UX Architect: search, findability, information discovery

Folks

I am recruiting for the following f/t permanent position. If you’re interested, or know someone who might be, drop me a line.

Tony

User Experience (UX) Architect

Position Overview

We are seeking an accomplished, innovative, and multi-talented UX Architect for our UK/EMEA practice, based in Richmond, UK (just outside of London) with outstanding expertise in all facets of human centered design, with a particular focus on interaction design. We need a senior, articulate, passionate UX leader and doer who can help our field teams, product teams, customers, and partners conceive, design, and build products and Endeca powered solutions and user interfaces that optimize discovery inside and outside the enterprise.

Responsibilities

• Identify, plan, and execute strategic UX customer project opportunities that inform product development, inspire UI innovation, and contribute to UI best practices and reusable UI assets
• Collaborate with the UX team and product teams to help accelerate the delivery of high quality product that provides an unparalleled user experience
• Educate and evangelize  — with internal teams, customers, and partners- regarding Endeca user experience best practices
• Harvest user knowledge and reusable UI design assets from field work that contribute to product innovation and development
• Execute user experience work streams to optimize product quality and UX for selected product areas across ebusiness and enterprise discovery applications
• Conduct user research and create explicit user models (e.g., personas, scenario flow models, mental models, task models) that characterize people’s information access, decision support, and discovery needs and behaviors in key business-user domains/verticals
• Conceive, design and prototype useful, usable, and compelling user experiences and user interfaces based on an understanding of business goals, people’s discovery goals and needs, the available information assets, and the capabilities of Endeca’s platform
• Create UI design artifacts – e.g., UI wireframes- to guide development teams and provide UI development oversight to ensure realization of designs and UX-usability quality/effectiveness
• Conceive, design, and help optimize the usability, effectiveness and adoption of reusable and extensible UI assets for Endeca — e.g., UI components, UI application templates and frameworks, etc. – that enable Endecans, partners, and customers to rapidly create and extend compelling and effective discovery applications based on the Endeca platform
• Conduct and collaborate on iterative UX/UI design evaluations (e.g. user testing) and user adoption & impact measurement activities to inform continuous product improvement and UX best practices
• Harvest insights from field projects that contribute to the articulation and evolution of Endeca UX best practices, thought leadership & knowledge base (e.g., Endeca UI Design Pattern Library)
• Apply domain knowledge (e.g., cognitive psychology, information design,  HCI, human factors, technology adoption, etc.) and knowledge of emerging search/discovery/UX related advances and technologies to support product innovation and evolution

Requirements

• 10 or more years in user experience consulting, UX architecture and user experience/UI design in business and product development environments
• Experienced and skilled working with cross-functional development teams; experience working within an agile product development process is a plus
• Advanced degree or equivalent in information architecture, information design, interaction design, HCI, Cognitive Science, Human Factors, or related field
• Skilled and knowledgeable across all facets of user experience/human centered design with outstanding expertise in user experience strategy, research, & interaction design
• Experienced and knowledgeable about designing user interfaces for enterprise software environments and application frameworks (e.g., portal technologies, CMS systems, etc.)
• Practical knowledge of emerging user interface/web technologies and advances in search and discovery research and UI best practices
• Skilled in user research and modeling and user assessment methods
• Strong communication, organizational, and project management skills
• Experience with business analytics, dashboards, and complex database, business intelligence, and content management systems a plus
• Experience with B-B and B-E (“behind the firewall”) applications a plus

About the Company

Endeca is a leading provider of search applications. Search applications built on Endeca’s technology deliver the clearest visibility into information, driving hundreds of millions of dollars in cost savings and increased revenue for our customers. Powering these solutions is Endeca’s Information Access Platform, a major enterprise search innovation based on a fundamentally new architecture for building high-ROI applications that let users access any data from anywhere any way they need it. With this improved information visibility, customers make better choices, and employees better decisions. More than 250 million end users around the world access information through Endeca solutions, which are in use at more than 600 leading organizations including: ABN AMRO, Boeing, Cox Newspapers, the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency, Dell, Ford Motor Company, Hyatt, IBM, the Library of Congress, Texas Instruments, and Walmart.com.

