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Amazon.com's Usability Team aims to improve the industry-leading usability of the company's internal and external web sites and tools. To this end, the group's user experience specialists provide consultative assistance to interaction designers and other members of product teams .
As a versatile user experience specialist with a particular interest in information architecture, you will apply a variety of cost-effective HCI techniques. Depending on the needs of each project, you may, for example, collect and organize customer requirements, develop personas, facilitate information architecture exercises, run field, lab and benchmark studies, and/or participate in rapid prototyping cycles.
In support of interaction design efforts, you will work closely with designers and product managers tackling difficult usability issues. You will assess the information architecture of features undergoing revision, and contribute to the gathering of requirements for new features. You will perform heuristic reviews, cognitive and pluralistic walkthroughs, and contextual inquiry. You will also contribute to documents describing user interface principles, standards, and learnings.
You will sometimes script and conduct usability studies of existing and proposed designs. For these tests, you will be responsible for the recruitment and screening of usability test participants. Immediately following each test session, you will prepare an interpretive report that enables the project team to make well-informed decisions, and you will debrief the team on the results.
The ideal candidate has conducted heuristic reviews, cognitive walkthroughs, contextual inquiry, and usability studies. You have developed site maps, wireframes, scenarios and other deliverables to clearly communicate the workflow and organization of Web sites and web-based tools. You have contributed to the effectiveness of consumer-facing web sites and to the efficiency of employee productivity tools. Your training and experience in human-computer interaction includes information architecture, experimental design, and observational methods. Experience with web design and web programming would be desirable.
You have five to ten years of commercial experience, including substantial experience related to consumer-facing web sites. You have a degree or extensive coursework in human-computer interaction, usability engineering, technical communications, cognitive psychology, anthropology, industrial design, or a related field.
This team employs a rapid development, test-and-learn, mode of operation. You are innovative, flexible and self-directed. You have solid written and verbal communication skills and a desire to experiment with new ideas.
If you are an accomplished user experience specialist interested in providing support to user interface designers and project teams , please send a cover letter and resume in confidence to jobs@amazon.com and refer to Job #04-012213. If your real interest is user interface design, please instead search our job pages for positions with the title "Designer".
Received: 23-Sep-04