:: User Experience Research Lead for Microsoft Silicon Valley Web Communications team ::
Our Silicon Valley User Experience team is seeking an experienced, talented, and creative research lead who is excited about joining one of Microsoft's most truly impactful and integrated user experience teams. If you choose to join this team, you will have the opportunity to deeply impact products that reach hundreds of millions of users every day. This team's day-to-day challenges include shaping the current and next generation of Hotmail, Windows Live Mail, Contacts, Calendar, Gallery, Web Messenger, and more. As part of the web communications team, you will have a seat at the table with engineers, program managers, product planners, and designers solving real customer issues and identifying opportunities for the business. You will be expected to be a leader in helping teams understand how to meet and anticipate the needs of customers, and be adept at setting research directions and goals, as well as translating research results into both high-level and feature-level conclusions to set the direction for design. Your primary responsibilities include managing a small team of researchers, setting high level research goals and schedules, working proactively with the Web Communication team to seek and analyze user feedback on Windows Live products, competitor products, and interface designs, and making recommendations to improve the products based on that feedback. You will carry this through from product concept to market, including analyzing market and usage data/trends, writing user scenarios, reviewing product specs, making recommendations to design through regular informal and formal evaluations (including on the spot brainstorming), planning and conducting research studies, and doing field visits. This role is for an experienced, enthusiastic, and talented research leader. You should have proven experience driving research teams to create and execute plans in response to overall product strategy. You'll bring knowledge of user research methods and have demonstrated ability to help your team adapt the appropriate methods to specific design questions. Your leadership skills will also include the ability to set research priorities, including doing both research on current products while also doing the research that is needed for the next product version. Qualifications include: * Five or more years of work experience, preferably on research for consumer products. * Minimum of a Master's degree in Experimental Psychology, Cognitive Psychology, Human Computer Interaction or Human Factors, Library and Information Sciences, or other related discipline. * Thorough knowledge of user research methods, including strong experimental design, data analysis, and results interpretation, inferential statistics, site visits, interviews, card sorts, focus groups, user flows, user profiling and task analysis; has demonstrated ability to adapt the appropriate method to specific design questions. * Required experience in developing User Research studies from writing the research protocol for an individual study through to the final written report with prioritized recommendations. * Proven experience creating and executing research plans in response to overall product strategy and applying your extensive repository of user information to multiple product areas, versions, and releases. * Excellent management skills to provide leadership and mentoring career growth for researchers. * Strong communication, organization, and leadership skills and ability to work collaboratively. * Proven experience influencing product designs and directions based on customer needs. Be prepared to share examples of research that demonstrates this influence. For more information: Contact Nicole Dresser at [EMAIL PROTECTED]<mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Erez Kikin-Gil | Microsoft | Windows Live Web Communications | UX LEAD II | IM:[EMAIL PROTECTED] ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