We represent an opportunity to work with bright peers and embark on challenges that stem from rapid growth and building a business around market-changing technology. Endeca offers the resources and reach of a larger company, with great opportunities for those that love innovation, fast growth, and want to make a difference every day.

Create 2010: innovative interaction design in Edinburgh

I don’t normally circulate CfPs here as a matter of course but this one is our own Create conference, sponsored by the IEHF. It’s also a great event in its own right – hope to see some of you there. Note though that the early bird rate expires on Monday 31st.

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Create10 :: the conference for innovative interaction design

30th June – 2nd July 2010

Edinburgh Napier University, Edinburgh UK

http://www.create-conference.org/

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Programme online now, early registration ends 31st May

The Create conference centres on interaction design, a young discipline with roots in human-computer interaction, ergonomics, product and graphic design, multi-media and art. An interaction designer is a difficult person to pigeon hole and can be found in mobile phone companies, consumer product manufacturers, design consultancies, as a single practitioner, or within academic computing and design departments.

As well as presentations of academic research, interactive demos and student work, the conference will provide real learning opportunities through case studies, discussion and demonstrations. We also present theoretical and research perspectives on the process of design innovation and approaches to creativity in HCI; how human factors can be integrated within a creative design process, methods that encourage creativity in interaction design, and the challenges of working in multi-disciplinary teams.

Conference Keynotes

Mika Tuomola is artistic director of Crucible Studio at the Media Lab of the University of Art and Design Helsinki and has produced highly innovative interactive TV productions.

Jason Bruges produces innovative installations and bridges his work  between architecture, interaction design and installation art. He has just been nominated for a Brit Insurance Design Award for his Panda  Eyes installation, originally created for the World Wildlife Fund.

Prof. Ernest Edmonds, University of Technology, Sydney is one of the  rare academics who has successfully brought together human-computer  interaction, creativity and art.

Create10 Design Exhibition

Alongside the conference and showcase, Create10 is very pleased to be presenting some of the most innovative work from current international students alongside works from awarding-winning design practitioners. A jury of design practitioners selected works from an open competition aimed at students from a wide range of creative disciplines. The selected entries will be displayed at the Create10 design exhibition from June 30th to July 9th 2010 in Edinburgh, at New Media Scotland’s Inspace.

Competition Jury

Dr Shaleph O’Neill,  Exhibition & Student Competition Chair
Mark Daniels
Anab Jain
Crispin Jones
Di Mainstone
Christopher Pearson

Digital Creativity Journal

We have also agreed with the journal Digital Creativity that successful papers and student submissions will be invited to submit their work for potential publication.

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http://www.create-conference.org/

ECIR 2010 Industry Day: Final Call

You’ve probably seen all the emails on the various search/IR mailing lists, but if not, here’s the final call for participation for ECIR 2010 Industry Day. It’s being held on April 1 at the Open University Campus in Milton Keynes. We have a great line-up of speakers this year – no, really – I know I always say that but this year I do believe we are blessed with a great programme of topical talks which combine to make a really well-balanced programme. And considering we only started in planning this in earnest a couple of months ago, that isn’t a bad outcome at all. As with many events, there was a time when we weren’t sure if we’d get critical mass of speakers, or even break even on attendees, but thankfully we’re well past both those milestones now. So many thanks go to my colleagues Mike Taylor and Udo Kruschwitz for helping get this show on the road. Full (and final) programme is shown below.

ECIR 2010 Industry Day

Thursday 1st April 2010

The Open University, Milton Keynes, UK

We are pleased to announce the European Conference on Information Retrieval (ECIR) 2010 Industry Day. This event takes place the day after the main ECIR programme and represents a unique opportunity to meet and share ideas with a broad mix of experts from both industry and academia. We have a great list of speakers who will present the latest challenges faced by practitioners in both enterprise and web search. We are excited that this year we have some talks on applications of semantic analysis which is considered to be a rapidly maturing academic field, now ready for wider adoption in the marketplace. The event should appeal to students, academics, researchers, designers, and developers alike.

