Watson Design Researcher
Job ID WAT-0734084 Job type Full-time Regular
Work country USA Position type Professional
Work city Austin,TX, New York,NY, Pittsburgh,PA Posted 23-Mar-2015
Travel 25% travel annually Job area Software Development
Business group IBM Watson Job category Design & Product Management
Business unit ClientExp Job role Designer
Job role skillset Design Research
Commissionable/Sales-Incentive jobs only No
Job description
Ready to change the way the world works? IBM Watson uses Cognitive Computing to tackle some of humanity's most challenging problems - like revolutionizing how doctors research cancer or transforming how businesses engage with their customers. We have an exciting opportunity for a Design Researcher.
Technology should work for people, not the other way around. Watson’s cognitive computing experiences represent a potential breakthrough in the ability of computers to become more humane, more helpful to people.
Join the Watson Design team’s mission to build revolutionary business and consumer applications that change the way people think and work in market areas such as Healthcare, Retail, Finance, Science, and more.
Our environment is ever changing and requires a candidate who is flexible, thrives in ambiguity, and can effectively collaborate across cross-functional groups and locations.
We’re looking for Design Researchers with a passion for uncovering latent user needs and solving real users’ problems. While the entire team is focused on doing what is best for the user, the Design Researcher is in many ways the “voice of the user” within our product teams.
Although Design Research will be your primary role, we’re looking for candidates with secondary skill in Interaction Design.
Responsibilities:
• Work closely with product management to translate requirements into hypotheses that need investigation
• Lobby for, design and conduct persona identification, user needs assessment and solution validation activities in order to help drive product strategy
• Synthesize user feedback via hands-on team discussions in order to translate insights into actions and requirements
• Clearly communicate your ideas to address user needs with succinct presentations and creative wireframe mock ups, avoiding lengthy text-only reports
• Use Lean and Agile practices to uncover your recommendations quickly, collaborate with other designers and disciplines, and shepherd actions to completion
• Facilitate team activities to create and maintain personas in order to build team empathy for real users; use those personas in storytelling techniques such as empathy maps and as-is/to-be journey maps
• Leverage secondary research (market research reports, psychology whitepapers, previous user research, etc.) as a means to supplement primary research with real users
• Evangelize the importance of design research as part of IBM Design Thinking and educate product teams new to design research methods in order to help them integrate real users into their design lifecycle
Key Skills:
• Demonstrated use of design research methodologies including primary and secondary research, including interview and survey best practices
• Demonstrated ability to translate research findings into specific, prioritized recommendations to improve product designs
• Recent research studies created and conducted with usability tools (such as UserZoom, SurveyGizmo)
• Demonstrated written and verbal communication skills, including techniques to persuade and negotiate and the ability to articulate alternative approaches
• Demonstrated storytelling and presentation skills
• Attention to detail
We live in a moment of remarkable change and opportunity. The convergence of data and technology is transforming industries, society and even the workplace. New roles are being created that never existed before to meet the demands of this transformation. And IBM Watson is now looking for talent to usher in the next era of cognitive computing. Embark on the journey with us at IBM Watson
Please attach your portfolio for consideration (URL or PDF).
Find out more about Watson:
http://www.ibm.com/smarterplanet/us/en/ibmwatson/
Required
* High School Diploma/GED
* At least 1 year experience in customer-facing roles
* Readiness to travel 25% travel annually
* English: Fluent
Preferred
* Bachelor's Degree
* Basic knowledge in accessible designs
* At least 1 year experience in design researcher with demonstrated responsibilities and skills
* At least 1 year experience in Agile, Scrum and Lean approaches
* At least 1 year experience in Natural Language Processing (NLP) or artificial intelligence software
* At least 1 year experience in designing for Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS); e.g., Application Programming Interface (API), documentation
* At least 1 year experience in Secondary skill in Visual Design, Motion Graphics or Front-end Development
IBM is committed to creating a diverse environment and is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, genetics, disability, age, or veteran status. IBM is also committed to compliance with all fair employment practices regarding citizenship and immigration status.