Position: User Needs Assessment Specialist
Organization: Cognos Incorporated
Category: User Interaction/Usability
Reference: 3813
Location: Ottawa, ON, Canada

Cognos logo

The Cognos User Experience Team has an immediate opening for a User Needs Assessment Specialist. The dates for this position are from February 1st until September 15th, and these dates are flexible. Previous experience with user research is essential.

This is an intermediate role that partners closely with Product Management. Your objective will be to facilitate the design and development of Cognos’ web-based and windows products by providing accurate, substantive data on the needs of end users, customer trends, market acceptance, market problems, and product risk assessment. Occasional travel is required.

The User Needs Assessment Specialist plans and conducts user research programs designed to identify the ways in which users interact with the application being developed. You will use empirical and statistical research methods to understand target audiences and potential users’ needs. By researching users with quantitative and qualitative techniques, this role contributes to defining user group profiles, personas, market problems, and user tasks/workflows.

The Challenge

  • For the activities below, employ varied user research methods including focus groups, surveys, interviews, site visits, contextual inquiry, job shadowing, market acceptance, and usability evaluation to:
    • Gather input for product requirements
    • Conduct end user and chooser research
    • Perform and document task analyses and user workflows
    • Describe and document personas or actor/role definitions
    • Validate product requirements and concepts
    • Design surveys
    • Develop and validate usage scenarios
    • Conduct Heuristic and expert evaluations
    • Participate in competitive analysis activities

Your Expertise

  • A relevant honors university degree in experimental design, human factors, cognitive psychology, or equivalent job experience
  • Demonstrated ability to adapt the appropriate customer research methodology to specific design questions
  • Proven experience creating and executing research plans in response to overall product strategy and applying your extensive repository of user information to multiple product areas, versions, and releases
  • Demonstrated experience in developing User Research studies from writing the research protocol through to the final report with prioritized recommendations
  • Strong knowledge of:
    • User Centered Design process
    • Experimental design
    • Data analysis and results interpretation
    • Statistical analysis
  • Proven customer relationship management skills
  • Excellent interpersonal skills are required
  • Excellent written and verbal communication skills
  • Demonstrate a high level of personal initiative, creativity, and innovation
  • Ability to quickly learn and understand the Cognos products and concepts
  • Knowledge of Pragmatic Marketing is an asset
  • Working knowledge of
    • DreamWeaver, ASP.Net, or other HTML prototyping tools is an asset
    • Paint Shop Pro or other graphics tools is an asset

For more information or submit a resume, contact steve.macko@cognos.com, or visit our website www.cognos.com.