Programme

09:00 – 10:00 Registration (Berrill Building)
10:00 – 10:10 Welcome

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Session 1: Advancing Web Search

• 10:10 Ricardo Baeza-Yates (Yahoo! Research) “Mining the Web 2.0 to Improve Search”
• 10:35 Dan Crow (Google) “Google Squared: web scale, open domain information extraction and presentation”
• 11:00 Milad Shokouhi (Microsoft Research) “Relevance Challenges at Bing”

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11:25 – 11:55 Coffee break

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Session 2: Enterprise Search

• 11:55 Vegard Sandvold (Comperio) “Search User Experience – The Essentials of Great Search Design”
• 12:20 David Hawking (Funnelback) “Getting value from the Search Master’s Toolbox”
• 12:45 Nick Patience (The 451 Group) “Enterprise Search: State of the Market 2010 & Beyond”

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13:10 – 14:10 Lunch

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Session 3: Domain-Specific Search

• 14:10 Rob Blackwell (Active Web Solutions) “Project Plaza – A new approach to information management in the Construction Sector”
• 14:35 Sally Chambers (The European Library) “Rethinking the library catalogue: making search work for the library user”
• 15:00 Francisco de Sousa Webber (Matrixware)

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15:25 – 16:00 Coffee break

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Session 4: Beyond Search: Question-Answering

• 16:00 Jon McLoone (Wolfram Alpha)“Wolfram|Alpha – the new computational knowledge engine”
• 16:25 Simon Overell (True Knowledge) “Using AI to get Answers from the Internet”

Panel Discussion

• 16:50 Panel Topic: “Leveraging semantics to enable better search experiences”

Dan Crow (Google), Gjergji Kasneci (Microsoft Research), Jon McLoone (Wolfram Alpha), Simon Overell (True Knowledge). Panel moderator: Mike Taylor

This discussion will centre on the exciting subject of semantic analysis. We will try to cover both technological and application orientated aspects of this field. For example, some of the questions we will attempt to address are as follows:

• How feasible is it to automatically infer useful semantic information from the Web?
• How should we quantify trust and ambiguity in knowledge extracted from the Web?
• Could semantic search ever replace keyword search?
• What is a good UI for semantic search?

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17:30 – 19:30 Drinks reception

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Registration

The registration fee includes lunch and a copy of the Industry Day proceedings. Tea and coffee will also be available throughout the day followed by a drinks reception. Please register via the ECIR 2010 Registration site.  Fees: Students/BCS Member £95, Non-Member: £120.

Venue

Industry Day will be held at the same venue as the main conference (The Open University). See http://kmi.open.ac.uk/events/ecir2010/ for further details.

Contact

If you have any enquiries about the event, please see http://dces.essex.ac.uk/staff/udo/ecir2010/ or contact Udo Kruschwitz: udo [at] essex.ac.uk

Industry Day Organisers

Tony Russell-Rose, Endeca
Udo Kruschwitz, University of Essex
Mike Taylor, Microsoft Research

ECIR Industry Day is organised by the Information Retrieval Specialist Group of the BCS (British Computer Society).

Create 2010: Innovative Interactions

Better late than never… in case you missed it, March 15 was the deadline for paper submissions to Create 2010. For those unfamiliar with Create, it’s a conference series that began life as a collaboration between the IEHF and the BCS, with the first event being held in London in 2007. It has since then expanded both its scope and influence to embrace new communities (such as art & design) and new locations (such as Edinburgh).

My involvement with the event is somewhat more peripheral this year, partially due to the distances involved, but also to give some other folks the chance to shape the event and further develop its identity. This is being admirably done by Edinburgh Napier University, who are not only hosting the event but also managing most of the programme. So you may be too late now for a formal paper submission, but there are plenty of other opportunities to contruibute, including short papers, posters, demos and more.  Full details below.

