Call for Short Presentations

Let’s have a sharing and discussion session. In support of that, we’re putting a call out for short (5-15 minutes) presentations highlighting something interesting about the work you’re doing in UX. Whatever your role or level of UX experience, submit a ‘short’ today.

Here are a few ideas to consider:

Job: Senior Interaction Designer – McAfee, Waterloo, ON

Amazing organizations don’t just happen. Vision, strategy and innovation come to life through exquisite execution. Help create the future of McAfee, where our diverse talent and culture provide the competitive advantage to help McAfee win big!  At McAfee, Together is power. 

Sr. Interaction Designer

About the Role

You will be involved of every step of the design process, from gathering insights, brainstorming, prototyping, and experimentation, to launching high quality designs. This role is for someone who can demonstrate the ability to take initiative and work independently to solve complex design problems.

Qualities

We’re looking for someone who is self-motivated, able to prioritize and focus on critical tasks, is independent, and open to input. You’ll need excellent verbal communication abilities to effectively share your design rational. We value those who are constant learners and interested in working in a test & learn environment.

What you’ll do:

• Apply strategic thinking to design and deliver innovative end-to-end user experiences that optimize among user needs, business goals.
• Start with deeply understanding the design problem, then move to visualizing solutions
• Turn complex design problems into simple user experiences
• Deliver User Experience visions, UI specs, wireframes and prototypes
• Collaborate effectively with other designers, content strategists, product managers, and researchers
• Share a strong point of view, backed up by personal expertise, design rationale, customer data, and industry trends
• Participate in and foster the McAfee’s Experience Design Community and mentor junior members of the design team

Preferred qualifications:

• 6+ years of experience in design, prototyping, or related field.
• Bachelors degree in Graphic Design, Human-Computer Interaction Design, or other relevant field; Masters preferred
• Deep knowledge of design principles and methods
• Curiosity and commitment to testing new ideas and innovating to drive business results
• Effective communicator, presenter, and negotiator
• Mastery of design tools such as Sketch, Adobe Creative Suite, and Invision
• Strong knowledge and experience with driving and applying user-centered design processes
• Seasoned in Agile development processes
• Proficient in a variety of methods to convey ideas and concepts (e.g. storyboards, wireframes, prototypes, etc)
• Proven track record in setting a vision for great customer experiences, inspiring others to get behind the vision, and ultimately delivering products and services that are known for their delightful experience and ease of use
• A passion for creating products that resonate on an emotional level
• A stunning online portfolio

Apply Now at McAfee Careers

January 2018: Experiments in Creating an Urban Design UX in Kitchener

This month, we’ll be learning from folks in another design discipline: urban design!

The City of Kitchener’s role as innovators in urban design includes fostering an environment in which all parties– developers, consultants, city staff and the public– are able to collaborate sympathetically toward a future condition where new development is a valued and positively integrated part of urban life. This means not only creating leading policy in urban design, but expanding the ways in which we disseminate urban design issues and educate stakeholders so that we can make informed decisions and overcome existing, ingrained prejudices.

The City of Kitchener has developed unique design guidelines that are adaptable, scalable, and inclusive. Our approach is one that focuses on the relationships between design elements to ensure good design. Because of this, we have increased the burden on all parties when it comes to implementation; rather than static, unchanging numbers, our approach requires a greater user sophistication. To build that sophistication, we have created a series of experiments to demonstrate concepts, analyze relationships and promote creative thought processes amongst our users.

In our presentation, we will look at these experiments and consider their effectiveness. We will demonstrate how we use 3D printed models as part of our tall building design workshops. We will explore how the charrette process can help to build both understanding and consensus with the public. We will show how we deploy 3D modeling to perform detailed analyses of impacts, including shadow and viewshed studies. And finally, we will discuss how the organization, style and format of the upcoming Urban Design Manual are designed to improve the user experience, increase accessibility and advance the cause of good urban design to a wider audience.

Biographies

Adam Clark Urban Designer City of Kitchener

Adam Clark is an Urban Designer with a Masters of Architecture from the University of Waterloo. In his time with the City, he has contributed to multiple station area plans for the ION LRT and is co-lead of the Urban Design Manual, which includes the recently approved Tall Building Design Guidelines. He also provides architectural and urban design review and approval for a variety of development applications.

