Job Specification
Position Title:
Senior User Experience (UX) Specialist/Content Designer
Job Code:
17162 - Systems Officer 6
Purpose of Position :
To provide project leadership to multi-disciplinary teams in the planning, business process and associated design, delivery, evaluation and maintenance of website development and online experiences for users of ministry's websites.
To provide web content/user experience consulting expertise to clients and advise on strategies, standards, and performance measures.
To plan, manage and consult on the development of strategic and operational frameworks that deliver business value, addressing real human needs, client management, generating user-centred-solutions and high-fidelity prototypes and ensuring alignment to service specifications, standards, policies and best practices.
Duties / Responsibilities :
- Leads and monitors multi-disciplinary team throughout the system development life cycle, to ensure that project objectives and schedules are being met. Coaches project staff to assist with the completion of assigned tasks and provides feedback for staff evaluations and reviews as required by Unit managers.
-Provides senior technology expertise for creating and implementing integrated end-to-end solution and/or design, including providing input to/influencing target architectures, and oversees the technology integration of business solutions through the evaluation, selection, and integration of technologies to meet business needs, ensuring that appropriate technical policies, standards and procedures are used by multidisciplinary teams throughout development cycle, developing estimates of costs/resources/staffing, determining schedules, and monitoring deliverables against the standards to ensure project control.
-Directs the research and evaluation of client IT needs and technology solutions to satisfy client's program/service delivery requirements and both short/long term business goals and objectives. Uses senior technical expertise to perform feasibility studies and cost/benefit analyses on complex
business/systems initiatives, establishing web design solutions which meet client needs, monitoring performance, and implementing upgrades to ensure optimal performance.
-Leads the establishment of technical methods, techniques, operational and systems practices and tools for solutions analysis and design, technology infrastructure, information development, training and overseeing testing and implementation of web designs and improvements. Reviews proposals from subordinates and peers for feasibility, quality and effectiveness.
-Provides expertise in developing and executing online user experience/content strategy as part of the agile development software life cycle to evaluate software, hardware, and technology components, to ensure appropriate solutions are suitable to meet specific client business needs; articulates business and IT impacts of technology solutions and ensures integration of business processes and technology are effective and efficient.
- Leads and negotiates the development of user experience/content standards and performance measures, produces design concepts/content strategy for digital services and ensures effective use of tools, techniques, standards, documentation and performance criteria required for ministry's website development and user experience ensuring quality control by measuring against standards. Directs software product, evaluation, selection and acquisition and negotiates service/ acquisition contracts with external stakeholders.
- Provides specialized technical expertise and guidance to facilitate solution acceptance, assesses changes and change management processes; assures systems integrity, performance and adherence to service specifications, standards, policies and best practices.
- Designs broader online information and services, including information architecture, and transaction/content design and flow, wireframes, page templates and navigation, functional specifications, and identifying opportunities for new functionality and connectivity.
- Provides advice and guidance on all aspects of user experience/content design strategy, assessing user characteristics, needs, goals, and opportunities; conducts stakeholder and subject matter expert consultations to determine and assess business needs; provides feedback to clients on user experience through analysis of web analytics, visitor feedback, performance metrics and other tools; identifies emerging trends; and assesses and prioritizes feature requests and changes from clients; to establish overall website requirements.
-Prepares business cases on request, initiates and recommends next generation solutions, based on technology, service gap analyses, risk, and business value to Cluster(s) and customer base; prepares briefing notes, slide decks and white papers to present recommendations on a variety of digital topics.
-Other duties as assigned.
Knowledge :
- Current and emerging technologies (e.g. J2EE, .Net, BPM/BPEL, Business Intelligence, cloud, etc.), environments and methodologies (e.g. cloud, DevOps) including business and system analysis, design, development, testing and implementation methods to assess their applicability to meet clients'/clusters'/business' objectives/needs and ensure alignment with ministries'/clusters' information technology plans (e.g. Unified Modelling Languages, programming languages, and service-oriented architecture), in order to set up integrated development environments and design solutions that meet both client and OPS requirements.