Create10 :: the conference for innovative interaction design30th June – 2nd July 2010
Edinburgh Napier University, Edinburgh UK

SUBMISSIONS

The Create10 conference is seeking submissions in the form of full papers, and other submissions such as workshops, short presentations, commercial case studies, student work-in-progress, demonstrations and exhibits.

THEME : : TRANSITIONS
We invite examples of innovative design from the commercial, academic, public, government and research sectors. Cases can come from any paradigm – the web, mobile and hand held, products or consumer electronics. We would particularly like to encourage submissions from students. They will be given the opportunity to showcase and discuss both finished work and work-in-progress in a supportive environment.

The Create conference centres on the discipline of interaction design, a young disciple with roots in human-computer interaction, ergonomics, product and graphic design, multi-media and art. An interaction designer is a difficult person to pigeon hole and can be found in mobile phone companies, consumer product manufacturers, design consultancies, as a single practitioner, or within academic computing and design departments.

We are seeking original, unpublished work under the following categories:

FULL PAPERS (2 stage submission)
- High quality academic papers for peer review (max 6 pages)

OTHER SUBMISSIONS (single stage)
- Practical half-day workshops
- Short papers and/or case studies from practitioners within the field
- Short presentations and/or posters from students to be presented in informal student sessions
- Demonstrations and/or videos of installation-based exhibits or creative work in progress

Please note that all successful authors will be expected to pay to register for the event.

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IMPORTANT DATES

Submissions of:
max 1 page abstracts for papers : 15th March 2010
max 2 page proposals for all other submissions : 31st March 2010
Notification of acceptance : Early April 2010
Full paper submission : End of April 2010

http://www.create-conference.org/calls-for-participation/

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CONFERENCE KEYNOTES
Mika Tuomola is artistic director of Crucible Studio at the Media Lab of the University of Art and Design, Helsinki and has produced highly innovative interactive TV productions.

Jason Bruges produces innovative installations and bridges his work between architecture, interaction design and installation art. He has just been nominated for a Brit Insurance Design Award for his Panda Eyes installation, originally created for the World Wildlife Fund.

Prof. Ernest Edmonds, University of Technology, Sydney is one of the rare academics who has successfully brought together human-computer interaction, creativity and art.

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STUDENT DESIGN COMPETITION
In addition to the above call Create10 is organising a unique competition for students.

Today’s art, design and technology students are the people who will be defining what the interdisciplinary field of interaction design will become in the near future. Create10 is a conference that celebrates innovative interaction design, whether digital products, services, environments or new interaction paradigms.This competition is aimed at students from a wide range of disciplines, for example: interaction design, product design, industrial design, communications design, architecture, fashion, multimedia, HCI, and related fields. Students, both undergraduate and postgraduate, can enter for up to a year after completing their studies.

Entries will be assessed by a jury of leading creative design practitioners and academics: Dr Shaleph O’Neill, Mark Daniels, Anab Jain, Crispin Jones, Di Mainstone, Christopher Pearson.

All selected submissions will be exhibited at the Create10 conference exhibition in June /July 2010 in Edinburgh, at New Media Scotland’s Inspace. There will be one free conference place available for each successful entry, as well as access to assistance with travel.

Wolfram Alpha and 451 Group to present at ECIR 2010

Quick update to my previous post about ECIR 2010 Industry Day: I’m pleased to announce that we can add Nick Patience of 451 Group and Jon McLoone of Wolfram Alpha to the line-up. So with 11 great speakers, the programme is now officially full! We’re also working on various ideas for the panel: watch this space for updates …

ECIR Industry Day – lineup announced

Been so busy with the day job recently it’s been almost impossible to find the time to write anything meaningful, so it’s nice to be able to announce something that’s both new and bang on topic: the lineup Industry Day at ECIR 2010. Udo Kruschwitz, Mike Taylor and I have been working behind the scenes to make this event happen, sorting out the logistics and (most importantly) putting together the programme. So I’m pleased to report that we now have critical mass and it’s time to start promotion.

The full lineup of speakers (and the text of the call for participation which is due to go out shortly) is included below. We still have space for one more speaker, so if you’d like to join us a presenter, say so now!

