The Economist is looking for a strong UX designer (combination of interaction and visual) for London office.

Here’s the job posting:
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Who we are and where we are headed

The Economist is a standout brand in a world of massive media fragmentation. Founded in 1843 to support the case for free trade, The Economist has become a resource of choice for people who lead, explore ideas and influence opinion globally. The way people read, watch and interact with current affairs reporting and analysis is changing radically. Like all publishers, we are in the fray of a radically new news environment online, and it’s an exciting time to be here.

Our vision is to build the foremost destination online for analyzing and debating the global agenda. The Economist looks to our user experience team to understand our readers and to use that insight to inspire and inform design, to raise the bar on design quality and user engagement and to contribute to innovation.

The role: User experience architect

We’re looking for a user experience architect with a confident and critical design sense, a solid grounding in user-centred design and a strong interest in current affairs. You should be a good problem-solver who can make complex ideas simple and clear. You will be working in a highly collaborative environment with developers, product owners, and editors throughout all stages of product development.

The position will report to the Director of Customer Experience for The Economist online.

You should have…

* Experience as an architect on the launch or redesign of a large, consumer-facing web site
* A complete grasp of tools and concepts applied to all stages of product design — user and business requirements gathering, translation via storyboards, mockups, wireframes and prototypes to effectively communicate interaction and design ideas
* Good oral and written presentation skills
* Fluency in gauging the usability of new and existing products, and making constructive suggestions for change
* Experience applying user-centred design in an agile environment
* Excellent team skills

* A university degree in HCI or related subject, or equivalent training
* A good theoretical and practical grasp of interaction design issues, and of the continually evolving vocabulary of interaction and UI design, and an ability to explain this simply to others

Having the following is a plus…

* Designing news applications and/or information-rich interfaces
* Designing social interfaces
* Web application and tools design
* Taxonomy design
* Designing and developing interactive charts, maps, and interactive information visualizations
* Experience working with Drupal or other open-source CMS system
* Strong HTML, CSS and JSS skills for prototyping

What you can find at The Economist….

* Experience understanding and using a variety of user testing and research methods and approaches
* Collaborative use of open-source software and tools
* Experience integrating customer insight and metrics into design planning
* Experience working on social media design
* An especially bright, engaged and highly skilled group of colleagues, in user experience and beyond
* Extremely responsive and engaged users, who have a high level of respect for our brand
* Business managers and editors who support the value and practice of user-centred design

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If you or someone you know is interested, please contact me. Send me both your resume and portfolio. It would be great if you could also include sample working documents and sketches.

Today I spent the whole day preparing sample works to apply for a UX position at a well-known financial company.

It was a very agonizing process.

They want to see some formal documents that show my process and how I solve UX problems, mainly from the interaction design perspective.

I know how to do wireframes, site architecture, user flow, etc., and have been doing that but I don’t have anything in the form of a formal documentation. I did most of these on paper because it’s the fastest way for me. We had a very small team, so we had to move from one project to another quickly. In other words: just get stuff done. In many cases, I collaborate with front end developers in real time as they implement the design.

This sounds like an excuse, though.

Note to self: going forward, I need to make sure I keep the artifacts used in the design process and make time to create proper formal documentation.

I got the following from a friend of mine who’s one of the lead engineers at Netflix. If you’re interested, or know anyone who is, you can either go to the link below or contact me. Good luck.

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Company: Netflix
Job Title: Sr. Web UI Engineer
Description: At Netflix I have an immediate opening on my team. This is an exciting opportunity to ply your amazing web development/engineering talents to one of the most recognized brands on the Web! In this position you would join an absolutely amazing team of Web UI engineers at an exciting time in Netflix history.

We are currently refactoring the entire Web UI layer. As a team member you would be responsible for specific areas of the site and participate in moving our site to latest Web standards (think unobtrusive javascript, layered semantic markup, hijax, etc.), working to improve client performance and working to realize new interaction approaches to our interface.

The job details are posted here