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.
Reporting to the AVP, Digital Strategy, the Director, User Experience is a new role. The Director, User Experience and team will provide thought leadership and be the resident authority team on user experience and information architecture principles.
This person will have a demonstrated ability to collaborate effectively with a variety of business leaders, technology leaders, brand teams, and other key stakeholders to develop large growth businesses.
The ideal candidate will bring deep understanding of customer research, knowledge gathering, ideation, prototyping, design frameworks and concept visualization. He or she will bring years of experience building and leading a team ideally including user experience leads, architects and researchers. The Director, User Experience will partner and work with the business units and regions to ensure alignment incorporating feedback and best practices. This role will interface and have accountabilities for communication with a variety of stakeholders in Canada, the US and Asia.
Accountabilities
Develop and implement an enterprise level strategy for embedding user experience (UX) guidelines and best practices in the organization.
Provide strategic guidance in support of the user experience and information architecture service by understanding the direction and goals of the business.
Identify and champion the User Experience to deliver business value and increase the Sun Life Financial digital brand recognition
Identify innovation opportunities improving the customer experience and lead generation with a focus on creating and updating the digital properties to address user challenges.
Define and incorporate relevant UX, web and mobile usage research and date to appropriately inform design decisions
Create and effectively present UX deliverables; wireframes, workflows and paper prototypes to explain and negotiate design solutions to key stakeholder.
Define and measure metrics to track user satisfaction both overall and specific to strategic development
Build and maintain key relationships in Canadian, US and Asia with Marketing leaders by optimizing their digital channels and ensuring a customer-centric approach is consistent with the Digital Marketing vision and mandate.
Keep abreast of industry trends, web development technology and advancements insuring SLF provides best in class services
Staff and train the team according to strategic direction and technical requirements
Foster and promote a positive working and leaning environment
Skills
Strong knowledge of user experience design; information architecture and interaction design. Leading expert and thought leader in UX methodology.
Familiar with User Centered Design Process.
Ability to successfully manage and deliver on multiple projects.
Education and Experience
University or advance degree in business, marketing or communications
Minimum 7 years’ experience in digital environment
Experience with developing and executing UX strategy in a mid to large size corporation
Business minded and oriented
Excellent communication skills – written and verbal
Strong interpersonal skills and ability to develop relationships to influence change
Innovative problem solving skills and excellent analytical abilities
Strong ability to identify and implement process improvements
To apply
Please apply for this position by email at ashley.avolio [at] sunlife [dot] com. We thank all applicants for showing an interest in this position. Only those selected for an interview will be contacted.
June has turned into a rare, but not unheard of, a two-event month for uxWaterloo. In addition to our previously-announced design workshop with Tula Foundation as our regular event, we have this second bouns event to look forward to!
Come out and share your insights and design expertise with the next generation of UX practitioners and researchers, while learning more about exciting new technologies. The discussions are sure to be enlightening all around.
Wednesday June 13, 2012 5:30 to 7:00 pm FELT Lab at Quarry Integrated Communications
1440 King Street North, St. Jacobs, Ontario
[Map] Sign up now, as space is limited!
The user experience of the Aeryon Scout is what sets it apart from the pack. We’ve made an aerial vehicle that can be flown by anyone using Google Maps and we’re looking to enhance our current design. As Aeryon’s UI/UX Designer, you would own the user experience, transforming ideas and turning them into real-world product designs.
Job Description
Work closely with the R&D team to build product demos, prototypes, and interfaces
Define user interface design standards for Aeryon products, optimize ease-of-use and achieve an integrated and consistent product look and feel
Represent the “user experience ” and translate customer requirements into defined product features and specifications
Conduct ongoing research on user interface development
Required Skills
Bachelors degree preferred along with 4+ years relevant design experience
Portfolio required to demonstrate front-end product design and graphic skills
Strong graphics production capability experience with Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator and other graphics tools
Experience with Agile software methodology
Outstanding interpersonal skills and the ability to collaborate with the team as well as outside vendors
Experience managing multiple design projects
Detailed-oriented and committed to delivering dynamic, visually appealing design under tight time constraints
Willingness to learn new programming techniques and skills
Wednesday March 7, 2012 5:30 to 7:00 pm FELT Lab at Quarry Integrated Communications
1440 King Street North, St. Jacobs, Ontario
[Map] Sign up now, as space is limited!
