Job position: User Experience Specialist at Elsevier (Amsterdam)
Do you “design in the browser” to create outstanding interaction design solutions that delight users? Do you think of yourself as someone who looks at product implementations with “pixel eyes”? Then we have an interesting opportunity for you!
Elsevier’s User-Centered Design group is looking for a User Experience Specialist to strengthen the team. As part of the User-Centered Design group, you will design and implement advanced user interfaces that are used as proof of concept in user testing, and you will work with the development team to get the design correctly implemented. You will be working on Elsevier’s SciVal tools, which offer quick and easy access to the research performance of 4,600 research institutions and 220 countries worldwide. Your contribution consists of further improving and extending the user experience, including aspects like responsive design, visualizing information and designing the best navigation options.
As our User Experience Specialist you feel comfortable working in an agile team and keeping focus on the user experience of the product. You stand your ground in a fast-paced environment with high-level, imprecise and changing requirements. You have the technical and communication skills to translate and express complex technical expertise in a simple manner to less technical people.
This is a unique opportunity to work with a robust team of more than 40 UCD professionals internationally, and with one of the world’s foremost leaders in publishing and e-publishing. Ready to apply?
Your responsibilities
Interaction design combined with technical skills
- Combine strong interaction design skills with technical expertise (“design in the browser”).
- Maintain well-structured, robust, production-ready front-end code that implements these designs. Your code is used to build out our UI component library and to inform the code produced by the development team.
- Ensure your implementations and the final product implementation accurately implements all the subtle design details (looking at the implementation with “pixel eyes”).
- Keep up to date on new front-end technologies and their implications for design, identifying areas of innovation, and sharing your knowledge in and outside of projects.
- Project management of UCD deliverables in this area.
Contribute to concept development
- Take active part in discussions about new product ideas, concepts and functionality.
- Based on these discussions, deliver multiple interaction design solutions.
Team member of the Scival team
- Natural collaborator, easily building relationships with UCD designers, product managers and technology staff.
Build out expertise of yourself and the team
- Promote design best practices, consistency and integrations across solutions.
- Set an example in quality of deliverables, and introduce tools to support design & documentation process.
What you should bring
- Bachelor Degree in a relevant subject area (e.g. Interaction Design/Information Technology/Computer Science)
- At least 2 years of experience in “designing in the browser”, across a wide range of browsers and devices.
- A track record of interaction design and implementing the front-end for creative, resourceful solutions to complex problems within a user-centered design culture.
- Completely up to speed with and taking an active interest in front-end development for desktop and mobile devices, across many different browsers.
- Technical expertise centered around HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript and many of the tools and frameworks in this area (e.g. jQuery, Sass, JSON, Ajax), as well as wider topics such as front-end architecture, responsive design, MVC models, semantic markup, accessibility, performance. You routinely use developer tools like Firebug or Chrome developer tools.
- Experience with the scientific research community is a strong plus
- Experience with working in agile teams is a strong plus
- Experience with back-end technologies (e.g. PHP, apache, SQL or other databases, search engines, versioning tools) is a strong plus
- Experience in working in an international matrix organization is a plus
- Fluent in English
This position requires international travel to, amongst others, the US.
What we offer
We welcome you to a truly global, dynamic and challenging environment with great opportunities to develop yourself. Elsevier’s benefits are very competitive and the summary below will give you an idea of the kind of things you can expect when joining Elsevier in the Netherlands.
- Competitive salary and a 13th month
- 27 days of leave
- Attractive collective health care insurance package with considerable reduction rates
- Solid Pension Plan of which 70% of the premiums is paid by Elsevier
- Profit share or bonus plan subject to the company annual results
- You can participate in the convertible personnel bond loan scheme
- Flexible working arrangements
- Travel allowance for commuting between home and work
- Reductions to several personal insurance packages due to our collective agreements
- Additional benefits, like memberships of Elsevier’s magazines, discount on books and in-house sport facilities
- Numerous training, coaching and e-learning modules for long term job opportunities and development
- Several local and global networking communities to share best practices and knowledge
- Various social responsibility programs, channeling knowledge and strengths to help communities around the world improve education, science, healthcare and protect the environment.
Interested?
Please contact us on https://reedelsevier.taleo.net/careersection/16/jobdetail.ftl?lang=en&job=ELS00172.
An assessment or business case could be part of our selection procedure. Please be aware that we request references and a copy of your diploma in the offer stage.