Dayna Edwards MCIP, RPP Senior Planner (Urban Design) City of Kitchener  

As a professional in planning and urban design, Dayna Edwards coordinates and implements the Urban Design Program, including the preparation of Urban Design Guidelines and Urban Design Studies, at the City of Kitchener. In addition, she leads and participates in the review of infrastructure projects and development proposals and applications. Dayna is a graduate of the Queen’s University’s School of Urban and Regional Planning and later completed a specialization in Urban Design at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver. Dayna’s interests have focused on urban design challenges related to infill development and master planning projects.

Please register for this free event

Thursday January 17, 2018
5:30 to 7:00 pm
Communitech Hub, 3rd floor
[View on Google Maps]

December 2018: Building a New Design System at D2L

In this talk, Nick Dingle will share some stories and lessons learned from a journey building up D2L’s “Daylight” design system, which is primarily used by D2L’s flagship product Brightspace. How did they get started? How did they get everyone using it? How are they maintaining it? Where do they still need to go?

Nick Dingle has been a Product Designer for fifteen years. He started by designing websites for Canadian tv shows and they called him an Information Architect. Then he moved on to designing native mobile apps for communications companies and they called him an Interaction Designer. Now he works as a Senior Product Designer / Team Lead at D2L where he gets to design experiences for teachers and students. He loves his job.

Please register for this free event

Thursday December 20, 2018
5:30 to 7:00 pm
Communitech Hub, 2nd floor
[View on Google Maps]

Job: UX Design Lead – Alert Labs

At Alert Labs, we are passionate about saving natural resources, protecting our customers’ properties from water damage, and improving the operational efficiencies of cities, school boards, restaurants, and insurance companies.

Alert Labs is innovating in the IoT (Internet of Things) space. We build affordable, simple to deploy and reliable sensor networks targeted at protecting our customers’ homes and businesses. We bring the benefits of IoT to customers of all technical levels. By being thoughtful and elegant in our design, our products are friendly and easy for anyone to use.

We believe that innovation comes from every member of the team and that the best designs combine technical skills with creativity to achieve great results. We provide an open environment that will allow your job to grow with you. We are passionate about what we do and are driven to create great solutions. We value results, not hours worked, and offer a flexible schedule that allows you to maintain a healthy work/life balance.

There’s never a dull day at Alert Labs, and with a whole stable of upcoming product releases, that’s never been more true than right now. Over the next year, we plan to finalize an extensive suite of utility monitoring devices and you’ll be a key part of the process in sharing this with our customers.

We are looking for a UX Design Lead to work closely with our customer experience, marketing and sales teams, and to be the bridge to the software development team. We value people who are enthusiastic, engaged, and eager to work in a team committed to delivering industry-leading products and software.

Job Description:

Reporting directly to the CTO and CEO, our UX Design Lead will own the vision of our user interface. We’re a tight-knit and scrappy company, so ownership comes with the responsibility for doing the hands-on work needed to make it happen – this includes research, user stories, wireframes, prototypes, testing, and specifications with a mobile-first responsive design approach – to be clear, we’re looking for leaders who are serious doers as well. We’ve got an amazing team of software developers to back you and they’re all passionate about finding ways to deliver the best possible experiences within a fever-pitch development cycle. We believe in a user-first design approach to build products our customers love by incorporating user-centred design at the outset of every project and feature request.

This is a chance to guide our UI vision, shape our company’s design culture, and be an integral part of the leadership team as our company grows… oh, and get lots and lots of your work out into the real world. This is a very important hire for us and we want to make sure we get the right person for the job. Could it be you?

Day-to-day responsibilities will include:

• Working closely with customer support, the sales team, business clients and end users to understand user needs and business objectives. Then hunker down with software to find the optimal way to make the most people the most happy.
• Translating customer and business needs into UI concepts, sketches, user flows, wireframes, mockups and prototypes that lead to intuitive user experiences.
• Running user trials and performing in situ user research.
• Creating UI designs that will work for a wide range of devices and interfaces.
• Taking a user-centered design approach and rapidly testing and iterating your designs.
• Following and/or refining visual design style guides.

