Job: Director of User Experience at Sun Life

Location: Waterloo or Toronto, Ontario

Summary

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.

(August 2011) BrewUX 2: More beer, more pizza, and new friends.

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!

Please thank our sponsor

Our thanks to Brick Brewery for sponsoring this @uxWat event! To show our appreciation, please visit Brick on Facebook and “Like” them, or tweet a quick thanks to @BrickBrewery on Twitter.

BrewUx July 2011

Job: UX/Web Designer at TribeHR

TribeHR is an early stage startup in Waterloo, building a refreshingly simple Human Resources application for small and medium business. If you’re looking to see the fruits of your labor used and loved by customers and if you’re excited by the idea of participating in the creation of a new company, we are the place. Our team hustles, and we’re looking for people who are up for the challenge of keeping pace.

We are looking for a creative UX/UI designer to continue to build the company’s brand online and offline in the field of human resources software. We’re looking for someone who already has experience designing successful web applications. We have a high performing team and if you enjoy the thrill of working with a group that will push you to do the best work you’ve ever done, then you might be the right person.

This person will:

• Maintain existing designs and interfaces
• Help define new experiences, workflows, and architectures for new features
• Conduct user research and testing
• Apply principles of interaction design to designing UI, behaviour, and page layout
• Generate simple, creative solutions to usability problems.
• Write scenarios, sketch storyboards, draw wireframes, and create production-ready design specifications
• Implement new application and website designs

We iterate quickly and this role will have the opportunity to influence the rest of the development team and product direction. The ideal candidate will have:

• A passion for design and user experience.
• Examples of work that demonstrate your abilities in interaction and visual design for the Web.
• Solid understanding of UI design principles and user-centered design methodologies.
• Strong communication and presentation skills.
• Hardworking, flexible, and effective in multi-disciplinary teams.
• Expertise with design tools such as Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, etc.
• Fluency in HTML, CSS and JavaScript.

Experience designing for mobile apps and web pages will be an asset. Interested? Apply here.

11th Annual Human Factors Inter-University Workshop

Here’s an event that may be of interest to uxWaterloo folks.

November 13 is the date for the 11th annual Inter-University Workshop, hosted at the University of Waterloo. The purpose of this day-long workshop is to bring universities and industry together to explore current issues in human factors and ergonomics. It is intended to be quite informal and presenters will discuss past research, work in progress, and ideas related to human factors engineering. Please join us for a great schedule of student speakers!

For those who cannot make it to attend the workshop, all the presentations being webcast by the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society. Show your support by virtually attending one or more of these presentations.  It is a free, day-long webinar, open to all.  You can come and go as you please during the day. The webinar starts at 8:45am EST and ends at 4pm EST. There are 15 different speakers throughout the day. The schedule is found at: http://hfes.uwaterloo.ca/iuw/?page_id=17

To register for the FREE Webinar on November 13, go to:  https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/707607051

To register to attend the workshop, go to: http://hfes.uwaterloo.ca/iuw/?page_id=62

Date and location

Saturday, November 13, 2010
8:45 am to 9:00 pm
Davic Centre, DC 1301
University of Waterloo

Video of Scott Berkun's February 2009 talk in Waterloo

Last February Scott Berkun was in Waterloo and gave an entertaining talk to a full house of designers, developers, and anyone else interested in hearing about Scott’s experiences. The result was a talk in which the audience engaged in a wide-ranging discussion with the speaker. UX Group stalwart Henry Chen has uploaded a video of the event. Enjoy! (Sorry about the lack of embedding. Couldn’t seem to make it work!)

[Vimeo http://vimeo.com/6249357]