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Posted: August 1st, 2018 | Author: Adam Euerby | Filed under: Jobs | Tags: job | No Comments »
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
Posted: July 17th, 2018 | Author: Adam Euerby | Filed under: Jobs | Tags: job | No Comments »
Wilfrid Laurier University is poised to meet its future with vision, energy, and optimism. Excellence in education and research supports an academic community addressing critical business, economic, social, and environmental challenges. With over 19,000 students and 2,100 faculty and staff across locations in Waterloo, Brantford, Kitchener, and Toronto, Laurier is a mid-sized university with small-school strengths: experiential programming, engaged alumni, high levels of student satisfaction, and a unique culture inspiring lives of leadership and purpose.
Reporting to the Manager, User Experience, Web Services, is seeking an experienced UX Designer and Analyst with a passion for usability and a strong background in data analytics and reporting. The successful candidate will lead all stages of user experience design, from planning to measurement, translating requirements into meaningful online experiences that work within the context of organizational priorities. The incumbent will have responsibilities for the configuration and deployment of Google Analytics; providing statistical analysis of data and information surrounding website metrics and performance, the role will present research findings as prioritized, actionable recommendations to stakeholders across the university.
The ideal candidate will possess a Bachelor’s degree in User Experience, Interaction Design or a related discipline, with a minimum of five years recent related experience. An advocate for UX Strategy, best practices, principles and methodology; the incumbent will possess advanced skills in Google Analytics with working knowledge of Google Tag manager. The incumbent has a proven ability to recruit, design, run, and analyze qualitative and quantitative research experiments including use of workshops, surveys, and focus groups, to measure and inform web structure and performance with a strong knowledge of web accessibility and its implications for user experience design.
Diversity and creating a culture of inclusion is a key pillar of Wilfrid Laurier University’s Strategic Academic Plan and is one of Laurier’s core values. Laurier is committed to increasing the diversity of faculty and staff and welcomes applications from candidates who identify as Indigenous, racialized, having disabilities, and from persons of any sexual identities and gender identities. Indigenous candidates who would like to learn more about equity and inclusive programming at Laurier are welcomed to contact the Office of Indigenous Initiatives at jbecker@wlu.ca. Candidates from other equity-seeking groups who would like to learn more about equity and inclusive programming at Laurier are welcomed to contact the Diversity and Equity Office at diversity@wlu.ca. We have strived to make our application process accessible however if you require any assistance applying for a position or would like this job posting in an alternative format, please contact Human Resources at 519-884-1970 ext.2007 or hr@wlu.ca.
Should you be interested in learning more about this opportunity please visit www.wlu.ca/careers for additional information and the online application system. All applications must be submitted online by July 27, 2018.
Posted: July 8th, 2018 | Author: Mark Connolly | Filed under: Events | Tags: event | No Comments »
In what is now a beloved summer tradition, it’s time to replace energizing presentations and deep UX thoughts with a lighter event befitting the season. Let’s savour that summer feeling with a July uxWaterloo session that features informal talk, some of it even UX-related, and drinks. As befits any self-respecting tradition, we do this every July and August and the laid-back atmosphere and conversations are a welcome addition to any summer schedule. Join us!
And, as has become a yearly tradition, count on hearing an update on Fluxible 2018, Canada’s UX Festival! You’ve been warned…
Please register for this free event
Thursday July 27, 2017
5:30 to 7:00 pm
Abe Erb Brewing
15 King Street South, Uptown Waterloo
Waterloo, Ontario
Posted: June 21st, 2018 | Author: Adam Euerby | Filed under: Jobs | Tags: job | No Comments »
ConsenSys is a venture production studio and the leading technology firm in blockchain globally. We deliver products, solutions and platforms built using blockchain technology to transform how business is done in complex network of buyers, suppliers and consumers.
Our teams are busy at work building the future of identity, financial markets, commerce, the music industry, security, and infrastructure, and more. To accomplish this we’ve built out a flat organizational structure which we call the ConsenSys Mesh: a network of individuals & teams working autonomously and towards the same goal. Our mission is to use these decentralized solutions to fundamentally reshape the economic, social, and political operating systems of the planet. If you are someone that thrives in a fast-paced environment where being self-directed, determined, and resilient are a requirement, we would love for you to join us.
