Job: Visual Designer at D2L

Company: D2L
Location: Kitchener, Ontario or Winnipeg, Manitoba

What would I be doing in this role at D2L?

• You will be helping learners achieve their full potential. Think about the good you will do for the world!
• You will be researching, designing and influencing products that are going to have an impact on improving teaching and learning.
• You will make the products more usable and beautiful. You will work with layout, typography, color, and motion to guide users through the product and evoke an emotional response. You will push creative boundaries. You care about every pixel.
• You will work with an agile scrum team delivering mobile and web-based solutions that benefit learners, teachers, and those who support them.
• You will collaborate with our team of product designers—experts in visual design, interaction design, user research, accessibility, and front-end development. You will have an opportunity to share your expertise and be supported by other like-minded people. You will continually learn and look for ways to innovate.

What would my main duties be?

• Demonstrate a passion for our users. Participate in a variety of research activities to understand our users’ motivations, behaviours and unmet needs. Validate design ideas and respond to user feedback
• Iteratively design and specify the visuals for key parts of our mobile and web apps
• Rapidly prototype designs so that they can be demonstrated and tested
• Refine the composition and layout of key screens
• Create the detailed visuals elements and subtle animations that make our apps beautiful
• Be a champion for the brand within product development

What is D2L looking for from me?

Visual designers at D2L demonstrate excellence in:

• Layout
• Colour
• Typography
• Illustration
• Motion Graphics and Animation
• Adobe Creative Cloud
• HTML, CSS, JavaScript
• Mobile App Design

In addition, we like to see:

• A track record of delivering successful mobile and web application
• Experience working in an agile development team
• Good understanding of mobile and web technologies and an appetite for learning more
• Strong communication and interpersonal skills
• Degree in graphic design, digital media design, or related discipline

Ready to make a difference?

Contact Pete if you’d like to chat about the role – peter dot rothe at d2l dot com. Otherwise, apply online now.

Reference #: D2LVDWIN

Job: Product Designer at D2L

Company: D2L
Location: Kitchener, Ontario

What would I be doing in this role at D2L?

Whether you are an experienced interaction designer or a recent co-op graduate, we are looking for creative problem solvers to transform product requirements into highly functional user interfaces.

You will be designing and influencing products that are going to have an impact on improving teaching and learning. You have a good intuition for what makes an effective experience and a love for designing software to meet our clients’ goals and expectations.

You will collaborate with your team, usability specialists and other designers who will challenge you to create the most desirable software. Whether you are designing a web or mobile application, our designers are technically savvy and stay on top of the leading technologies they are designing for.

You will continually learn and look for ways to innovate. You thrive in an Agile development environment and culture where designers speak freely and collaborate to solve interesting problems. You take pride not just getting things done, but delivering the best.

What would my main duties be?

• Take product requirements and consolidate them into software workflows that meet user expectations
• Develop user stories, wireframes and high and low-fidelity prototypes to communicate a compelling design vision
• Collaborate with your development team, product owner and graphic designers to ensure feasibility of design concepts
• Conduct user research and focus groups by interacting with the community and internal stakeholders
• Proactively vet designs to ensure seamless user experience across the product suite

What is D2L looking for from me?

• Strong analytical, communication, facilitation, negotiation and interpersonal skills
• Experience taking a design from concept to software delivery
• Experience creating storyboards, wireframes, flow diagrams and interactive prototypes
• Strong visual design sense
• Understanding of Agile and other project methodologies
• Knowledge of user-experience design principles
• Graphic design skills are considered an asset
• Knowledge of accessibility principles is considered an asset

Ready to make a difference?

Contact Pete if you’d like to chat about the role – peter dot rothe at d2l dot com. Otherwise, apply online now.

Reference #: D2LCPD

April 2015: Design for the Network

Important note: This event has been rescheduled to April 16. The time of day and location remain unchanged.

For our March April session we’re delighted to welcome past Fluxible speaker Matthew Milan back to Waterloo Region!

For thousands of years, networks have played a growing role in the progress of human society. They are the hardware infrastructure that the software of culture runs on. Design has always been about creating culture; what’s different now is that the target of design isn’t just a user, a group or a market. We’re designing for the network.

Proposing a new target for design means that we need a new language of design. We need to consider a new aesthetic, new materials, and new methods, methodologies and mindsets. Perhaps most importantly, we need to reflect on whether the future of design should continue to be human-centered.

