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Posted: September 30th, 2018 | Author: Mark Connolly | Filed under: Events | Tags: event | No Comments »
After a September filled with UX goodness in Waterloo Region, this month we have a very cool special guest speaking on a topic that is simultaneously lighter and dead serious.
Most people know about AI through movies and TV shows. This one has an unblinking, red eye. That one crushes human skulls under its metal—and humanoid—foot. But how does the AI seen on screen match up with the science of AI? How does what you’ve seen color the way you think about it? How optimistic you are? What you think should be done, and how you would vote on AI policy? Join Chris Noessel, keeper of scifiinterfaces.com, as he explains what screen AI aligns with the science, what is pure fiction, and what we should be telling ourselves but aren’t.
Please register for this free event
Thursday October 18, 2018
5:30 to 7:00 pm
Communitech Hub, 2nd floor
[View on Google Maps]
Posted: August 28th, 2018 | Author: Mark Connolly | Filed under: Jobs | Tags: job | No Comments »
We are looking for a UX writer to join our team for a 1-year contract position based in Waterloo, ON.
UX writers are the voice of Google. They craft intuitive, inspiring text in graphical user interfaces on the web, on mobile, in cars — everywhere people engage with Google. UX writers collaborate closely with product managers, designers, researchers, and others to imagine, design, test, and deliver products that are relied on by hundreds of millions of people around the globe.
General Responsibilities
- Write clear, concise user-interface text for web-based and mobile products
- Own user-facing error messaging & help documentation
- Collaborate with designers, researchers, prototypers, product managers, and engineers to define user content requirements
- Add order to the broader product mission by creating and curating writing guidelines for both the core product and integration points, and then training others as needed.
- Help improve writing tools and processes, participate in team projects, and generally lend a hand as needed to produce world-class software and hardware products
Minimum qualifications
- 2 years of professional writing or editing experience
- Strong verbal and written communication skills
- Meticulous grammar and proofreading skills
- Ability to juggle multiple competing priorities in a fast-paced, constantly changing environment
- Detail-oriented with strong project management skills, and a desire to move quickly and innovate on the way we communicate with our users
- Experience working with design, engineering and product management teams as part of the software development process
Nice to Have
- Preference will be given to candidates with technical writing experience
How to Apply
Please submit this short form as your application to the role. Note that you’ll need to be signed in to your Google account to complete it since it includes a file upload section for your resume and writing samples.
Applications due by Sept. 10th, 2018
Posted: August 20th, 2018 | Author: Mark Connolly | Filed under: Events | Tags: event | No Comments »
This month, we’re presenting a special edition of uxWaterloo as a part of Fluxible Meetups!
As user experience professionals, we are uniquely positioned to drive product strategy through deep understanding of the needs of the people who use our products. In this talk, Google’s Meagan Timney will share some stories of how she’s developed successful long term relationships with cross-functional teams and enabled UX to be an effective partner in developing product and organizational vision and strategy. She’ll discuss some of the most common barriers and challenges, what’s worked (and what hasn’t), as well as how to be effective when you’re the sole UX voice on a team, working remotely, or constrained by ambitious timelines and limited resources.
Meagan Timney is a London, Ontario native and a creative at heart. After completing her PhD in English Literature and a postdoc in Digital Humanities 8 years ago, her path led her to the Bay Area and the field of UX, where she’s worn many hats: designer, researcher, and manager, at small agencies, silicon valley startups, and now Google.
Please register for this free event
Thursday September 20, 2018
7:00 to 8:30 pm
Google Kitchener-Waterloo
51 Breithaupt Street
Kitchener, ON
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 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: 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.
Posted: March 13th, 2018 | Author: Mark Connolly | Filed under: Jobs | Tags: job | No Comments »
Zenreach was created to solve one of the most important problems in the modern economy—the majority of our time is being spent online, yet over 90% of purchasing still happens offline — and there is no link between the two systems. Brick-and-mortar merchants are working decades behind their online counterparts without essential data and tools. We created Zenreach to give them the same level of technology and transparency that anyone operating online has come to expect.
Position Summary
Greenfield Labs, the Zenreach R&D lab in Kitchener, Ontario, is seeking a highly-motivated Senior-Staff level UI/UX designer to help create and maintain Zenreach’s core product. An ideal candidate has the ability think about experiences holistically which means you have a good balance between technical knowledge, research abilities, problem-solving skills, and awesome visual design/interaction skills.
Zenreach is backed by leading investors with decades of experience in building enterprise hardware and software. We were also featured as one of the top breakout startups of 2017! Interested in closing the loop between the online and offline worlds? Join us!
What you’d be doing
You’ll join a small but mighty design team and have the opportunity to shape the design function as we continue scaling the business. You’ll have the responsibility of partaking and leading a full cycle design process, from research and developing initial wireframes/flows to creating magnificent visual designs, all while maintaining a user-centered design mindset. You’ll be spending a great amount of time with your good friends Sketch, Illustrator, Photoshop, and the prototyping tools of your choice. But you’ll also be working hand-in-hand with the engineering, product, and other teams not affiliated within the EPD organization. You’ll also create, facilitate, and manage component and pattern libraries for our web and mobile experiences ensuring a holistic experience regardless of device type. You’ll provide guidance on design strategy and structure work to effectively solve design challenges. You’ll also be play a key role in mentoring junior staff, and providing oversight of their day-to-day execution work.
About You…
- 5+ years of relevant b2b experience. From discovery and ideation to documentation and implementation support.
- An inspiring online portfolio demonstrating strong and agile/Lean UX/Visual skills.
- You’re obsessed with the details and have the ability to think about features holistically.
- You have the ability to research, share, and apply new trends in design, usage, and technology.
- You’re a person that works openly, is able to continuously share progress, and solicits feedback from other verticals outside of product and design
- You’re extremely fluent in working with Sketch, Adobe Creative Suite, and various prototyping tools
- You’re self motivated with a positive attitude and always consistently looking for ways to improve our product
- In addition to your design-thinking skills, you also have great soft skills and want to help cultivate our company culture
- You’re always hungry for more, embraces challenges, and always is open to new ways of thinking
Perks & Benefits
- Excellent and comprehensive health plans
- Flexible Vacation Policy
- Fully stocked kitchen with healthy (and unhealthy) snacks and beverages
- Catered lunches
- Enhanced Paternity/Maternity Programs
- Organized volunteer events to give back to our community
- Off-sites, events and happy hours
Not ready to apply, or have some questions first? Feel free to email our Recruiter, Gary Good, directly at gary@zenreach.com.
If you’re interested in this role, please apply on our website here.
Zenreach is an Equal Opportunity Employer and considers applicants for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, orientation, national origin, age, disability, genetics or any other basis forbidden under federal, provincial, or local law.