About Product Design at ConsenSys:
The excitement surrounding the possibilities of blockchain technology are at an all time high—and rightly so. Designers at ConsenSys must balance passion for the technology while knowing when and how to focus the conversation on our users. ConsenSys designers enjoy an open and inclusive culture and the freedom to explore and experiment. We are always iterating and improving our work, the culture, and ourselves.
About the role:
We are currently seeking a Lead Product Designer with a passion for organizational behaviour and development in the Ethereum ecosystem. You have an interest and/or SaaS based experience in human resources, autonomous management, and open platforms—you are passionate about the needs of users in relation to these areas. As a Product Design Lead at ConsenSys, you will take products from ideation and rough prototypes to high fidelity designs, relentlessly validating and pushing for accessible, delightful design solutions.
Responsibilities:
- Lead a collaborative design process from conception to launch: partner with small, global teams of engineers, product managers, and researchers to identify user needs, define product strategy, and create roadmaps
- Develop storyboards, prototypes, and high-fidelity visual design to effectively communicate interaction and design ideas
- Actively give and solicit feedback from other designers in order to continually raise the bar for quality
- Mentor junior designers or interns, growing and iterating on our design culture by participating in design-team-wide initiatives such as recruiting, developing design principles, and improving design tools and process
- Evangelize design and product thinking methodology
- Fearlessly take on highly complex problem areas and then publish what you learn
- Grow a design team as the product matures
Requirements:
- You have 5+ years of experience working as a product designer on agile teams
- You have solved complex problems with elegant, shipped product—evidenced in an online portfolio featuring end-to-end product design
- You demonstrate product vision and use data and experimentation to provide product direction.
- While you may not have a branding or marketing background, you understand customer experience and the relationship between brand and product design
- You’re excellent at articulating design decisions, presenting to clients or stakeholders
- You’re effective at prototyping at varying levels of fidelity
- You demonstrate solid leadership skills and an ability to develop strong partnerships with product managers and engineers
Even better if:
- You’re interested in or have experience with decentralized applications and blockchain
- You’re interested in or have experience working with self-managing organizations and modular platforms
- You have experience at both large organizations and start-ups
- You are able to facilitate design thinking workshops
- You enjoy some amount of ambiguity and freedom to experiment
- You’ve built or worked with design systems
- You have front-end development experience
Here are some of the perks of being part of a unique organization like ConsenSys:
- The forefront of a revolution. At ConsenSys we fundamentally believe that a next generation of technologies presents the opportunity to create a more just and equitable society.
- A dynamic startup environment. ConsenSys is a thought leader in the blockchain space and we are absorbing a significant portion of the mindshare. This is both exciting and challenging, as we learn to scale our organization while adhering to the principles of decentralization.
- Continuous learning. You’ll be constantly exposed to new languages, frameworks and ideas from your peers and as you work on different projects — challenging you to stay at the top of your game.
- Deep technical challenges. This entire ecosystem is about 10 years old. Ethereum itself is still a toddler. There is much work to be done before these platforms can scale to the order of millions or billions of users. ConsenSys is building the technology platforms that can get us to those next thresholds of scale.
Click here for the latest updates from ConsenSys.
Apply!
Apply through the ConsenSys website.
Posted: June 2nd, 2018 | Author: Mark Connolly | Filed under: Events | Tags: event | No Comments »
Steve Portigal is no stranger to Waterloo Region, having spoken at the second edition of Fluxible back in 2013, and again in 2015. Now, through the miracle of video calling, Steve joins us at uxWaterloo to help navigate the potentially tricky skills of communication and collaboration.
Working successfully in UX entails communicating and collaborating with a diverse range of individuals in other geographies, organizations and disciplines. But we’re people first and workers second. We’ll take a hard look at what it really takes for people to get work done — working with colleagues, leaders, and users — and trying to deal better with ourselves! These are the skills we know we need, but we rarely spend time or effort to develop.
Note that Steve will be presenting remotely for this event, through the miracle of the internet-enabled transmission of sound and images.
Pizza and drinks will be served at the event.
Please register for this free event
Note the special day this month!
Wednesday June 13, 2018
5:30pm to 7:00pm
3rd Floor Theatre, Roddenberry, Communitech
151 Charles Street West
Kitchener, Ontario
Posted: May 2nd, 2018 | Author: Adam Euerby | Filed under: Events | Tags: event | No Comments »
How do you persuade your customers to try your new product when they’re already pretty happy with what they’ve got? How do you get them to migrate to a new product that, technically, has fewer features? How do you overcome the dreaded “switching cost,” the pain of learning something completely new?
