JOB: nForm - Intermediate-Senior Interaction Designer / Information Architect - Toronto

[Kaleem]

Hey Irregulars,

Our friends at nForm User Experience Consulting are hiring again for
their new Toronto office. nForm runs the annual CanUX workshop and
have been a strong supporter of UX Irregulars, among other notable
items.

They're a great group of people and one of the few shops that
specialize in UX, so if you're looking for work or a new challenge,
consider yourself advised to act fast.

Details follow.

-K

--

As an nForm consultant, your primary responsibility will be gathering
business and customer insight and translating that insight into
concrete plans and prototypes, such as conceptual models, interaction
flows, wireframes, and functional specs. You will work with clients,
their users, and nForm colleagues to understand, define, and solve
problems to create business and user value through designing fantastic
user experiences.

Excellent interpersonal skills are required for client-facing
engagements. We're a small firm so you'll be called on to serve in a
variety of roles--flexibility and the ability to tackle new challenges
are important. We are looking for someone who can work independently
with little or no supervision on projects and has excellent time
management skills. Experience in managing small work groups or teams
is a great asset.

Skillset
- Strong design portfolio including things like scenarios, interaction
flows, sketches, sitemaps, wireframes, prototypes, and possibly great
final interfaces
- Strong research and evaluation skills including things like
usability testing, interviews, survey methods, card sorting,
ethnography, diary studies, and web analytics
- Strong facilitation or co-design skills such as user scenario
development, experience mapping, conversational sketching,
participatory design, affinity diagramming, and collaborative
inspection
- Fluent with Visio, Omingraffle, Unify or other diagramming tool
- Ability to model interaction flow, navigation structure, and other
structural components of system
- Ability to show ideas visually
- Ability to write and present clearly
- HTML and CSS (you won't be coding, but your designs need to be
feasible)
- Web 2.0 awareness (from acronyms like RSS and RIA to your own
thoughts on social software)

Mindset
- Ability to listen and take direction
- Shows initiative and goes the extra mile
- Ability to learn new skills, both with guidance and on your own
- Ability to work independently
- Keen interest in the craft of user experience. We'd like to know who
your influences are, where you look in the community for guidance and
inspiration, what books and blogs you read, and who you think is doing
the coolest work online

History
- 3 - 8 years of work experience doing interaction design or
information architecture preferred. This experience may have been in a
dedicated role, or as part of work doing innovative web design
- Your portfolio, process, and mindset trump both formal education and
previous jobs, though we appreciate good schools and good work

Compensation
- Salary based on experience, plus benefits to start, review at 6
months, 1 year, and then annually
- Participation in employee bonus program
- 3 weeks vacation to start, plus 1 week of "personal time"
- Participation in employee professional development program

Some compensation isn't about money or benefits. We're all here
because we like working with an experienced, smart team that not only
serves great clients, but also influences the practice of user
experience across industry. We encourage and sponsor UX events,
conferences, and speak at a number of UX conferences around the globe.
We host our own Canadian User Experience workshop, CanUX, every year
in Banff, and we hosted our first Web Strategy Summit in Calgary this
May.

It's not just events. We regularly blog and write articles, we co-
founded the IA Institute, and our President Gene Smith has recently
published a book, titled Tagging: People-Powered Metadata for the
Social Web.

Well-balanced life
Come early or stay late, but try and avoid doing both. We think crunch
time should be a rare occurrence - and at our offices, it is.

Some travel will be required, but let's talk about that.

How to Apply
Email your resume (Word or PDF) and link to your online portfolio to
Yvonne Shek, at Yvonne [at] nform.ca. If we're going to go ahead with
an interview, we'll let you know within a week. Unfortunately we can't
respond to everyone who applies, so if you haven't heard from us in a
week, we're probably looking for a different skillset.

http://nform.ca/blog/2009/09/we-are-hiring-again-intermedia