This talk will delve into the role of design in our connected world of networks, software and systems. We’ll explore approaches and perspectives that can help us become more networked-centered in our work as designers, and challenge some core elements of current design practice by asking what it means to “design for the network”.

About Matthew Milan

Matthew is the Co-founder and CEO of Normative, a software design firm headquartered in Toronto. Matthew is a design leader with 15 years of experience in the domain of emerging technologies, specializing in software design, innovation and product development. A veteran of startups in the areas of knowledge management, geospatial visualization and machine learning, Matthew excels at helping collaborators turn complex ideas and information into compelling and engaging user experiences.

A recognized voice in the areas of design and strategy, Matthew speaks regularly at conferences on a wide range of topics including interaction design, systems theory and wearable computing.

Please RSVP for this free event

We manage our monthly events at Meetup.com. Join us there!

Thursday April 16, 2015
5:30 to 7:00 pm
Atlas/Matrix room
Communitech Hub
Kitchener, Ontario

[View on Google Maps]

March 2015: Introduction to user story mapping

Note: As our original March event has been rescheduled to April, we’re now presenting this fine workshop event for March.

User story mapping has been described and demonstrated by Jeff Patton for years in workshops and, most recently, in his terrific book User Story Mapping: Discover the Whole Story, Build the Right Product. It’s a great a tool for helping software product development teams focus on users and their needs rather than on features.

In this session, uxWaterloo’s very own Mark Connolly will provide an introduction to Patton’s user story mapping through a straightforward hands-on workshop that focuses on the key concepts and enables everyone to create their first story map. Sounds like fun, right?

Thursday March 12, 2015
5:30 to 7:00 pm
Atlas/Matrix room
Communitech Hub
Kitchener, Ontario

[View on Google Maps]

Job: User Experience Designer at Sandvine

Company: Sandvine
Location: Waterloo, Ontario
Type: Full time

As a User Experience Designer you will be responsible for helping define the user experience for the next generation of Sandvine products.

You will be required to perform a broad range of UX activities, as needed to support various initiatives. Depending on the project this may involve the analysis of existing products, the design and/or redesign of our product user interfaces, planning and execution of field research and usability testing, as well as helping establish standards and guidelines. Additionally, you will collaborate with other team members in a challenging and fast-paced environment.

This position is Waterloo, Ontario.

Responsibilities

• Serve as a knowledgeable and passionate user advocate.
• Analyze products and proactively identify opportunities for improvements in the experience.
• Design intuitive, efficient and elegant experiences for our end users.
• Communicate design ideas and decisions effectively, ensuring that UX design has a strong voice.
• Plan and execute user research and usability tests.
• Establish standards and guidelines.
• Maintain awareness of current human-computer interaction and usability research, theories and methodologies.
• Collaborate with other contributors, including product management, engineering and the support and testing teams.

Qualifications

• Formal education in design, information science, psychology, social science, or equivalent work experience.
• *Deep* understanding of usability and user experience design principles, with a minimum of 5 years of experience.
• Minimum of 5 years of experience organizing and executing field studies and/or usability tests.

• Ability to produce various design artifacts as needed to support your activities: wireframes, mock-ups, task flow models, information maps, personas/user profiles, and/or prototypes. You are a proficient user of various wireframe, drawing or prototyping applications such as Axure, Fireworks, Photoshop, etc., or HTML, CSS & JavaScript.
• Capable of designing user experiences for various devices including desktop, tablet and mobile.
• Exposure to business or technical applications, intellectually curious, and able to learn about products that deal with complex subject matter.
• Awareness of web technology, and its capabilities and constraints.

As a person you are

• An articulate communicator, with excellent written and verbal communication skills.
• Flexible and versatile, with the ability to jump into a broad range of UX activities.
• Self-motivated, able to balance the demands of multiple projects, and still get things done.

Apply for this position!

Job: Information Architect at Kobo

Company: Kobo
Location: Toronto, Ontario

Work downtown at one of Canada’s most exciting tech companies and design software architecture for our top-rated Device portfolio.

At Kobo, Information Architects design user interfaces, inform functional specifications, perform competitive reviews and create flows, wireframes and process maps. You must be able to visualize concepts quickly and clearly.

Ideally, you will have at least 5-7 years of experience, a portfolio of successful projects, be extremely proficient in site-mapping and wire-framing software, and possess a keen eye for detail. You will also require significant experience developing mobile applications. The successful applicant will have experience developing applications for mobile devices, tablets and the web.