In this talk, Aaron Wright and Jeff Kraemer will detail how they researched migration experiences (which are usually terrible), explored UX designs using a lean UX process, and ultimately launched a migration experience that lives up to FreshBooks’ mantra: “Execute extraordinary experiences every day.”
In 2014, FreshBooks launched an ambitious, secret project to reinvent itself—a complete redesign and rebuilding of its flagship product, a cloud accounting application used by over five million people. The old product was saddled with both technical and UX debt, and we just weren’t able to deliver what our customers needed quickly enough.
After two years of testing and iterating in weekly UX sprints, we were confident that the new product was a much better experience for users. But: it had fewer features. And the first thing we learned when we asked customers what they expected from a new FreshBooks was “more features!”
So, we had a challenge: we needed to persuade our customers to leave a product they generally loved, move to a new one with fewer features, and avoid making it another awful migration experience.
We’ll explain how we researched and designed that experience, list some lessons we learned, and offer key takeaways for anyone planning to introduce their users to a radical change.
Bios:
Aaron Wright:
I stumbled into the field of UX while pursuing a degree in Graphic Design at York University. Originally just trying hone my web design and app-building skills, I soon learned that there was, in fact, an entire field devoted to the study of user experience itself and immediately changed focus. And I haven’t looked back. I’m now a UX Designer at FreshBooks since 2012, livin’ the dream of taming complexity and trying to make boring work (like accounting) as close to fun as humanly possible.
Jeff Kraemer:
I ran my first usability test back in 2001; this was before screen-recording software, so recording the test meant pointing a VHS videocamera at the screen. Since then, I’ve spent time specializing in content strategy and instructional design, but I really love being a UX generalist. Previously at Workopolis and Usability Matters, I am now Principal UX Designer at FreshBooks.
Please register for this free event
Thursday May 24, 2018
5:30pm to 7:00pm
3rd Floor Theatre, Roddenberry, Communitech
151 Charles Street West
Kitchener, Ontario
Pizza and drinks will be served at the event.
Posted: April 17th, 2018 | Author: Mark Connolly | Filed under: Jobs | Tags: job | No Comments »
Who we are and what we do
Founded in 2011, Mappedin powers search and discovery indoors, enabling consumers to find what they’re looking for with speed and ease. Our software platform provides industry leading tools to manage dynamic indoor spatial data and offer wayfinding experiences for customer-facing applications, including a recent collaboration with Apple Maps.
Mappedin works with the ten largest malls in Canada, the largest REITs in the US, and in stores, hospitals, campuses, and airports around the world.
At Mappedin, we have a strong culture of design. We firmly believe that design plays an integral role in creating the best possible product that is used by millions of people. Even more than that, we believe that our ongoing dedication to great design is part of how we differentiate ourselves in the market. Only by having high end design can we charge high end prices.
Who you are and what you’ll do
You are a designer who can understand the intrinsic motivation of a user while recognizing the difference between #FF5800 and #FFA500. You love the psychology of how people interact with technology and thrive on how to create a great experience.
You are aware and excited about new design concepts and love to learn. We expect you to be passionate about design that is motivated by research and data. You don’t have to know how to code, but you’ll need to be able to interact intelligently with developers who will be bringing your designs to life.
As part of the Product Strategy team and reporting to the VP, Product Strategy, you will own the look and feel of a suite of products spanning responsive web, directories, and mobile applications:
- Create and test design prototypes
- Communicate designs using mockups, wireframes and written descriptions
- Validate product designs through user research activities
- Run user story mapping sessions and develop user journey maps
- Build white label consumer experiences, taking into account customer branding into final design
- Contribute to fundamental user research including user personas and ethnographic research
- Learn and relate to Mappedin’s customers as well as your colleagues in product management
- Collaborate with your peers in software development to help guide them towards building the most usable version of our products
You are highly interested in learning about or already have experience in:
- Bringing SaaS products to market, spanning some or all of the spectrum of research, ideation, prototyping, aesthetic design, product validation, and iterative improvements post-launch
- Talking to customers in a design capacity where you worked to understand business pains, find new opportunities, and build insight with end users
- Data informed design
- Working harmoniously with other business units (Development, Operations, Sales, Marketing, etc.) to identify problems worth solving and prioritizing solutions
- Designing for interfaces based on user-generated content
What are some challenges?
Our design process is still immature and requires more robustness. You’ll need to figure out how to operate with ambiguity and contribute to improving how our team and process works. We’ll need your help ensuring consistency of design across products, building out libraries of components that can be reused, and creating processes and resources that help improve the efficiency of the design team.
