Saturday, October 31, 2009

Interaction Design Internship, IDEO, Boston

Position Summary:

IDEO helps companies innovate. We design products, services, environments, and digital experiences for organizations seeking new ways to provide value to their customers. IDEO creates visible and tangible strategies for innovation and executes all aspects of design and development, from conception through production.

IDEO is looking for interns to work for 3 -6 months in our Boston location.

Key Activities:

Design Interns work collaboratively, creatively, and flexibly within interdisciplinary teams and with our clients. IDEO's human-centered design process involves careful observations of people; gathering insights from those observations and other creative perspectives; exploring and defining design opportunities; helping to define strategy; creating tangible design expressions; and communicating the essence of these ideas. Being a designer at IDEO means you do a lot of listening, observing, brainstorming and iterating with a group of people with backgrounds very different than yours. This diversity of thought and approach results in breakthrough ideas that lead to innovative outcomes.

The ideal candidate has strong visualization and prototyping skills in addition to being comfortable working within multidisciplinary teams.

Additional Skills Required:

Candidates should demonstrate an ability to work across a range of projects, from product interaction to software tools and applications for the web. Prototyping and production skills are essential, as well as a passion for design and a point of view about your work. Please indicate your specific roles and contributions for each project submitted as part of the portfolio.

All Intern candidates must

be passionate about their craft/area of specialization
demonstrate a clear “point-of-view” relating to their design
play nicely with others (IDEO is a very team-oriented culture)
be self-directed toward excellent work outcomes
Technical Skills Desired:

Information Architecture; Conceptual Model Design; Visual UI Development Required tools: Flash (including actionscript); Illustrator; Photoshop Desired tools: Final Cut Pro; After Effects; Hardware Prototyping tools such as Arduino

Please note that we are only considering students who are in the midst of their education or who will be returning to school following the internship. You can apply online at www.ideo.com or e-mail Maria at mnorelli@ideo.com directly.

Visual Interaction Designer, IDEO, Boston

Position Summary:

International design consultancy IDEO is seeking a Visual Interaction Designer for our Boston office. The candidate should be a design thinker and craftsperson, be able to thoughtfully contribute in a team environment during a project’s user research and concept development phases, and be passionate about expressing interactions in visual form through clear and creative user interfaces. The responsibilities of this position will vary depending on the project, but the candidate should be comfortable participating in all parts of the user-centered design process and with creating deliverables at varying levels of fidelity: from quickly communicating a concept’s value proposition to final artwork and specifications delivered to a developer.

Candidates should have a background in visual communication and 3+ years of professional experience in user interface design. He or she should possess a broad understanding of related deliverables including information architecture diagrams, interaction flows, wireframes, screen mockups, interactive demos, animation, design of behavior interactions, and UI specifications. The position will require designing interactions for many mediums including web, mobile, medical/consumer devices, and vehicles. A portfolio that focuses on a single medium, such as the web, is acceptable only if the candidate can also demonstrate interest and ability to apply his or her skills more broadly.

Qualified candidates should have led the design of one or more complex applications or services and a have a general understanding of the methods involved, including participatory design, rapid iterative prototyping, and asset optimization.

Additional Skills Required:

Requirements:

o 3+ years visual UI experience.

o Strong visual communication skills with a dedication to detail and consistency.

o Be able to work collaboratively with other disciplines including communication, industrial, environmental, engineering, and business designers.

o Understand user-research and testing methodologies.

o Contribute to product/service ideation and concept development.

o Translate high-level objectives and design principles into interaction flows and information architecture diagrams.

o Create visual UI designs that embody product/service function and brand, including production screen layouts, color palettes, typography, user interface elements, buttons, icons, etc.

o Communicate design rationale verbally and visually to colleagues and clients.

o Knowledge of practical benefits and limitations of relevant technologies.

o Design and prototype interface transitions.

o Proficient with the Adobe CS4 suite.

Please include either your portfolio in pdf format or a link to your portfolio in your application. You can apply online at www.ideo.com or e-mail Maria at mnorelli@ideo.com directly.

Friday, October 30, 2009

Visual Designer, Acquia, Woburn, MA

Acquia is looking for an exceptional visual designer to work on a contract to permanent basis. We're looking for someone who is fast, truly talented and passionate about great design with an appreciation for usability. In this role, you'll collaborate with internal creative, marketing and engineering teams to identify the vision of an entire site, page, UI component or advertisement and bring it to life.