Information Architects work closely with the Product Owners and Team Leads to determine scope and prioritize feature sets, with the development team to ensure their designs are implemented as intended, and the Usability team to ensure designs and implementations are user friendly.

You should have excellent verbal communications skills and be able to rationalize your designs. You welcome feedback and see collaboration as a natural part of the creative process.

Key Responsibilities

• Conceive, design and prototype useful, usable, and compelling user experiences and user interfaces for mobile applications (represented by scenarios, paper prototypes, storyboards, wireframes, site maps, screen flows, etc.).
• Document user interface requirements
• Apply domain knowledge, user interface design best practices, and knowledge of emerging UX related presentation/gestural technologies.
• Bring strong design, conceptual and problem-solving skills to translate conceptual ideas (business needs and user goals) into simple yet meaningful user interfaces.
• Have a keen understanding of (and interest in) visual design, and enjoy working with graphic designers.
• Assess data from multiple sources (product requirements, tech constraints, UX research, web analytics) and synthesize it in order to develop efficient user scenarios, taxonomies, classification schemes, navigation systems, design patterns, etc.
• Create and effectively present UX deliverables (wireframes, workflows, paper prototypes, etc.) to explain and negotiate design solutions to key stakeholders.
• Help define, request and incorporate relevant and recent UX research and data from customer feedback to appropriately inform design decisions.
• Help define UX performance metrics
• Uphold UX guiding principles and style in project execution.
• Create, maintain and share project documentation and UX guidelines after project execution.
• Develop competitive assessments and perform site/application/device reviews.

Required Skills

• Applicants should have 5-7 years interaction design experience in a product development context
• Must have experience in developing mobile applications
• Is up-to-date on User Interface Guidelines for small and large devices, and knowledgeable about best practices for touch screen devices
• Embrace and champion a collaborative approach in resolving difficult design questions and issues
• Ability to successfully execute multiple projects and tasks simultaneously
• Ability to quickly visualize concepts through sketching or other rapid prototyping methods (experience with Axure a plus)
• Ability to help define site strategies, concepts, content and features
• Experience developing user personas, functional specifications and wireframes
• Understanding of HTML, DHTML, and JavaScript and the capabilities of web browsers, mobile applications and user interactions
• Strong time management skills, is self-motivated, organized and accountable

Apply now!

Job: Interactive Designer at Kobo

Company: Kobo
Location: Toronto, Ontario

Conceive, design and support the implementation of projects with a focus on the visual appearance and interaction design of products, applications and web initiatives.

The range of responsibility in this role requires working closely with members of the UX team, developers, QA and product managers to initiate new features and deliver on approved design requests.

Key Responsibilities

• Produce high-fidelity creative with multiple options for feedback.
• Responsible for creating user interface designs, graphics, icons, colour schemes, layouts and some wireframes.
• Ensure consistency and brand attributes are represented consistently across multiple software applications and experiences.
• Apply domain knowledge, user interface design best practices, and knowledge of emerging UX standards.
• Work closely with other members of the UX team to solve problems and offer multiple options and alternatives to interface and interaction challenges.
• Support the development and quality assurance teams to help optimize the user experience iteratively in an agile development and design environment.
• Share and communicate designs with team members for feedback, implementation limitation considerations and assist in creating stories for sprint planning.
• Monitor and review the execution of the designs through the development cycle.
• Process and deliver graphical assets for developers as required for implementation.
• Create and share detailed layout specifications of final mocks.
• Flash device(s) with the latest build to ensure accurate implementation compared against final designs.
• Attend daily scrums to share information.
• Explore examples of other product designs for inspiration, animations, gestures, layouts, and interaction for future reference.
• Keep up to date on design trends to ensure our designs are current and relevant to the business.
• Strive for and support the creation of highly usable software experiences
• Support usability team members with information required for testing.
• Observe usability testing for design iteration considerations and offer feedback as needed.

Required Skills & Qualifications

• Proficiency in industry standard software programs: Adobe Creative Suite (Illustrator specifically) in a Mac environment.
• Experience designing mobile applications and websites; in particular designing for small and large devices with knowledge about best practices for touch screen devices.
• The ability to multi-task across multiple projects simultaneously.
• Problem-solving skills and the ability to translate conceptual ideas into high-fidelity creative.

Apply now!

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.

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.