[IxDA Discuss] Staff Researcher/Designer (Plano, Texas)

[Falkenburg, Nancy]

Location : 	Plano, Texas (Dallas)	 			
Job Title : 	Staff Researcher/Designer 	
Company:		Intuit

Duration: 		Full-Time 				
Contact:  		nancy_falkenburg at intuit.com
JOB DESCRIPTION:

Are you a talented, skilled, and influential user researcher with strong
customer affinity and user empathy? Do you want to improve business and
improve lives by applying your skills to create world-class
applications? Do you want to be a key player in a community that is
leading the industry in designing compelling and useful user experiences
for business and information workers? 

Intuit's user experience team seeks an accomplished User Researcher to
help grow our User Centered Design team capability and to uplift our
product efforts. It could be you! You could play a role in defining and
building a strong user experience team that actively works with a
variety of functional teams across the group and across the professional
tax software and services Intuit provides. We seek a strong researcher
(and/or UI Designer) with previous leadership and product/interaction
experience, one with passion around communications, product innovation,
field and laboratory research. You will provide thought leadership
toward our ability to understand users and customers in context and to
turn that understanding into action. You will help build a culture that
is able to collect and analyze relevant data (from planning, support,
lab testing, and your own field research) and to turn it into
compelling, useful, and successful tax-related products.

Duties and Responsibilities

*Develop and execute innovative strategies to answer user research
questions *Gather information on user needs and goals from user
research, field studies, lab studies, site visits, market researchers,
support personnel, customer feedback channels; turn that data into
actionable design requirements and use it to influence product direction
*Apply knowledge of usability, human factors, experimental or cognitive
psychology, ethnography, anthropology, and the user-centered design
process to product design Design and conduct competitive reviews,
usability tests, focus groups, site visits, longitudinal studies (field
research, ethnographic studies, benchmarks); will include U.S. travel
*Analyze and present results of research efforts, creating both
compelling presentations and design/product recommendations *Collaborate
with initiative and product management, other user researchers, and
designers on conceptual models, process flows, user scenarios and tasks,
UI design and architecture *Drive innovations in methods and tools to
move offerings and the user experience team forward Participate in and
contribute to the Intuit user experience community and other
professional activities *The User Centered Design group is tasked with
designing the user experience for the ProTax family of products and
services. Our group creates elegant, appealing, and extensible designs
through user-centered design practices. *These practices include
gathering user needs, setting standards for design development, serving
as user advocates on development teams, and performing usability testing
for effective design iteration.

Primary Responsibilities & Duties:
*Promote and support User Centered Design processes through all stages
of the product development life-cycle *Responsible for the design and
facilitation of lab-based usability studies, field studies and
contextual inquiry, focus groups, expert evaluations, brainstorming
sessions, survey and questionnaire creation, and other usability
engineering methodologies *Choose appropriate methodologies to identify
issues within prototypes, conceptual models, beta code and released
products *Analyze and synthesize qualitative and quantitative
information, write research and usability test reports, and present the
results to the stakeholders *Provide concrete, actionable
recommendations to development teams *Manage test schedules and
deliverables- Work with other User Researchers and UI Designers to
maintain methodology guidelines *Work with usability lab recruiters to
schedule and specify screening requirements for studies  
Qualifications :       Experience Requirements

*Five to eight years ethnography, usability, user research
professional/corporate work *Strong understanding and practice of the
fundamentals of social research and ethnography *Expert knowledge in
usability engineering and field study methodologies, notably designing
and conducting usability studies, heuristic evaluations, contextual
inquiry *Proven laboratory, interview, and observation skills
*Proficiency and polish in written and oral communications *Strong
project management skills *Strong collaboration and organization skills
*Prototyping, video capture and editing, and design skills a plus; basic
familiarity with Morae a plus *Statistical analysis skills a plus
*Advanced degree or equivalent in HCI, Cognitive Science, Human Factors,
Usability Engineering, Anthropology, or related field *Proficiency in
design and prototyping tools (Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Visual Basic and
others)  

Reply to: nancy_falkenburg at intuit.com