Required Skills/Experience:

• Five or more years of UX design experience with a degree/certificate in design or relative field. Preference will be given to candidates who combine hands-on proficiency with technical leadership experience.
• Ability to work with customers and business clients to understand detailed requirements, design user experiences that meet their needs, and evaluate your designs through user testing.
• Extensive experience using UX design best practices to design solutions, and a strong understanding of mobile-first and responsive design.
• A solid grasp of user-centered design, planning and conducting user research, user testing, A/B testing, rapid prototyping, usability and accessibility concerns.
• Ability to iterate designs and solutions efficiently and intelligently.
• Ability to use high and low fidelity sketches and mockups to communicate ideas quickly and effectively throughout the entire design process.
• Expertise in standard UX software such as Balsamiq, Sketch, Zeplin, or Adobe CS. Basic HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript skills are a plus.
• Candidates MUST submit a portfolio of work with their application

Bonus Points:

• Visual design chops to make your designs look awesome and carry them through to the point where they can be implemented by the software team using existing style guides.
• We all wear many hats. If you’re really good at something we didn’t capture here, tell us about it and we’ll make sure you find a way to shine.

How to apply:

Email us at jointheteam@alertlabs.com with your resume and portfolio.

November 2018: The UX of Mobile Autonomous Robotics, with Clearpath

Job: Product Designer – Encircle

“Design thinking is nothing without design doing.” – Suzanne Pellican

Are you a design doer who’s also a design thinker? Then we’re looking for you!

We are a nascent product design team in a successful and growing startup. How nascent is our design team? We’re less than 3 months old – which means you’ll have an immediate impact.

We’re not looking for unicorns. We don’t want you to code – unless that’s how you communicate naturally. We don’t want you to spread yourself thin across too many areas of specialization. We are looking for engaged user experience professionals looking to design compelling experiences.

If this resonates with you, we want to talk to you. If this sounds too good to be true, it isn’t – the catch is that we expect you to have your best day at work ever – every day.

What We’re Looking For…

We apologize if the following words sound familiar, they’re Pete’s 3 Ps for hiring engaged user experience professionals:

• Passion – We want to see your passion for users, design and working collaboratively with an agile and cross-functional team.
• Portfolio – You don’t need to have launched products that have changed the world. But, you will need to show us your designs and have a conversation about the business and user problems you were solving for.
• Perspective – We want to hear what you have to say. We are looking for designers who have, and can form, opinions about their work. You’ll need to be able to talk about your ideas, concepts, research findings, and designs in front of others – including senior leadership.

As a Product Designer, You’ll…

• Report to and work closely with the VP of UX
• Have a human-centred design mindset and are looking to grow as a designer through user and customer feedback
• Always be focusing on the details, sketching concepts, tweaking user flows, or polishing the designs
• Work closely with Product Managers to turn insights and concepts into practical user experiences
• Work closely with the product development team throughout the production process
• Work with the design team to help grow the product design practice and the Encircle design system

To Be An Effective Team Member, You’ll Have…

• 2+ years experience as a Product Designer, preferably with enterprise UX
• Experience creating wireframes, prototypes, and high fidelity designs
• An understanding of product development lifecycle for iOS, Android, and web apps
• Experience in user testing, user interviews, and feedback sessions
• Effective written and verbal communication skills

Ready to Apply?

• Apply on the Encircle Career Site

• Resume & Cover Letter: Submit your resume and cover letter describing your unique fit for this role. If this feels old school, as a UX designer you should feel free to rethink the hiring team’s experience. Your goal for this challenge should be to unlock an interview.
• Portfolio: Include a portfolio of design work that showcases your UX and design skill sets (website(s), pdf, Keynote/Powerpoint/Slideshare, etc.)
• Professional Online Presence: Include links to your online design persona (Medium, Instagram, Twitter, Behance/Dribbble, etc.) 

We’re Encircle, Nice to Meet You!

We’re leading the $2 trillion property and casualty insurance industry out of the dark ages of pen and paper processes with solutions our customers actually love. Our easy-to-use software platform enables thousands of restoration contractors and insurance professionals around the world to process claims faster. We’re located in the heart of downtown Kitchener and our 40+ person startup has huge goals as we scale!

Our Perks, Benefits & Smiles

We offer free snacks and drinks, catered lunches, competitive pay, health benefits, and one of the friendliest work environments around.

You Will Hear Back From Us

We place a high importance on candidate experience. We’ll contact every single candidate that reaches out.

Need an Accommodation?

Encircle is an equal opportunity employer. Applicants who require reasonable accommodation to complete the application and/or interview process should notify the talent team during the recruiting process.

Apply on the Encircle Career Site

Job: Product Designer – Intellijoint

Job Overview:

Intellijoint is seeking a creative and resourceful Product Designer to help round out our R&D team. Intellijoint Surgical creates smart, simple, and easy-to-use medical devices for orthopedic procedures. We’ve made a fantastic product with Intellijoint HIP that surgeons love to use and greatly improves their experience in the operating theatre. Our design chops and surgeon-centric decisions have gotten us this far but now we need your help. We’re looking for someone to help take our user interface and user experiences to the next level.

