobe CS, OmniGraffle, or similar programs
• Work portfolio available for review

Bonus points for:

• Experience with user-facing web technologies
• Experience with Android UI development
• Familiarity with maps and other ways of graphically expressing spatial relationships
• Experience with designing interfaces for commercial/enterprise users
• Familiarity with the QT framework
• Comfort with one or more of: Linux, JIRA, git, ROS
• A firm belief that the only thing holding the robot revolution back is a better UI for Skynet

Apply through our online job portal. Please submit cover letter along with your resume. Instructions for sending supporting documentation, testimonials, references, pictures, web links, code samples, drawings, or other indications of how much you love robots will be provided in the confirmation email sent by our system upon receiving your application. Include User Experience Designer in the subject of any further communications.

No recruiters or form cover letters, please. They do not please our mechanical masters.

January 2015: Design is kids play at UX BookClub

A new year is fast approaching, and with it comes new UX Book Club meetups, topics to discuss and colleagues to meet! We’re excited to let you know that our next UX Book Club meetup will be on Thursday January 15th, 2015.

To kick off the 2015 series, we’ve selected a fun read that focuses on something completely different from previous books: Design for Kids by Debra Levin Gelman (@dgelman).

Debra’s book discusses how design changes when your users are kids. How do they interact with and understand technology? What special considerations should you take into account when your product will be used by kids? How should you change your UX practice and methodologies?

Many of our interactions with children will have helped us form our own ideas about how to design for kids. Debra’s writings and our own anecdotal experiences should fuel an interesting and thoughtful discussion. We expect this will be a great one!

There are many locations to buy this book, including Amazon.ca, or buy a hardcopy or e-book from Rosenfeld Media. (Psst! If you came to Fluxible, now is a great time to use that free ebook coupon for Rosenfeld Media!)

Please register at Meetup.com for this free event

Remember, we’re now using Meetup.com to manage our monthly sessions. Join us there!

Thursday January 15, 2015
7:00 – 9:00pm
Boltmade Inc.
187 King St North
2nd Floor
Waterloo, ON
N2J 1R1

[View on Google Maps]

December 2014: Designing for Disruptive Innovation

Our very own Robert Barlow-Busch, co-champion of uxWaterloo, spoke last month by invitation of Jared Spool at UX Thursday in Toronto. If you missed that event, here’s your chance to catch Bob’s talk, which people described as informative, inspiring, and entertaining. Join us and find out if it’s true!

Sometimes we get so focused on winning the small victories of the present — like sign-off on UX or design support — that we fail to plan for a project’s bigger challenges.

Robert Barlow-Busch journeyed with a team who faced the possibility of failure after ignoring something big: the future. In this talk, Robert will share how:

• Having higher-ups support design and research can impact a project
• Bringing colleagues along for a design journey will turn them into evangelists
• Destroying a team’s assumptions might be a designer’s most important contribution

About the speaker

Robert has spent over 20 years as an interaction designer with one foot in the marketing world. He’s now leading the charge in both worlds as Chief Experience Officer of MetaMarketplace. He’s busy building Ontario’s design community as co-chair of the Fluxible conference and co-champion of uxWaterloo.

You can find Robert’s ideas in books such as User-Centered Design Stories and The Persona Lifecycle.

Please register at Meetup.com for this free event

Remember, we’re now using Meetup.com to manage our monthly sessions. Join us there!

Monday December 15, 2014
5:30 to 7:00 pm
Boltmade Inc.
187 King St North
2nd Floor
Waterloo, ON
N2J 1R1

[View on Google Maps]

Job: Interaction Designer at Christie

Company: Christie (Global Market Solutions department)

Location: Kitchener, Ontario

Duration: Full-time permanent

The User Experience Design Team at Christie is seeking a talented, passionate Interaction Designer to help create best-in-class interfaces for the control of our professional digital projectors.

You possess a rich understanding of user-centered design principles, interaction design, information design, and usability, and are able to demonstrate this through the creation of beautiful and functional interfaces. You can work collaboratively within an agile product team made up of product managers, engineers, software developers, and Q&A, and be able to clearly articulate design choices in the form of high level and detailed wireframes, task flows, mockups, and/or prototypes. You know how to employ user research and user testing methodologies to drive design decisions iteratively throughout the development lifecycle. Finally, you eagerly seek out opportunities to serve as a champion of User Experience within and outside of your project teams.

Summary

You have a strong background in interaction design, a keen design sense, and a passion for bringing products to life.

Requirements

• A strong portfolio demonstrating examples of interaction design, such as annotated wireframes, storyboards, or prototypes, as well as user research activities. It should show a breadth of experience and illustrate the entire design process from ideation through to the final design and clearly state your individual contribution to the project/product. Submissions without a portfolio included will not be considered.
• Experience translating high-level product requirements into high-level and detailed design specifications, such as wireframes, task flows, prototypes, etc.
• Demonstrated ability to plan and execute usability tests and other user research, showing how results were analyzed and translated into specific and prioritized requirements.
• Excellent communication skills. Ability to communicate and defend your ideas at all stages of the design process to a wide variety of audiences, including product management, engineering, and software development teams.
• The right person is a good team player but also a self-starter who is able to carry a project through to completion.
• Experience designing software solutions for a variety of platforms, such as desktop, web, and mobile, including touch interfaces
• Proficiency with industry tools – such as Visio, Illustrator, Fireworks, Axure, Balsamiq, etc.
• Degree in a relevant field (Interaction Design, Human Computer Interaction, etc.). Industry experience is an asset. Preferably 3 – 5 years.