Requirements:

3-5 years of experience designing user interfaces, workflows and various other creative assets.

Strong graphic design & typography skills.

Experience designing for theme based CMS packages.

Experience with Fireworks.

Online portfolio demonstrating all of the above.

Based in our Woburn, MA office, close to major highways and commuter rail.

Desirable:


Drupal theming experience.

Experience with user centered design principles
.

Experience with HTML, CSS and Jquery skills.

Experience with Flash & actionscript.

Experience working in an Agile environment.


Contact jeff.noyes@acquia.com if interested.

Thursday, October 29, 2009

Senior Web UI Designer, 6 month contract, Greater Boston

We are looking for a very solid UI/UX Designer for a 6 month contract around the Newton area in MA.

The company is a fast paced, high energy mobile and web firm that is working on some cutting edge products. They are building a very high profile product for the company and need a senior level designer to help them with it. They are redesigning their platform from a UI and end to end flow perspective. They need someone strategic enough that can define and plan it out from end to end on the UI side. They need a mixture of senior UI and User Experience. Someone that can build basic prototypes, get immediate user feedback, change it as needed and test again.

Person must have excellent written and speaking skills. They will not pay for travel expenses so this person must be in the Boston area.

If interested, please reach out to me. They are actively interviewing for this role now.

James Parselle
jparselle@focusedstaffing.com
310 966 7231

Monday, October 26, 2009

Lead User Experience Designer and Developer

POSITION TITLE: Lead User Experience Designer and Developer

COMPANY: Kadient, Inc. (www.kadient.com)

LOCATION: Wannalancit Mills

175 Cabot St, Lowell, MA

Job Summary:

Kadient has been growing at a tremendous pace and is now looking for a UI/UE Rock Star to build innovative designs that have a lasting impact on our brand, product and users. We are looking for a talented Lead User Experience Designer to help define, create, and test the user interface of our web-based product. You would be the only visual/UI designer in the company. As such, the interaction and user interface of every product would be designed and implemented by you. Our ideal candidate will have deep experience with the entire user-centered design process: from researching user needs to building polished interfaces. This role reports directly to our SVP of Products.

Responsibilities:

Guide technical and business teams in user-centered design principles
Promote usability best practices
Design the UI architecture, interface, interaction flow and aesthetics of web applications
Develop conceptual diagrams, wireframes, prototypes, visual mockups and graphic assets
Develop and maintain detailed user-interface specifications
Build upon and expand established style guides and UI patterns
Present design work to product and executive teams for review and feedback
Able to quickly create high-fidelity prototypes and iterate towards production-level quality
Qualifications:

3-5 years of interaction design work, focusing on user interfaces and user experience for web-based business applications
An obsession with detail and analytical approach when it comes to UI. You must have ease of use and user-centric design in mind at all times
Experience building tested, robust, easy to use interfaces on top of complex systems and data
Expert knowledge of presentation layer technologies including standards compliant HTML, DHTML, CSS, Javascript and AJAX, in addition to design tools, especially Photoshop
Familiarity with the technical considerations needed when designing for dynamic .NET and AJAX-based web 2.0 applications
Experience with .NET and VisualStudio is a strong plus
Demonstrated history of acquiring user data (e.g., conducting usability studies, performing user research) is a plus
An online portfolio or samples of work demonstrating related experience
Experience in a dynamic, early stage business environment.
Company overview:

Kadient's on-demand software helps sales teams to dramatically increase productivity. Simply put, we give salespeople access to the strategies, tools and resources they need to sell, when and where they need them. We have an early stage company culture, investment by some of the region’s premiere venture capital firms, cutting edge products with an enormous market opportunity, and the strength of an existing marquis client list into which we are expanding our value.

Kadient was recognized by CRM magazine as a 2008 Market Leader in the category of Sales Force Automation (SFA) for the second year in a row. In 2009, the company has introduced an innovative integration with both Salesforce.com and Oracle On-Demand, embedding its application directly into the SFA applications.



Advantages of working at Kadient

Participatory environment in which leadership/ownership is encouraged, expected and rewarded.
Dynamic company that is bringing innovative products to market.
Opportunity to work on exciting offerings with tangible business value and broad customer reach.
Growth opportunities for high performers with a passion for learning.
Supported by a marquis client list, you have the rare opportunity to be part of an established company offering an entrepreneurial environment as we build a new business.

