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Design Researcher, Yahoo! Personals, Yahoo!
Jul 27 05
Source: direct submission
COMPANY: Yahoo!
URL: http://yahoo.com
LOCATION: Sunnyvale, CA
POSITION TITLE: Design Researcher, Yahoo! Personals
DURATION: Full Time
JOB DESCRIPTION:
Yahoo! Inc. is seeking an experienced Design Researcher to join the User Experience & Design (UED) team for Yahoo! Personals. Yahoo!
Personals is one of the world’s largest and most popular online dating services and holds a significant place in Yahoo!’s portfolio of products and services. The User Experience & Design Team mission is to define and design the user experience for Yahoo! Personals, recently ranked as the #1 user experience in the online dating industry.
You will be responsible for planning, designing, and conducting a variety of design research techniques to generate actionable recommendations that will maintain Yahoo! Personals’ dominant industry position and extend its market leadership by defining the next generation of online dating. You will collaborate closely with the Personals UED Team that consists of talented design researchers, interaction designers, and visual designers who work in a highly collaborative environment with one another and their cross-functional counterparts. Your research will be vital to defining the Yahoo!
Personals user experience strategy, spearheading a user-centered design process, and developing the most useful, usable, and delightful online dating experience in the world.
URL: http://personals.yahoo.com
RESPONSIBILITIES:
* Plan, design, and conduct high quality design research throughout
the product development process, including ethnographies, diary
studies, competitive evaluations, iterative prototype studies,
participatory design sessions, usability studies, benchmark studies,
and similar methods.
* Foster collaboration with designers, and product managers to
convert user insights into actionable strategic and tactical
recommendations that inform product strategy and design.
* Collaborate with other design researchers and research
organizations within Yahoo! (market research and site analytics) to
create comprehensive and coordinated research strategies.
* Collaborate with product and marketing managers to understand
business needs and design appropriate research strategies to generate
focused insights.
* Advocate for the end user by building consensus with designers and
stakeholders to ensure that design and business goals are balanced
with user needs.
QUALIFICATIONS:
* Demonstrated success translating design research results into
actionable recommendations that have a significant impact on product
strategy and design.
* Demonstrated success at developing creative and comprehensive
research strategies to reveal unforeseen opportunities and issues
that have a significant impact on product strategy and design.
* Demonstrated experience presenting research data in unique and
innovative ways, such as affinity diagrams, personas, narrative
storyboards, work models, workshops, and role-playing.
* Extremely strong communication skills. Must be able to communicate
clearly and effectively to varying audiences, verbally and in
writing, in small and large forums, and at all levels of an
organization.
* At least 3 years experience leading design research activities,
including ethnography, contextual inquiry, prototype/usability
testing, benchmark testing, competitive evaluations, and survey
design within a product development organization or in support of a
large website.
* Experience researching user needs throughout the complete product
development cycle of successfully launched consumer web and/or
software applications.
* Bachelor’s, Master's, or PhD degree in Anthropology, Cognitive or
Experimental Psychology, Cognitive Science, Human Factors,
Human-Computer Interaction, or related area.
* Formal training in negotiation or facilitation techniques a plus.
CONTACT INFORMATION:
Send your resume and portfolio link to
RX1000008883 in the subject heading of your email.