contact: nancy falkenburg (intuit – mint.com) // iPhone: 650/336.3645
email: nancy_falkenburg@intuit.com

COMPANY: Intuit

JOB LOCATION: San Diego, CA

JOB TITLE: Staff User Researcher

JOB DURATION: FTE

JOB DESCRIPTION:

Intuit is a leading software provider of business and financial management solutions for small and mid-sized businesses, consumers and accounting professionals. You probably know us by our flagship products, QuickBooks(r), Quicken(r) and TurboTax(r), but that’s just the start. We are currently going through a fundamental transformation from a shrink-wrapped software company to one of the country’s leading providers of web-based applications and solutions.
Come join Intuit as part of the Consumer Tax team as a Staff User Experience Researcher, New Business Initiatives . We are looking for creative problem solvers with a passion for innovation to join our team and revolutionize the way the world does business.

Summary:
New Business Initiatives (NBI) is a group in San Diego dedicated to finding Intuit’s next big consumer-facing ideas and building them into businesses. It is a fast-paced and exciting atmosphere, and a great fit for innovative people who love problem-solving. The team is hungry for customer insights, making this a great opportunity for researchers to have a direct impact on the success of the overall business.

The Staff User Experience Researcher will report into the Customer and Market Insights (CMI) group and will partner with NBI product managers and marketers across a variety of initiatives. He/she will be responsible for working cross functionally with teams to shape and execute learning plans, with an emphasis on making sure that new products/experiences deliver on customers’ needs.

RESPONSIBILITIES:

• Conduct research throughout the design process to ensure that experiences are delivering on business goals and customer needs
• Develop XD-centric research plans in conjunction with business owners and designers
• Develop overall business learning plans to help teams gain the insights necessary to drive projects forward successfully
• Balance organizational demands, timelines and internal milestones to determine the most appropriate methodology for research
• Execute in-house on research using a variety of research methodologies
• Manage vendor relationships with recruiters and outsourced research companies

Qualifications:

• 5 to 7 years of research experience
• Solid, demonstrated experience conducting usability research for large scale products, websites or web-based applications
• Must be able to work independently
• Experience writing appropriate discussion guides, screeners, test protocols, etc
• Experience with quantitative research and related statistical packages like SPSS are a plus, but

contact: nancy falkenburg (intuit – mint.com) // iPhone: 650/336.3645
email: nancy_falkenburg@intuit.com.

COMPANY: Intuit

JOB LOCATION: Mountain View, CA

JOB TITLE: Experience Design Manager

JOB DURATION: FTE

JOB DESCRIPTION:
Come join Intuit as part of the Small Business – Financial Management Solutions group as a Experience Design (XD) Manager. We are looking for creative problem solvers with a passion for innovation to join our team and revolutionize the way the world does business.

The Experience Design (XD) Manager is responsible for inspiring individuals and teams across the Financial Management Solutions group.
This individual will work with Product Development, Product Management, Marketing and others to provide the leadership and direction necessary to deliver great end-to-end user experiences for QuickBooks software products.

This leader will have a proven track record in setting a vision for great customer experiences, inspiring others to get behind the vision, and ultimately delivering products and services that are known for their delightful experience and ease of use. The individual will have 7+ years of demonstrated results as a practitioner of design and research. He/she will bring deep knowledge of innovation, customer research, ideation, storytelling, prototyping, design frameworks, concept visualization, etc and will manage and inspire a team of interaction and visual designers to produce great outcomes. In addition, this person will have a demonstrated ability to collaborate effectively with a variety of business leaders, technology leaders, Product Managers and other key people to develop large growth initiatives.

JOB QUALIFICATIONS:

• Strong leadership and change management skills, being able to galvanize energy and great people around delighting customers through great user experiences, and ensure successful implementation through influence and hands-on leadership
• Strong understanding of software products and services environments for consumer customers, while also having a strong business sense and appreciation
• Experience attracting, developing, and exciting Experience Design talent
• Great communication skills, being able to paint an exciting vision for experience design and drive it into practical reality
• 10+ years of significant track record in defining and delivering great user experiences in software products and services to a large number of customers
• 3+ years experience managing an experience design team and a strong track-record of developing and hiring great people
• Master’s in interaction design, the social sciences, or related fields
• Excellent command of: user experience methods, design principles, problem-framing skills, verbal and written communication skills
• Exemplary ability to build positive, collaborative relationships across teams/groups/functions through facilitative leadership, and to “raise the bar” continually as an effective leader of positive change
• Strong track-record of developing and hiring great people
• Experience, comfort and track-record in dealing at all levels in a large organization, and in leading both through influence and hands-on ownership

CONTACT INFORMATION:
nancy_falkenburg@intuit.com.