To Apply:

Forward resume and cover letter to jpeterson@kadient.com.

Friday, October 16, 2009

Senior Interaction Designer, Constant Contact, Inc. Waltham MA

We’re looking for an experienced, talented interaction designer with proven experience designing leading edge web applications. Join our growing user experience team to implement, plan and refine industry-leading user interfaces for existing and new web-based products and services.

Responsibilities:

Drive designs from ideation to implementation with agile, cross-functional teams.
Collaborate with the user experience team to define and evolve the overall design of our products.
Develop and run usability tests and conduct additional user research as needed.
Create mock-ups (paper, Axure, and optionally HTML) and interactive prototypes for internal reviews and usability testing.
Create and maintain UI specifications such as online style guides and standards documents.
Skills and Experience:

Bachelor's Degree or equivalent in design related field including interaction design, industrial design or human computer interaction.
5-8 years of interaction/interface design experience.
Experienced in the creation of compelling and original user interfaces for software or services. Experience with SaaS products a plus.
Expert in user-centered design methods and best practices
Knowledge of online coding languages, limitations and expectations including but not limited to HTML, CSS, Flex and JavaScript
Working knowledge of design tools such as Photoshop and Illustrator.
Passionate about customer focused research and applying it to create effective interaction designs.
Well-organized with the ability to handle multiple tasks/projects simultaneously.
Excellent written, oral and visual communicator; able to articulate relevant technical and complex interaction design issues. Attention to detail.
Motivated self-starter with excellent problem-solving skills.
Team player with the willingness and ability to put in the extra effort to create outstanding user experiences
Desire to work in a fast-paced, success-driven environment.
Please bring examples of your interaction design work and deliverables (wireframes, specifications, mockups)
Constant Contact offers a competitive compensation package that includes base salary and stock options. Our benefit package is comprehensive and includes Medical Insurance; Dental Insurance; Vision Insurance; 401(K); 529 College Savings Plan; Flexible Spending Accounts; Paid Vacation/Holidays; Short Term Disability; Long Term Disability; Tuition Reimbursement; Adoption Assistance; and, an exciting Stock Option Plan!

If you desire to make a difference, are committed to bringing the highest quality of service to our customers and are looking for a "once in a lifetime" opportunity, send us your resume and salary requirements for consideration.

Please apply online at https://home.eease.com/recruit/?id=469573

User Experience Engineer, SeaChange, Acton MA

This candidate will join our user experience team to produce design and usability guidelines, GUI standards, user profiles and personas, wire frames, logic diagrams, functional specifications and other user experience documents. In this role the candidate will work closely with other organizations to ensure that user interface designs meet product requirements and user needs. In addition, this person will collaborate with other offices to ensure a consistent experience across all SeaChange products.
The ideal candidate will have the following qualifications:
Solid understanding of user experience activities, standards and visual design principles
Strong collaboration skills, effective communication skills, creative problem-solving skills, and the ability to inspire others
Experience working with cross-functional teams and external users to lead, produce, and document user experience activities
Understanding of web development technologies such as CSS, Javascript, and AJAX
Desired educational background includes a B.S. or M.S. in Computer Science, Information Science, Human Factors, Information Architecture, Usability, Graphic Design, or related field
US Citizen or permanent resident

You can find the details below and candidates can apply on-line at www.schange.com

Senior Software UI Designer / Developer, Authoria, Waltham

Basic Purpose
Helps to design the next generation user experience for a suite of web based applications used by millions of users. Translates complex business problems into intuitive software solutions. Creates compelling functional prototypes of new user experiences and product features. Helps with implementation of user interface elements. Investigates and evaluates new concepts and UI technologies. Operates under general supervision. Reports to the Director of User Experience. Typically requires five to seven years of Web, Internet related design and development experience.

Essential Duties and Responsibilities

60% Designing and building user interface prototypes for web based applications:
• Works with product managers and business analysts to refine software requirements and evaluate design alternatives.
• Builds functional high-fidelity UI prototypes to get customer feedback and continuously iterates over designs to improve the user experience.
• Works with engineers to ensure that UI designs are technically feasible and can be implemented within release timeframes.

