Alagad is Hiring a User Interface Designer

The following is a job description for a new position at Alagad: User Interface Designer. If you are interested in this position, please email a cover letter, resume, and portfolio samples to dhughes@alagad.com.

User Interface Designer

Reports to Program Manaer

Overview

The User Interface Designer is responsible for designing and producing professional software interfaces and website designs. This person will participate in the entire design process from start to finish, beginning with learning client requirements, establishing design direction, identifying and solving design challenges, creating modern and innovative interfaces, producing all required assets, and implementing designs with front-end code. In addition, the designer should have the ability to ensure acceptance of the design by the client and end user, making design modifications as necessary to accomplish this goal. The designer should possess excellent written and verbal communication skills, and the ability to maintain professional working relationships with clients, stakeholders and users.

Education and Experience

• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent experience in visual arts, graphic design, interaction design or related applicable field
• Some coursework or equivalent experience in software (including web) development
• Minimum of 3 years professional web or interface design experience

Essential Job Functions

• Conduct user and client research
  • Participate in requirements-gathering meetings with clients to gain an understanding of the client business needs, the project at hand, how it fulfills business needs, the audience/users of the project, and its desired outcome
  • Create and execute user research plans
• Develop information architecture
  • Organize and document the content and information required to assemble a design
  • Analyze and architect user interaction flow
  • Distill site content or features into logical screens or application areas to be designed
  • Produce diagrams to illustrate user workflow
• Create wireframes to communicate design concepts to clients
  • Develop grids and templates for interfaces
  • Produce low-fidelity visuals (wireframes)
  • Produce basic interactive (clickable) prototypes from wireframes
• Create finished designs, applying visual styling to wireframe layouts that
  • Meets client branding requirements
  • Results in readable, organized visuals that meet any specific client-defined accessibility requirements
  • Clearly communicates the purpose of its elements to the user
  • Influences the user to take the intended steps in using the site or application
  • Uses recognized patterns and conventions
  • Has flexibility for reuse as the application expands in scope or as content changes
  • Is visually attractive and appealing
• Collaboratively work with clients to achieve desired results
  • Justify design decisions and answer client questions objectively
  • Manage client alterations and suggest solutions that meet business requirements while enhancing the user experience
  • Conduct and observe acceptance testing of designs
• Produce and optimize final design assets
  • Produce finish graphic assets that can be integrated into the finished software
  • Optimize assets for file size and quality
  • Deliver organized and readable file names and structures according to company convention
• Implement finished design
  • Build flexible markup that can accommodate variations in content while maintaining design integrity
  • Produce production-quality, standards-compliant HTML markup that offers graded browser support according to client requirements
  • Produce production-quality Flex layouts
  • Produce Flash Catalyst Project or MXML files that can be integrated with developer-produced back-end services requiring minimal rewriting or editing
  • Deliver produced code and assets according to standard company workflow (commit to a repository or upload via FTP)
• Develop front-end behavior
  • Produce production-quality basic design behaviors such as visual effects, validation, and user interaction, following best practices, using JavaScript (including libraries such as jQuery, YUI or EXT as defined by the project technical requirements) OR ActionScript (occasionally working with developers on advanced behaviors)
  • Deliver a working client-side prototype that can be integrated with back-end services requiring minimal rewriting or editing
• Contribute to a project team, working with
  • Developer(s) to ensure design integrity is maintained after design portion is turned over for development
  • Other designer(s) to produce a cohesive total interface where each member of the team contributes parts of a unified design
  • Project manager(s) to ensure client requirements are fulfilled and project schedules are met
• Perform occasional in-house design tasks, such as
  • Identity products (business cards, stationery)
  • Brochures, flyers, advertisements and case studies

Required Knowledge, Skills and Abilities

• Professional demeanor, outstanding communication skills
• Knowledge of
  • Graphic design, aesthetics, and color theory
  • User interface and interaction design principles
  • Basic web programming
  • Software development lifecycle
  • Basic search engine optimization/findability best practices
  • Basic preparation of design materials for printed application
• Proficiency in the following software:
  • Industry and company standard design tools including Adobe Creative Suite (Fireworks, PhotoShop, Illustrator, InDesign)
  • Industry and company standard development tools (Dreamweaver or Eclipse/Aptana editors)
  • Flash and Flex authoring tools (Flash Catalyst, Flash Builder)
  • Wireframing and diagramming tools (Fireworks, Visio, OmniGraffle)
  • Microsoft Office suite of products
• Experience with the following languages:
  • Web standards-based HTML (advanced)
  • CSS (advanced)
  • JavaScript (intermediate, ability to use common libraries)
  • ActionScript 3 (syntax and basic constructs and functions)

Physical Demands

• Ability to work at a desk, in front of a computer for extended periods of time
• Ability to type proficiently and use a mouse, trackpad/ball or pen tablet

Work Environment

• Alagad is a small independent company focused on creating custom software for our clients.
• Alagad is a virtual company with no central office. All employees and contractors work from home on their own equipment.
• Employees are paid hourly based on a target salary. This allows us to compensate employees for overtime.
• PTO time is accrued proportional to the number of hours worked.
• Health and dental benefits are offered. Alagad will put $400 towards this per month.
• 401K, Adoption Assistance and other benefits are also offered.
• Alagad has a strong culture of integrity and honesty.
• Employees are invited to attend a monthly meeting to go over the company status and ask questions.
• Bonuses are paid out as often as quarterly based on company profits.
• This is a remote position, collaboration is conducted via internet connection, conference call, instant message, email and other remote electronic communications
• Hours can be flexible. Team members are expected to be available for calls or electronic communication.
• Occasionally tight schedules
• Normal/Reasonable turnaround times
• Heavy client involvement
• Frequent review of work progress
• Very little travel