ECIR 2010 Industry Day

Thursday 1st April 2010

The Open University, Milton Keynes, UK

We are pleased to announce the European Conference on Information Retrieval (ECIR) 2010 Industry Day. This event takes place the day after the main ECIR programme closes and so it is a unique chance to meet and share ideas with a broad mix of retrieval experts from both industry and academia. We have a great list of speakers who will present the latest challenges faced by practitioners of IR, in both enterprise and web search. We are  excited that this year we have some talks on applications of semantic analysis which is considered to be a rapidly maturing academic field, now ripe for wider adoption in the marketplace. The event should appeal to students, academics, industrial researchers, designers, and developers alike.

Confirmed Speakers

• Ricardo Baeza-Yates (Yahoo! Research) “Mining the Web 2.0 to Improve Search“
• Rob Blackwell (Active Web Solutions) “Project Plaza – A new approach to information management in the Construction Sector“
• Sally Chambers (The European Library) “Rethinking the library catalogue: making search work for the library user“
• Dan Crow (Google) “Google Squared: web scale, open domain information extraction and presentation“
• David Hawking (Funnelback) “Getting value from the Search Master’s Toolbox“
• Simon Overell (True Knowledge) “Using AI to get Answers from the Internet“
• Vegard Sandvold (Comperio) “Search User Experience – The Essentials of Great Search Design“
• Milad Shokouhi (Microsoft Research) “Relevance Challenges at Bing“
• Francisco de Sousa Webber (Matrixware)

ECIR Industry Day  is organised by the Information Retrieval Specialist Group of the BCS (British Computer Society)

Fees: Students/BCS Member £95, Non-Member: £120.

More details may be found at: http://dces.essex.ac.uk/staff/udo/ecir2010/

The main conference website is at: http://kmi.open.ac.uk/events/ecir2010/

Designing Effective Search Experiences

On March 28 I’ll be presenting a tutorial on Designing Effective Search Experiences at ECIR 2010. This is an updated version of the one I presented at HCI 2009 in Cambridge. Registration is free of charge to ECIR participants, or you can attend the tutorials day alone for £110. Note that since this is a half day tutorial you could attend both this and one of the other half day tutorials or workshops for the same price. Further details as follows:

Designing Effective Search Experiences

Overview

This half-day tutorial provides a practical introduction to Human Centred Design for information search, access and discovery. We present the fundamental concepts and models of human information-seeking behaviour and show how to apply interaction design principles to the design of search user experiences. A key element of the tutorial is the opportunity to apply these skills in a practical group exercise.

Benefits

Participants will learn:

• the fundamental concepts and principles of human information-seeking behaviour
• how to differentiate between various types of search behaviour: known-item, exploratory, etc.
• models of the information-seeking process, and how to apply interaction design principles based on those models
• an understanding of the key variables of user type, goal and mode of interaction, and how to apply these variables when designing for varying user contexts
• the role of design patterns, and how to apply Endeca UI design patterns and those of other pattern libraries in designing search experiences

Audience

Web designers, information architects, user experience architects, and HCI professionals and researchers interested in the designing effective user experiences for search and information access.

Instructors

Tony Russell-Rose is User Experience Manager at Endeca Technologies, an enterprise software company specialising in innovative solutions for information search and discovery. Before joining Endeca, Tony was founder and director of UXLabs, a user experience consultancy specialising in technology innovation and applied R&D. Prior to this he was R&D group manager at Canon Research Centre Europe and technical lead at Reuters, specialising in advanced user interfaces for information access and search. He holds a PhD in HCI and a first degree in engineering, majoring in human factors. Tony is also Honorary Visiting Fellow at the Centre for Interactive Systems Research, City University London.

Mark Burrell is Worldwide Lead for User Experience at Endeca Technologies. He has over 25 years of professional experience, including 15 years focused on the evaluation, design, and adoption of interactive technology solutions (with special emphasis on applications that aim to support learning and discovery). Prior to joining Endeca, Mark built and led user experience teams at several leading product and service companies including serving as Sr. UX Manager for Microsoft’s Unified Communications product division and Global UX Lead for Sapient. Mark holds a PhD in Clinical psychology with concentrations in cognitive psychology and epistemology/philosophy of science.