We like to mix up the kinds of events we do at uxWaterloo. It keeps things interesting, provides exposure to a wider range of ideas, and enables us to share our expertise with the community.
Some of you will recall our visit to the Felt lab back in November. That event was a chance to try out some of the interesting interactive display technologies at Felt. Well, we’re going back, but this time we’re on a mission to help students in the Research Entrepreneurship Acceleration Program (REAP) at the University of Waterloo by providing them with feedback on the projects that they are working on.
Come out and share your insights and design expertise with the next generation of UX practitioners and researchers, while learning more about exciting new technologies. The discussions are sure to be enlightening all around.
Our mission at Sortable is to make it easy for people to make decisions about which product or service to use, for example their next camera, phone, or tv purchase, or their next meal, movie, or trip. Sortable’s focus is making these decisions easy for ordinary people by handling all the data analysis and surfacing the best options in simple, beautiful interfaces. Sortable is a 7 person engineering driven startup, our fast growing websites are used by millions of visitors each month, and we need to expand!
We need talented frontend engineers to help us build simple and powerful web interfaces for mobile and desktop users. Designing interfaces that make complex tasks simple is what drives you. You live and breathe HTML5, CSS3 and Javascript — we’re talking clean, minimal markup, with fast page loads, and responsive layouts for multiple devices. At Sortable you’ll have the opportunity to build software that get used by millions of people. Join us to change how people make decisions online.
Skills
Extensive HTML5, Javascript, jQuery and CSS3 experience
Experience with Scala, Java or C#
User interface design
Mobile frameworks such as PhoneGap
Ability to take responsibility and release features users love that drive our vision forward
Top-notch communication skills – we’re a small team, you’ll need to fit in well
Bonus: Worked at a startup before, active in open source, personal projects, active blog, linux experience, spending way too much time researching which product to buy
Environment
We use Scala for most of our development. In addition, we have written tools or services in Python, Bash, and Java. We want our team of developers to have fun and be productive, so we’ll expect you to bring your own ideas and suggestions as to what hardware and software should be used.
Other tools and services we use include: Lift, PostgreSQL, Redis, Mercurial, Jenkins, Amazon Web Services (EC2, S3) and Ubuntu.
Benefits
We offer competitive salaries (80-120k+ based on experience and ability), health benefits, equity in the company, and kick ass developer machines. If you’re interested in building the future of how people make purchase decisions with a group of nice, funny, smart people, then Sortable is the place for you.
Thursday February 16, 2012
5:30 to 7:00 pm
Bauer Kitchen (private room booked under “UX Waterloo”)
Located in the Bauer Marketplace
What makes for a truly amazing conference experience?
Not everything we build as user experience designers is digital (service designers have known this forever!). Even if your own work to date has been strictly online, much of your knowledge is transferable to the real world. So this month, we put that idea to the test — by digging into the DNA of a successful conference experience.
Come prepared to share your own conference experiences, or to chime in with reactions to what others have to say. There’ll be no presentations this month, just informal discussion among UX peers. Have you been to a conference before? Let’s hear about it! Describe what you loved about the experience, and share some low points as well.
Your ideas could very well influence KW’s very own UX conference in September, Fluxible 2012.
RSVP requested
We’re meeting in a private room at the Bauer Kitchen, booked for “UX Waterloo”. Please note that food and drinks will not be supplied, but you’re free to place individual orders if wanted.
Please RSVP below if you plan to attend. Attendance will be capped at 20 people, so sign up soon!
Sorry, this event has been sold out! Also, please note the venue change below.
Thursday January 19, 2012
5:30 to 7:00 pm VENUE CHANGE:
Desire2Learn
Meet in the lobby of the Tannery building in front of the elevators
151 Charles St. W., Suite 100 in Kitchener
“It’s a small world, but I wouldn’t want to paint it.”
It’s true: designing user experiences for (or in) a global context can pose an enormous challenge. But it can also present enormous opportunities and rewards. This month, we’re joined by the authors of Global UX, a recently-published book that acts as a travel guide for UX teams tasked with blowing away borders and boundaries. Whitney Quesenbery and Daniel Szuc based their book not just on their own professional experience (which is considerable), but on dozens of in-depth interviews with design professionals who represent over 60 countries and 25 languages.