Job Duties and Responsibilities:

• Work closely with Product / R&D team to build product, but often collaborating with Marketing and Sales
• Evaluate both current and under-development products and features and identify areas where notable usability gains may be achieved
• Contribute to all phases of a feature or product development, from ideation and feasibility, user needs and requirements, detailed design and implementation, through to testing and release.
• Help formulate requirements, produce user stories, flowcharts, wireframes, and create functional prototypes in early phases of feature or product development
• Solidify concepts, deliver final image assets, source sounds, and help with front end development and implementation to seal the deal on a polished product
• Test and validate the usability of design outputs before releasing to the field
• Absorb feedback from users and sales team to understand the use in the field and where things could be better
• Overlap with Marketing team to ensure consistent aesthetic throughout product and marketing materials

Required Skills and Experience:

• Ability to provide a portfolio or samples of work that have made an impact on users
• 3+ years’ experience preferred; open to new grads with strong portfolios and extracurriculars
• Graphic design ability in: Sketch, Illustrator, Photoshop, etc.
• Know sounds and colour palettes like the back of your hand
• Experience with HTML and CSS beneficial
• Experienced in mobile app development, specifically iOS beneficial (e.g. creating slick iPhone apps, with a strong emphasis on aesthetic and usability)

Soft Skills and Key Characteristics:

• Keen eye for great design and pleasant user experiences
• Able to explain which designs won’t work and why
• No task too big or too small approach
• Nimble with a strong sense of urgency to support our business needs
• Able to work independently, organize, plan and prioritize competing needs and issues
• Start-up mentality and strong team player
• Strong communicator (both written and verbal) to various audiences

What does success look like in this role?

• Intellijoint HIP products are even more beautiful, have consistent design throughout, and provide an even greater experience for the surgeon to use
• New Intellijoint products are built from a fresh slate with users in mind to improve even further on Intellijoint’s strong fundamentals with a matching design aesthetic throughout product suite.
• You contribute to one of the key IJS Values of thoughtfulness and always think about the needs of surgeons, while considering the impact on patients, for any product decisions

Job Details:

Full time, based at Intellijoint Surgical’s main office in Waterloo, ON.

How to Apply:

Please submit cover letter and resume for consideration, along with any samples of work or your portfolio. Only selected applicants will be contacted for an interview. Thank you!

Sargun Narula
Human Resources Coordinator 
s.narula@intellijointsurgical.com 

August 2018: Informal Pub Meetup

Hello UXers! Join us for the 2nd instalment of the Summer patio edition of uxWaterloo. Come out to Abe Erb in Waterloo, have a drink and enjoy some like-minded company. The event will be informal, where you can meet and learn what others are working on or just how they’re spending their precious Summer time.

See you there!

Please register for this free event

Thursday Aug 16, 2017
5:30 to 7:00 pm
Abe Erb Brewing
15 King Street South, Uptown Waterloo
Waterloo, Ontario

Job: Sr. UX Designer, Sr. Lead for new labs in London Ontario

One of our clients, a reputable leader in their industry, is expanding rapidly and seeking talented Sr. UX Designers and Sr. Leads.  They are in the midst of developing new labs in London Ontario and are calling out to those who want to make an impact, help provide input and create a strong foundation.  There is a tremendous opportunity for advancement and a chance to work in an environment where your voice is heard!

The roles have a very diverse focus including visual, UX design, design strategy as well as user research.  Their vision and product design focus is very intriguing and has been very appealing to the talent that our firm has successfully placed thus far.

The company is offering:

• very competitive & generous base salary
• performance-based bonus
• comprehensive benefits program
• profit sharing
• pension contribution
• very supportive relocation assistance

If you would be interested in learning more about our client or the position details, please do not hesitate to reach out!

Not interested but know of someone amazing?!?!  We have a fantastic referral bonus program that can put $500 in your pocket!  All you have to do is send along our details (or share their details with us) – and if the talent is hired by our client the money is yours!

Julie Klin (Connect on LinkedIn)
Direct Hire Consultant
Vitamin T | A Q U E N T
P: 647.495.7921
A: 77 Bloor Street W. Suite 1405, Toronto ON, M5S 1M2