Designing for mobile is hard. At Mappedin, we design recommended experiences for customers who will take our product and customize it to their needs; you may end up collaborating with third party design agencies as a result.
We have tried a few things that we know doesn’t work and have a good idea of where to go, but our assumptions still need to be validated. Change is hard so you’ll need to be prepared to persevere through the hard times in order to work towards a better future.
Behind the scenes
Our tool set currently includes Sketch, InVision, Adobe Creative Suite, and JIRA, but we are firm supporters in supplying whatever tools are necessary for you to produce your best work. Our final products are built using Swift/Java or HTML/CSS/JavaScript, so some familiarity with their strengths and weaknesses is an asset, but not necessary.
There’s a lot of trust here at Mappedin. We work flexible hours, have a flexible vacation policy and work to provide the hardware or office equipment you require to unleash your potential. We will do what it takes to get things done if we said we would do it. We stay curious and will always ask each other questions, rarely making assumptions. We recognize that we are all different and will challenge each other’s views and perceptions from time to time, resulting in constructive and healthy debates, but that never stops us from all eating lunch together every day. If you want to join our sports team, we have a blank bright orange jersey here waiting for your name to be printed on it.
Lastly, we have an awesome office cat who loves attention. Allergic? Don’t worry, Hobbes stays on the other side of the office and won’t bother you unless you decide to work in the collaboration area there.
Apply!
Apply via the MappedIn website.
Posted: April 3rd, 2018 | Author: Mark Connolly | Filed under: Events | Tags: event | No Comments »
This month, we’re excited to welcome past Fluxible speaker Dana Chisnell to uxWaterloo to share her insights and experiences trying to improve the voting process in the United States. Dana will be presenting to us remotely, a format that has worked well in previous sessions this season.
Dana’s talk will show how every great designed experience starts with the stories of individual humans.
At the Center for Civic Design, Dana and her team collected close to 1,000 stories from U.S. voters over 5 years. They used the stories to visualize and map the voting experience. This revealed two massive gaps in the process.
First, people who administer elections and voters have very different mental models on the process of voting.
The second gap was between privileged voters and burdened voters. These gaps explained why it’s harder than it should be to vote in the U.S.
The stories also showed that several policies that were meant to make things better had unintended consequences that actually make it worse. And just as in the private sector and across lots of different kinds of organizations, design research could have helped solve real problems without causing new ones.
It’s time to start designing for democracy.
Pizza and drinks will be served at the event.
Please register for this free event
Thursday April 19, 2018
5:30pm to 7:00pm
3rd Floor Theatre, Roddenberry, Communitech
151 Charles Street West
Kitchener, Ontario
Posted: March 25th, 2018 | Author: Mark Connolly | Filed under: Jobs | Tags: job | No Comments »
Summary
We’re a team of Product Designers and User Experience Researchers with a diverse set of skills and some serious UX chops. We create experiences for people who learn and teach in K-12 schools, higher education, and business.
We’re looking for someone who’s familiar with the broad UX tools and activities with particular strength in visual design
What we offer
- A design team like no other
- A place for you to learn and grow as a designer and a person.
- Projects that will make you feel good again about working in tech.
- A chance to change the way the world learns.
We also offer a strong team environment and a strong commitment to work/life balance. Your quality of life matters.
What we’re after
Passion – We want to see your passion for people, for design, and for working collaboratively, both with other talented designers and user researchers and with members of cross-functional teams.
Portfolio – You don’t need to have launched products that have changed the world. But, you’ll need to show us your designs and artifacts and talk to us about the business and user problems you were trying to solve and how you approached your work.
Point of view – We want to hear what you have to say. We’re looking for designers who can provide rationales for 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.
Collaboration – You’re a team player, a self-starter who wants to collaborate with others. You understand that everyone can be a leader. You’re comfortable collaborating with other disciplines and with facilitating sessions with colleagues and with users.
Experience – You have real experience – about 2+ years’ worth. You should be able to share examples of artifacts you created and activities you facilitated, how they had an impact, and what you learned. Points for experience in an agile environment and for knowledge of Lean UX, Design Sprints (Google Ventures version of Design Thinking process) & Story Mapping. Bonus points for experience designing and facilitating user research.
