Senior Designer - Vancouver, BC | Microsoft Canada Inc. | FreshGigs.ca | 12/06/14
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Senior Designer full-time

Location: Vancouver, BC
Company Name: Microsoft Canada Inc. ()
Category: Design
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Job Category: Software Engineering: User Experience
Location: Vancouver, CA
Job ID: 880343-143187
Division: Applications and Services Engineering

With mobile devices now being the edge of computing, users have become app-hungry consumers. There are now new levels of expectation for the simplicity, connectivity, and productivity that comes with this “appification” of computing.

The Do More Experiences (DMX) team in Application & Services Group is chartered with building the next generation of mobile-first business productivity apps. We will redefine productivity with new apps that reflect an evolution in productivity where the phone is the central device.

What this mean in practice is that we will have a tight-knit team that is laser focused on shipping high quality, impactful, cross-platform mobile experiences on a fast cadence. Our Design group is seeking exceptional designers with a proven track record for creating beautiful, elegant and impactful design solutions.

Who are you?
You are an exceptional designer. You are already working on digital experiences that are more than simply websites, being applications that are delivered on the web, and too many devices. You work collaboratively with a team of software engineers, because you consider them critical to bringing your designs to life, and because their work provides continual inspiration regarding what can be accomplished technically. You are curious about users, their needs and their processes. You are equal parts problem framer and problem solver. You know when to explore and how to synthesize, how to bring in just enough chaos to the problem to find the path to elegance in the solution. You innovate with empathy; by whichever means works, you are able to conceive of the best imaginable experiences, through rapid immersion in what is, and rapid imagination of what should be.

You don’t define yourself as a Researcher, an Information Architect, a Visual Designer, or a Design Technologist. You are mainly one of these, but some of the others. Whatever you are, you know your strengths, and you know how to partner well with others who have strengths that complement your own. And you have a superpower - perhaps you can somehow throw together a working prototype in front of the customer; you are a photographer or filmmaker, a musician or graphic artist; maybe you have an encyclopedic knowledge of typefaces or a passion for HTML. But you have something that you can bring unexpectedly to bear on projects.

You are applying for this job because you want to deliver innovative experiences that become the accepted norm, and because you relish the opportunity for the difference your work makes to be made at scale. You believe that the essence of a great digital experience becomes a pattern for the future. You are motivated by a desire to design at the edge. In Microsoft, you see an opportunity to deliver no-compromise experiences consistently across emerging surfaces and devices, all the while thinking about how the new models of interaction that Microsoft technology affords can make these experiences more useful, more usable and more desirable.

Responsibilities

  • Ultimately responsible for the design of consumer-centric solutions built upon industry standards and Microsoft technologies.
  • You will participate in - and perhaps lead - “design-thinking” sessions, working with groups of individuals to understand and reframe their problems, to identify opportunities to innovate, and co-creating visionary experiences inside our solution studio.
  • Primarily an experience architect? You will follow user-centered design principles; planning and executing user-experience tasks such as business analysis, task and process analysis, experience audits, user interviews, persona creation, report writing, wireframing and specification of interaction patterns and behaviors.
  • Primarily a visual designer? You will create stunning visuals and work closely with the engineering team to breathe life into the experiences you create, ensuring their successful transition from vision to reality.
  • Primarily a design technologist? You will have a strong sense of motion and choreography, and the ability to breathe life into the slickest visuals, rapidly creating high-fidelity prototypes that make a vision real for those who need it.
  • Highly consultative, helping to resolve the tension between business goals and user needs with innovative solutions that are valuable, useful and usable.
  • Expected to work closely and confidently with other team members - designers and developers - alongside clients and key stakeholders.
  • Expected to contribute constructively to the DMX team, developing and refining best practices and processes for bringing consistently world-class design-led solution to the public.

Requirements

  • Background or qualification in one of the creative arts, with a deep knowledge, passion and expertise in your field.
  • Exceptional portfolio of your own work, showcasing innovative design solutions across screens and devices.
  • 5+ years of experience designing workflows, interactions and user interfaces for interactive applications on different screens and devices.
  • Unconscious competence in the appropriate software tools required of a creative.
  • Clear communicator, in ink or on your feet.
  • Able to work with technology experts to ensure that your design informs technology, and that technology informs your design.
  • Able to effectively manage workload to meet deliverables and produce quality work within agreed and negotiated timeframes.
  • Ideally, experience in a consulting organization, from strategy through execution, and the ability to facilitate and lead a customer through several day workshops.
  • Ideally you have worked within an agile development team, alongside agile software developers

Microsoft is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, religion, national origin, marital status, age, disability, veteran status, genetic information, or any other protected status.

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