Ethnographer Wanted

Design Science is seeking a researcher to design, manage, and conduct ethnographic projects. Most of the projects involve providing information to support new product development, particularly for medical devices.

Required:

• Experience conducting observational research.
• Advanced degree in Cultural Anthropology or a related field.
• Ability and willingness to travel, sometimes extensively, on short notice.

Desired:

• Research experience for product design.
• Medical/health care-related background.
• Knowledge of basic statistics.

About Design Science:
Design Science, established in 1991, is a world leader in helping manufacturers tailor their products to the needs of their users.
For more information about the position and to apply, please see: http://ds.dscience.com/ethnography. For additional questions, you may contact Nicole Dery, nicole@dscience.com

       Some years ago, I asked the question, “Who Stole Culture from Anthropology?” in a brief essay in  Anthropology News in 2006.  I raised the question because many anthropologists had complained to me since about 1987, about how they had trained “too many” anthropologists with the result that they were unemployed.  The discipline seemed to be in a perpetual depression, wallowing in its own insecurities, seemingly like no other.  This bothered me though, in part I guess because I was a victim of this insecurity.  Indeed, it was in 1987 that I first applied for graduate study in Anthropology because I thought the subject of culture—which anthropology has a special claim on—was among the noblest.  My application was rejected, and I was told by some old grizzled anthropological veteran that I was lucky not to be going into the field since, after all, there were too many anthropologists, and no one really cared about culture anyway.

      But when I looked around me, I  found that many many people were “doing” the core subject of anthropology, culture.  At the university, these people were found in almost any department except anthropology.  Thus there are classes on culture and marketing, multi-cultural classrooms, genetics and culture, multi-cultural social work, culture and the law, and in my own discipline of sociology classes like popular culture, and cultural contacts/conflicts. 

        Many of these courses are well-done, but they do not keep culture at the center of what is taught.  Nor do they keep ethnographic observation, or cultural anthropology at the center of things.  Rather, they are expressions of their own disciplines, which is perhaps as it should be.  Thus, a class on culture and marketing focuses on how to sell in modern multi-cultural societies, the multi-cultural classroom course focuses on delivering a curriculum to a diverse audience.  Social workers learn how to offer services to people who have different understandings of “the system”, and biologists speculate about how culture selects for particular genes and not others.  In sociology, where we have the closely related concept of “society” and a strong emphasis on survey research, culture is often reduced to a box checked on a survey form.  But missing are the traditions of anthropology, including emphasis on field work, ethnographic writing, four fields approach, and the rich traditions of people like Malinowski, Boas, and Durkheim.

           Chico State where I teach is right now engaged in an overdue dividing up of the “general education” curriculum.  Consistent with trends in higher education, we are developing seven (or eight or ten) pathways which students can select for their general education program.  There will presumably be pathways for internationalization, sustainability, communities, technology, health, and a range of other subjects which cut across disciplines.  Culture probably will not be there, though I suppose it should be.  But I wonder, if it was there, would our student body be served any better?  The range of courses they would be required to take would come from almost anywhere except anthropology, and it is still unlikely that our undergraduates would be required to read any of the anthropological greats, or listen to someone who has experienced the loneliness and anomy of anthropological fieldwork.

        Cindy van Gilder once asked on this blog when anthropology’s wayward child—that is culture—would come home.  When will anthropology’s child ever finish flirting with the Business School, Education School, Sociology Department, or Biology Department?  Or in other words, when will Cultural Anthropology be given the same weight in the curriculum of the different disciplines as Accounting in Business, Classroom Management in Education, Statistical Methods in Sociology, and Genetics in Biology.  When this happens, maybe all those under-employed Ph.D.s from Anthropology will begin to claim their discipline back.

Here is some good news from a former student at the University of Dar Es Salaam:
“My daughter is growing up, she is now 9 years, though still not able to walk, sit, or talk, It is a very hard task but I am happy to be her mother and she is still my inspiration.

“On top of all that, at last I have been able to meet a man who have decided to spend his life with us, I had problems with men accepting my kid, but this time it seems different and I hope all goes well. We are working together and teach same area, and we will be getting married this month on the 29th, 2010.”