- Digital strategy trends, technologies and professional standards within the public sector context; government policies, standards and legislation relating to the internet; communications planning in a large organization; presentation and written communications principles and practices; in order to address client issues, present complex subject matter to non-technical audiences, and ensure that recommendations are within the government's framework for digital communications.
- User experience/content design and strategy principles, methodologies and techniques, content management systems and related tools, front-end markup and scripting languages, including interdependencies of user interface and navigation design, accessibility, information architecture, graphic design and user-interface design, research methodologies and techniques, web analytics, focus groups, and user testing and/or Internet, World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) international standards, web accessibility standards, implementation and testing tools (e.g. for accessibility), and emerging trends in digital communications in order to provide advice and guidance on all aspects of content design and strategy to meet needs, goals and opportunities, design and wire framing tools and web analytics software, lead the design and ongoing renewal of the government's websites, and ensure that website development meets industry standards and remains accessible, stable and robust.
- Architectural domains, technologies and OPS development standards in order to review, provide advice, lead and coordinate technology solutions, and contribute to the development of business plans and IT business cases, including ability to interpret business requirements and identify project costing estimates; and to consult on and contribute to enterprise-wide standards and processes; risk assessment to evaluate options, select and support best solutions.
- Project management principles, methodologies and best practices, analytical tools and processes, to oversee projects and solutions.
- OPS procurement and tendering policies and processes, to participate in acquiring, negotiating goods and services, and/or to administer contractual agreements. Understanding of and skills in data design and management, database development (e.g. SQL) data warehousing (e.g., ETL) design/development and related technologies.
- Business analysis to apply consistent methodologies to identify/confirm requirements and develop documentation and solutions which address clients' business requirements.
Skills :
Identify emerging trends and design research projects to determine impact on government and potential opportunities; use evidence-based analysis to inform decision-making on user experience (e.g. web analytics, visitor feedback, performance metrics).
Evaluate and implement new OPS strategies for the provision of innovative user experience and designs services to multiple clients with varying needs, considering client requirements, evidence and analytics, user experience methodologies, service capacity and organizational goals and objectives.
Apply accepted best practices, technology, methodology and design methods to business solutions and ensure integrity of solution.
Develop and prepare technical specifications and documentation for installation, testing and performance; assess condition, technical performance and capacity of existing system to meet needs of clients cost/beneficially; advise on and make recommendations for improving performance through new technology, expansion, renovation or replacement.
Job requires team leadership/mentorship, persuasiveness, consulting and relationship building skills to:
Lead and support staff and colleagues.
Provide advice and obtain support for solutions recommendations and business cases, and to liaise with vendors to map functional requirements for product and services solutions.
Provide leadership and achieve mutual consensus on issues that are multifaceted and have broad ministry and stakeholder impact.
Develop and maintain relationships with clients, project teams, and staff to resolve issues and create a productive work environment.
Convey technical information, convincing explanations, options and recommendations for diverse internal and external, technical and non-technical audiences; discuss and develop support for recommendations on business and/or infrastructure solutions.
Liaise with internal/external clients and builds relationships while liaising effectively with internal/external clients and colleagues.
Job requires presentation skills to:
Convey technical information, convincing explanations, options and recommendations for diverse internal and external, technical and non-technical audiences; discuss and develop support for recommendations on business and/or infrastructure solutions.
Freedom of Action :
Work is performed within the broad mandate, policies and guidelines of corporate and Ministry I&IT programs. Decision-making is guided by corporate and I & IT strategies and policies and work-related OPS administrative policies and procedures. Has latitude to determine appropriate process, tools and methods for solution design and methodology to gather requirements, assess options and issues, and to create and implement solutions to meet business requirements. Job exercises latitude in determining how best to define and characterize client needs; recommending particular information architectural approaches for the implementation and integration of major business applications and by coordinating implementation and acquisitions necessary to seamlessly integrate and provide open architectures to enable achievement and performance of the business and technical objectives of the projects.
Work is regularly discussed with development teams, clients, vendors and other technical staff; and general updates on project status and achievement of enterprise objectives and provided to supervisor/manager and reviewed in relation to stated project objectives, timelines and budget.