Apply now

Job: UX Designer at Intellijoint Surgical

Contract: UX Designer at Intellijoint Surgical

Company: Intellijoint Surgical Inc.

Location: Waterloo, Ontario

Level: flexible

Duration: short term, with repeat possibilities

Intellijoint is a medium-stage startup currently producing measurement tools for hip replacement surgery. We are working on our next generation product that involves tools and custom measurement system and software. We are busy and looking for help with our workload. To that end, we are looking for User Experience oriented skills and abilities to augment our own in designing the software and measurement system interface.

Work could include any or all of the following:

UX Design:

• workflow optimization
• HMI/button mapping
• layout and integration of various SW steps

UI Design:

• individual screen layouts
• stylizing
• SW branding (consistent with rest of product)

Visual/Graphic Design:

• icons, pictures and other graphics
• motion design (transition effects, animations, etc)

UI Development:

• implementation of the details above for a Mac environment

Since we are a startup, we are on the move and looking for help as soon as possible. If you might be able to work with us, we want to hear from you. Please contact at us at job.posting@intellijointsurgical.com and tell us how you can help and convince us you are the one we want.

Job: UX Designer at Quarry

November 2014: Intellectual property for designers

What is your most valuable idea? Why is it valuable to you? How do you know it is actually yours?

Ideas are intangible, and, yet, can be highly valuable. Creativity and innovation have a significant impact on many aspects of our lives, from the global economy and international trade, to individual, personal expression. Governments create laws to protect intellectual property. Technology companies rely on new inventions for commercial success. Our personal identities may rely on originality and expression. We all live and thrive in a world of ideas, each in our own way.

But, to what extent to you actually own your ideas? How can this ownership be enforced? How does our intellectual property law system simultaneously account for inventions as assets for a corporation, the aesthetics of a unique design, or the individual expression of a person? Please join Kuyler Neable in exploring the concepts, principles, and laws that contribute to patent, trade-mark,copyright, and industrial design protection.

Kuyler is an intellectual property lawyer with the firm of Bereskin & Parr LLP. He spends his days helping his clients realize the value of their high-tech inventions by protecting their intellectual property with patents, and is also an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Engineering at Western University, where he lectures on copyright and trade marks.

Finally, from now on we’re using Meetup.com to manage our monthly sessions. Join us there now!

Please register at Meetup.com for this free event

Thursday November 20, 2014
5:30 to 7:00 pm
Kitchener Studio Project
44 Gaukel Street
Kitchener, ON N2G 4P3

October 2014: Wireframing Like a Boss

Can’t draw? Haven’t picked up a pen since 1998? Not sure what the difference is between a wireframe and a prototype? Just looking to pick up some quick and easy tips for creating full, annotated wireframes for clients. Perfect, this session is just for you!

Caryn Humphreys, of software design and development shop Vehikl, will introduce you to the different types of wireframes (both internal and deliverable), the terminology related to wireframing, and current available software.

She’ll also lead a hands-on workshop that will teach you how to create effective wireframes. Choose from one of the provided web or mobile app ideas and we’ll run through the basics of how to draw your wireframes.

Whether you’re delivering to developers on your team, planning out your design sprint on your UX team, or showing a proof-of-concept to clients/shareholders, you’ll walk away knowing how to wireframe… like a boss. (Or like someone who makes wireframes, at least.)

Thursday October 16, 2014
5:30 to 7:00 pm
Boltmade Inc.
2nd Floor, 187 King St S
Waterloo, ON

Job: Head of User Experience

Company: In stealth
Location: Waterloo, Ontario

We are looking for a talented, creative and experienced design leader to take on the role of Head of User Experience. This person will lead the design of every customer touch point and experience, from business cards to an application sub-menu, and everywhere in between. Collaborating with the rest of the management team, the Head of User Experience will have the opportunity to create the kind of technology experiences that people will remember and recall often.

Don’t get it twisted though — this is a big job. Our company cannot succeed without the right person in this role.

Responsibilities

Lead all creative aspects of the company, be the voice of the customer, strive religiously to deliver the best product experiences, know when to lead and when to get out of the way. We’re even holding off on naming the company to enable the Head of User Experience to be part of the conversation.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s, Master’s in Visual Arts, equivalent program, or equivalent experience.
• 8+ years experience in interface, visual and user experience design.
• 5+ years experience in heuristic analysis, accessibility and usability testing.
• Design experience with user-facing experiences on Internet connected devices (desktop, web, mobile, other).
• Design experience with shipping products used by real people in the real world.
• 5+ years experience in leading teams and people.
• Extreme passion to deliver the best product experience humanly possible.
• Demonstrable history of innovation.
• Self-starter who can roll well with others, deliver now, and be flexible in a fast-paced startup environment.
• Work in Waterloo (co-located work environment).
• Excellent written and oral communication skills.

Apply now

Send your resume and portfolio to gfeezee at gmail dot com.