Friday, October 26, 2007

Applications Architect in NEW YORK, NY

Friday, October 26, 2007
The User Experience team is responsible for creating a world-class online experience for a high-profile news site with a sophisticated, demanding and international audience. This includes experience planning, information architecture, user research, interaction design and visual design.
The Senior User Experience Architect plays a key role in the team. With a strong HCI (human computer interaction) background the architect helps lead the online business by practicing user-centered design in a fast-paced, rapid development environment.
We are looking for a strong practitioner and leader who will gather requirements, review customer feedback and market analysis, and help design and analyze user research to create effective, desirable and intuitive user interfaces that meet business and user needs and reduce time to market, and who translates the design into actionable tasks and projects.
The user experience architect works with editorial and commercial teams to understand business goals and with designers and developers to guide the prototyping and implementation process.
Projects include Web sites and applications, and products and services for other delivery platforms.
This position may require up to 25% travel.

Key accountabilities
• Gather business requirements
• Help design, conduct and analyze qualitative and quantitative research
• Help develop presentations, personas and use cases to foster and evangelize the understanding of the target audience, users and their goals in the editorial, commercial and development teams
• Define usability requirements
• Establish and maintain industry best practices
• Translate business requirements and user needs into effective, desirable, and intuitive user interfaces that meet business and user needs
• Develop representations that communicate designs clearly for developers and designers (e.g. conceptual diagrams, site maps, interaction models, wireframes, and specifications).
• Work closely with product development, technology, editorial and commercial teams
• Conduct heuristic reviews and user tests to identify key user problems
• Contribute to product development by introducing new ideas and creative approaches
• Advocate for and champion user experience
• Maintain and share awareness of industry trends and new technologies and explore those that would benefit the business and the audience

Performance measures
• Interfaces adhere to industry best practices
• High level of customer satisfaction with user interface
• Meets agreed deadlines in project plans
• Meets objectives set out in specific projects
Experience: • Bachelor’s degree required
• Degree or study in information architecture, human-computer interaction, information design, or a related field
• Graphic design and web development experience a plus
• At least five years of experience as information architect, interaction designer, experience designer or similar role
• Three or more years of applied experience in designing usable web interfaces
• Three or more years of applied information architecture experience
• Demonstrated ability to produce user-centered design solutions as evidenced by a portfolio or samples of work
• Proven experience creating successful, large-scale, consumer-facing sites
• Experience in gathering and documenting requirements for web-based products
• Experience designing accessible websites
• Experience with qualitative and quantitative user studies (e.g. usability tests, polls/surveys, field research)
• Experience conducting usability testing
• Proven experience in working with cross functional teams
• Familiarity with technical issues around web development and ability to work constructively with development teams
• A plus: Experience designing news and/or information interfaces
• A plus: Experience designing and analyzing web statistics
• A plus: Experience designing content management systems
• Strong understanding of user-centered design methodologies
• Fluency in human computer interaction
• Fluency in best practices for web-based information architecture and design, as well as strong knowledge of usability principles, issues, and techniques.
• Excellent wire-framing skills (Microsoft Visio or equivalent)
• Very good Photoshop skills
• Excellent Microsoft Office skills (Excel, Word, PowerPoint)
• Exceptional written and oral communication skills (comfortable in interacting with executives)
• Comfortable working in a small team
• Comfortable working in a fast-paced environment

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To Apply to this job go to http://www.GadBall.com or click here