20% Implementing user interfaces for web based applications:
• Builds reusable user interface controls.
• Helps engineers with implementation of user interfaces for new features by creating UI assets including graphics, css, html, and javascript.

10% Defining UI standards and performing UI reviews to ensure compliance with standards.

10% Investigating and evaluating cutting edge browser based presentation technologies.

Essential Education, Skills, and Environment
Education and Work Experience
Bachelor's degree in business, computer science, interaction design, human factor and/or visual design (or equivalent). Typically requires a minimum of five to seven years of web, internet or networking related development experience.

Specialized Knowledge and Skills
Required Technologies: XHTML, CSS, JavaScript (including jQuery), Ajax, Photoshop, XML
Desired Technologies: XSLT, Velocity, Flash
Required Skills:
• Passionate about creating rich user experiences with a proven track record of designing innovative and compelling web-based interfaces (Portfolio required)
• Must possess a relentless attention to detail, a gifted eye for aesthetics and the ability to quickly grasp and distill highly complex matters.
• Ability to brainstorm well with others (designers, engineers, and product managers) and give and take constructive feedback
• Exceptional understanding of fundamental design and usability principles
• Excellent understanding of cross-browser standards compliancy
• Ability to create final graphic and other UI assets for flawless design implementation.
• Expert-level knowledge of graphic design tools such as Photoshop
• Good communications, time management, and interpersonal skills.
• The ideal candidate is not afraid of a blank white board.

Work Environment and Physical Demands
General office environment. Some stress may occur at times. No special physical demands required.
Mark L. Munzer
Director of User Experience
Authoria, 300 Fifth Avenue, Waltham MA 02451
(W) (781) 419-7076 (C) (781) 760-5892 (F) (781) 530-2003
mark.munzer@authoria.com

Tuesday, October 6, 2009

Senior Interaction Designer, IDEXX Lab, Portland, ME

Please apply via our job site:
http://www.idexx.com/view/xhtml/en_us/corporate/careers.jsf

IDEXX Laboratories is a leader in pet healthcare innovation, serving practicing veterinarians around the world with a broad range of diagnostic and information technology-based products and services. IDEXX products enhance the ability of veterinarians to provide advanced medical care, to improve staff efficiency and to build more economically successful practices. Headquartered in Maine, IDEXX Laboratories employs more than 4,500 people and offers products to customers in over 100 countries.

The IDEXX User Experience team works on a variety of products from touch screen interfaces for medical analyzers and web applications to desktop software for our digital imaging and practice management products.

If you’re a creative interactive design professional with excellent collaboration and communication skills then we’d like to hear from you.

PRIMARY DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES: A key contributor to user experience initiatives and projects, this position is responsible for:

  • Teaming-up with usability engineers, and business and technical staff to understand and refine product requirements
  • Ideation and interaction design of innovative interfaces that meet the needs of our users and business partners
  • Building prototypes and simulations of user interfaces
  • Collaborating with visual designers and usability engineers
  • Working cross-functionally with internal customers and development teams (proficiency with “devspeak” is a plus)
  • Producing wireframes, flow diagrams, detailed specifications, other design related documentation
  • Contributing to the style guide and design pattern library to document a common approach to IDEXX user interface design
  • Participating in user research definition and observing usability tests
  • Being an advocate of the user-centered design process and contributing to the overall user experience of IDEXX products
  • MINIMUM QUALIFICATIONS:
    EDUCATION: Bachelor’s degree required; course work at undergraduate or graduate level in graphic design, computer science, psychology, biology or human factors is desirable.

    EXPERIENCE: A minimum of 5 years experience with interaction design for products; prior exposure to medical applications and software design is desirable.

    REQUIRED SKILLS AND ABILITIES: The successful candidate for this position will have the following skills and abilities:

  • Excellent visual, analytical and conceptual problem solving abilities
  • Demonstrated ability to design, prototype and document user interfaces
  • Ability to work collaboratively with product management, development, QA, visual design, and usability engineers in cross-functional teams
  • Excellent organizational skills and a strong attention to detail
  • Ability to effectively work on multiple projects simultaneously
  • Ability to recognize patterns in design and user research findings and make practical recommendations for changing the UI standards
  • Working knowledge of visual design software such as Axure, Visio, Fireworks and Photoshop
  • Familiar with user-centered design philosophy and process
  • Excellent written and verbal communication skills
  • Ability to work well in a multi-team cross-functional environment
  • Strong leadership skills
  • PHYSICAL DEMANDS: None

    WORK ENVIRONMENT: Standard office environment, 15% of time will involve travel

    Monday, October 5, 2009

    UX/UI Designer, HubSpot Inc. Cambridge, MA

    HubSpot seeks a rockstar UX and UI software designer to join its
    product development team.