Another Senior UX Consultant needed (contract)

OK, I don’t want to make this a habit here, but … I do need a(nother) Senior UX Consultant for some upcoming work, starting early January. As usual, we’d like folks who ideally specialise in Search User Experience, but good UX all-rounders who pick things up quickly should also apply. I’d ideally prefer people with a principled, evidence-based approach to design, i.e. folks who understand the difference between judgements based on idiosyncracy and personal preference and those based on sound analysis and objective data. Further details as follows:

Role: Senior UX Consultant / Interaction Designer

Duties to include:
1. User research & analysis (interviewing users, preparing protocols, analyzing results, etc.)
2. Concept ideation (storyboarding, brainstorming, sketching design ideas and screen flows, etc.)
3. Wireframing (detailed interaction design and prototyping, ideally using Axure)

Skills & Experience:
• 5+ years in user experience consulting / interaction design
• Extensive experience in interaction design and wireframing
• Skilled and knowledgeable in concept ideation and human-centred design
• Understanding and competence in user research, analysis and modelling
• Advanced degree or equivalent in HCI, Human Factors, IA or related field
• Ideally experience or knowledge of designing for search and information discovery applications

Location of work: Richmond (London), with occasional field work or travel to client site

Rate: Good

Start Date: early January

End Date: TBD, likely end of Feb / early Mar

Please send CVs asap to trose AT endeca.com.

ECIR 2010 – Industry Day

Not sure if I mentioned this before (I probably did in the last issue of Informer), but on April 1st next year Mike Taylor, Udo Kruschwitz and I will be organising an Industry Day at ECIR 2010. This event is similar in spirit to the Industry Track at SIGIR (which this year was chaired by my ex-Endeca colleague Daniel Tunkelang), but with a more European focus. The venue is the Open University campus in Milton Keynes, UK.

In common with previous IRSG Industry Days, we aim to present a topical selection of talks, panels and case studies from the world of search and information access, with the emphasis on content drawn from the IR practitioner community.

We won’t be issuing a “call for papers” as such, as this is essentially a ‘by-invitation’ event. However, if there are individuals or organisations out there who’d like to get involved (e.g. as panellists or speakers) and have an interesting case study or demo to present, then drop me a note either here or offline.

As in previous years, we aim to present a topical selection of the latest innovations in search and information access, whilst maintaining the collegiate spirit of what we like to think of as a community event. (As an example have a look at last year’s programme: http://irsg.bcs.org/SearchSolutions/2008/sse2008.php ).

We won’t be issuing a “call for papers” as such, but if there are folks out there who’d like to get involved (e.g. as panellists or speakers) and have an interesting case study or demo to present, then drop us a line at the address below.

Senior UX Consultant needed (contract)

I wouldn’t normally put job ads here, but this one’s urgent. If you’re interested drop me a line asap.

Role: Senior UX Consultant / Interaction Designer

Duties to include:
1. User research & analysis (interviewing users, preparing protocols, analyzing results, etc.)
2. Concept ideation (storyboarding, brainstorming, sketching design ideas and screen flows, etc.)
3. Wireframing (detailed interaction design and prototyping, ideally using Axure)

Skills & Experience:
• 5+ years in user experience consulting / interaction design
• Extensive experience in interaction design and wireframing (ideally using Axure)
• Skilled and knowledgeable in concept ideation and human-centred design
• Understanding and competence in user research, analysis and modelling
• Advanced degree or equivalent in information architecture, interaction design, HCI, Human Factors, or related field
• Ideally experience or knowledge of designing for search and information discovery applications

Location of work: Richmond (London), with occasional field work or travel to client site

Rate: Good

Start Date: early December (before Dec 7)

End Date: TBD, likely end of Jan

Please send CVs asap to trose AT endeca.com.

Senior UX Consultant