So needless to say, this will be a great event for anyone thinking about global design and UX.
What to expect
In the spirit of a connected world, Whitney and Dano will join us via Web conference in one of Communitech’s most tricked-out AV rooms in The Hub. Whitney will connect from her home in the Eastern US. Daniel currently lives in Hong Kong, but will dial in from London UK. So we’re going global in almost every sense!
Whitney and Daniel will lead us through a discussion of how UX practice is changing and how UX practitioners and teams around the world are designing for a global context. Their goal is to share what people are thinking about how they work in UX practices in global, cross-cultural, distributed team environments. They’ll challenge us to think about the process of understanding people from different countries and cultures. And they’ll share insights into how other teams have tackled the challenges of working on global products.
These glimpses into global practice may serve as either a mirror, reflecting your own work — or as a beacon, showing a path ahead. Either way, this event will both inform and inspire you!
About the presenters
Daniel Szuc (@dszuc) is Principal Consultant at Apogee, a usability consulting Services Company based in Hong Kong. Dan previously worked on a usability team for Telstra Australia. He is currently VP of the International UPA (Usability Professionals’ Association) and has lectured about UX in Hong Kong, China, Singapore, Malaysia, Australia, the USA, Israel, New Zealand, and Japan. He co-wrote a “Usability Kit” with Gerry Gaffney, which is an implementation guide providing best practices and guidelines for usability teams. Dan holds a BS in Information Management from Melbourne University in Australia.
Whitney Quesenbery (@whitneyq) is a user researcher, user experience practitioner, and usability expert with a passion for clear communication. She works with organizations from the National Cancer Institute to IEEE, Sage and The Open University. She has been president of the UPA and served on two national advisory committees for usability and accessibility. She enjoys meeting people around the world and using those insights to design products where people matter. She is the author of Storytelling for User Experience (with Kevin Brooks, Rosenfeld Media).
This month we’re meeting once again at the Red Baron Lounge, located on-site at the Brick Brewery in Uptown Waterloo. We’ll have a couple of brief presentations about UX happenings around town — and plenty of time for meeting new faces, talking shop, and raising a few glasses together. This is a private gathering for UX Waterloo, in which you can sample just about everything the brewery has to offer.
Where and when
Thursday August 18, 2011
5:30 to 7:30 pm
Red Baron Lounge at the Brick Brewery
(Entrance at the side of the building near the front)
181 King Street South
Waterloo, ONT
[Map]
RSVP required
You must RSVP to attend, as this is a licensed event. We’ll be checking names at the door. Sign up early before it’s sold out!
Location:Kobo Inc., 135 Liberty St. Suite 101, Toronto, Ontario
Kobo is currently searching for a talented and enthusiastic web professional to join our team as a Web/Flash Producer. As part of the Design & User Experience team, you will be responsible for production related tasks, including site updates, email development and delivery, banner ad and microsite builds, converting creative to web format, and more.
Responsibilities
Work with Merchandising team and HR Department to schedule promotions, rotations and job descriptions, etc., using internal tools.
Implementation of design changes to website based on requests from UX, Merchandising & Marketing.
Contest builds, maintenance, scheduling, etc.
Skinning and layout of microsites (blogs) owned by Marketing.
Maintain an in-depth knowledge of current Internet trends including CSS3, HTML5, Flash Action Script 3, vendors, services, and tools.
Skills & Experience
University or College degree in one of the following: Computer Science, Interactive Media OR equivalent experience (web development/e-commerce).
Expert level understanding of CSS, HTML.
Intermediate knowledge of JavaScript/JQuery.
Intermediate knowledge of Flash Action Script 2.0 & 3.0.
Understanding of best practices for coding emails across various email clients.
Proficient with Photoshop software.
Proficient with Flash software.
Web standards & browser compatibility.
Disciplined, organized & reliable work habits.
Good communication, written & documentation skills.
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About uxWaterloo
uxWaterloo welcomes anyone with an interest in user experience (UX) design, whether you're a seasoned veteran or hoping to get your career started. Located in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, we meet once a month and engage in a range of activities such as workshops, presentations, or informal meetups over food & drink.