About D2L…
Learn more about us, check out D2L.com & Brightspace.com or find us on Instagram & Twitter – because this role description is way too long already…
Posted: March 25th, 2018 | Author: Mark Connolly | Filed under: Jobs | Tags: job | No Comments »
Miovision’s mission is to provide the foundation for tomorrow’s smart cities by transforming the way traffic networks are managed today. Backed by the world’s most advanced traffic AI, Miovision’s innovations in traffic signal planning and operations have made it possible for cities to improve the transportation experience for drivers, cyclists and pedestrians since 2005. With offices in Kitchener, Canada and Cologne, Germany, Miovision serves over 17,000 municipalities worldwide. For more information, visit www.miovision.com
Miovision is looking for a Intermediate/Senior UX Designer to work alongside a team of talented engineers solving complex problems in the traffic and transportation space. The ideal candidate should be able to understand and align customer and business goals, to create highly engaging customer experiences. You are someone who is killer in Interaction Design, strong in Visual Design and Prototyping, capable in User Research and Information Architecture.
Why your work will matter:
Miovision’s mission is built around helping cities use data to solve big and impactful problems. Our hardware helps cities to connect to their infrastructure and sensors, and unlock the data trapped inside. Our software conveys the insights that enable cities to make critical decisions that ensure a safe, efficient, and productive city. As a UX/UI designer, you’ll ensure that city engineers and decision makers can understand the data they’re looking at and make it actionable. How does a city planner sort through mountains of data to understand what the most dangerous street crossings are? How does a non-technical city executive look at a dashboard to understand what parts of her city have the largest mobility problems and need more investment? We see great and thoughtful design as one of the essential pieces to solving these sort of challenges, and we’re looking for designers who are passionate about creating a massive impact in how cities operate.
Things we’d like you to do:
Delivery
- You develop the process/approach for tackling a design problem, using known methods, and can anticipate future design implications.
- You are confident in applying best practices to common design problems.
- Working with PMs, you lead the solution of specific customer problems, while connecting to the broader product vision.
Communication
- Communicates design rationale to PMs and Devs
Validates designs with key stakeholders / users.
- Prepares and delivers validated mockups for the product development team.
Leadership
- Clarifies success metrics with PMs in order to tie design efforts toward delivering business value.
- Facilitate/lead design exploration activities (eg. design sprints).
- Be a champion for design thinking and processes across the company.
Things we’d like you to have:
- You have at least 5 years’ experience in user experience(UX) design with some focus on complex products.
- You have a strong understanding of the fundamental visual and interactive design disciplines and principles.
- You’re someone who is killer in Interaction Design, strong in Visual Design and Prototyping, capable in User Research and Information Architecture.
- You’re able to quickly iterate through design concepts by sketching, wireframing, and low-fidelity prototypes.
- You’re able to deliver production-ready/customer facing high-fidelity mockups with your favourite tools (eg. Sketch, InVision, Adobe, etc.)
- You have a portfolio of works demonstrating the successful delivery of outstanding interface design solutions.
- You have excellent verbal and written communication skills.
- You have a strong understanding with an iterative design process, and able to prioritize tasks and meet tight-deadlines with minimal supervision.
- You have experience presenting your work to executives and defending it when necessary.
What Success in Your First 90 Days looks like:
First 15 days
- Meet with PMs of each product line to get an understanding of the product roadmaps and vision for Miovision product areas.
- Meet with Miovision’s brand leaders to understand brand considerations inside of our products.
- Get a general understanding of target users and overall product/market strategy.
- Conduct 1-on-1s with PMs and dev team leads to understand their goals and challenges and opportunities to improve on design involvement.
- Take inventory of design assets across various tools (eg. Sketch, Moqups, InVision) and make recommendations on design asset and prototype version management.
First 30 days
- Conduct a design review of existing products and identify key gaps in usability, information architecture, consistency and opportunities for improvement.
- Get your feet wet with a specific customer problem / product area and assist in the research and design of a solution.
- You work with PM, Customer Success, and Product Marketing to understand and support new feature/product introduction
First 90 days
- You have an intimate understanding of product goals, and user needs & motivations.
- You work closely with PMs and development team to assist in research, prototyping new solutions for discovery, and getting user feedback.
- You assist in the development of product requirements with supporting mockups / prototypes.
- You understand and consider the brand and vision for Miovision as you apply that to your design deliverables.
- Your designs are reaching customers in production, and you are providing feedback and acceptance throughout the development process.
To Apply:
Visit miovison.com/careers/and attach your resume and portfolio to your application.