    Summary
    Where others see annoyances in everyday life or in a webapp, you see
    opportunities for UX improvement. You have a blog about UX or design
    because these things seem obvious to you and yet the world is
    shocklingly awful at it. You think being obsessive about minutiae in a
    webapp is perfectly normal and makes a difference. Putting it all
    together, you want a company where you can help build software that
    impacts the daily lives of thousands.

    Day to day duties:

    * Inventing new interfaces for our SAAS application using
    wireframes, direct customer input, business-side strategy, and UX
    sense/analysis.
    * Providing the art and front-end design elements to create the
    sense of professional polish and high product quality necessary for
    our business customer base.
    * Rolling up sleeves to edit and tweak front-end CSS and HTML.
    * Working very closely with our agile scrum-based development team
    in our month-long sprints and frequent product releases.
    * Brainstorming big-picture changes to the product behavior and
    user experience.

    Qualities/ Experience:

    * High wattage. We move fast and change a lot so we look
    exclusively for folks who have the intellectual chops to keep up and
    push the envelope with us, regardless of their role or function in the
    company.
    * UX sense and analytical ability. You excel at inventing and
    tuning the smoothest and most intuitive user experience from macro
    product-wide IA all the way down to on-page workflow and interaction.
    * Art gene. You can create beautiful, visually polished graphic
    work. This is important because professional polish affects the
    perceived quality of our product and has a real effect on our
    business.
    * Edit-level code ability. Even if you are not the ideal person to
    build frontend code, you a comfortable editing frontend code to
    accomplish UX and design changes.
    * Team player. Our Engineering process is Agile scrum and very
    team-focused. You must be able to not only play well with others in
    that kind of environment, but actually excel in it.

    Education:
    College or graduate degree in design would help you stand out. But
    frankly if you are self-taught and your portfolio of work demonstrates
    your ability to rock it in design, that works too.

    Things You Should Understand About HubSpot in General:

    * HubSpot has a strict NO JERKS policy.
    * We are an MIT-minded company started by a bunch of Sloan MBAs
    and we really like it that way. At HubSpot, we dream in graphs and
    our native tongue is Spreadsheet Speak. Our data might be the most
    metrically driven data you've seen. That's right, we are metrics
    freaks. We measure EVERYTHING, all the time. If you are not part of
    the Spreadsheet Appreciation Society, you will not have a good time
    working at HubSpot. The right candidate will understand perfectly what
    we mean and will smile upon reading this bullet point.
    * This is a position with tremendous growth potential. This role
    will develop and maintain relationships with senior executives as well
    as stakeholders in our sales, marketing, and service teams. You will
    talk a lot to customers, both internal and external.
    * Since HubSpot is a highly collaborative and transparent
    environment, you will not be isolated. This role will own a variety of
    cross-group, strategic projects based on evolving business needs.
    * Our compensation model takes into consideration that you have to
    pay the bills, save some money and have some fun. Options are a sexy
    benefits but...they don't pay the bills right away.
    * Our culture is fantastic. Ask any of our employees.
    * We offer a flexible, progressive, best practices workplace with
    less than 2% employee turnover.
    * Our people are the best talent in the world.
    * We are a flat organization and politics are at a minimum.
    * Your brain will be used.
    * Your ideas will be implemented.
    * Benefits are excellent, better than many start ups at our stage.
    * The opportunity here is the best one currently available in
    Cambridge or possibly the world.

    About Us
    HubSpot (HubSpot.com) is a SaaS Inbound Marketing firm. HubSpot has
    won a number of awards and been recognized by organizations such as
    NEDMA, Mass High Tech, MassTLC, AlwaysOn, Red Herring, MITX, and
    ad:Tech. HubSpot and its products have also been featured in various
    media and publications including The Wall Street Journal, Boston
    Globe, The New York Times, ABC News, Mashable, and TechCrunch.

    This job listing is also available here:
    http://www.jobvite.com/Jobvite/Job.aspx?m=nDJXjfwm&j=onWeVfwc