Product Designer

ITHAKA's mission is to expand access to knowledge and education around the world. Our services - Artstor, JSTOR, Portico, and Ithaka S R - enable people everywhere to learn, to grow, and to overcome historical barriers to education. In carrying out our mission, as employees we feel a deep responsibility to each other and our well-being, and are committed to building and sustaining a diverse, equitable, and inclusive workplace. The Role Join a passionate and innovative Product Design team dedicated to creating end-to-end user experiences that resonate with our diverse user base. As a Product Designer, you'll focus on UI design, interaction design, and brand expression for ITHAKA, ensuring that our products are not only functional but also visually compelling and aligned with our brand identity. You'll address opportunities like: Finding visual and interactive UI solutions that clarify and explain product offerings, and solve workflow challenges for scholarly librarians, curators, and administrators. Working closely with full-stack engineering teams to build interactive and data-driven solutions. Looking holistically at product workflows across product lines and users to align with our platform strategy, design system, and vision for entirely new library services. Reporting to the Director of Product Design, you will work with fellow product designers, researchers, and writers while collaborating with a cross-functional agile development team. You'll have responsibility for the overall functionality and feature directions to ensure a great user experience.This is a 6 month fixed term position working 40 hours per week. Your days might include the following: Storyboarding a user's goals, creating end-to-end framing of user tasks in a narrative format. Prototyping user interface flows with brand hallmarks, imagery, and UI components that reinforce the ITHAKA brands visually and experientially, and that can be used in marketing and external materials. Prioritizing and prototyping user experiences with features and functions learned in partnership with user researchers and collaboration with product managers. Sharing constructive feedback in design reviews to unify our brand with a polished design system, and bringing out the best in your colleagues' design work. What do we need you to bring? As our product designer, you'll be an effective communicator, able to explain the problems your design solves and how user experience affects brand perception and product marketing. You're an expert at balancing user needs and business requirements, translating them into sketches and prototypes, and collaborating with the Product and User Research teams to iterate your designs. You're excited to work alongside expert front-end engineers, shipping a final product for millions of users that is pixel-perfect and embodies the brand. Your ability to think as a platform problem solver, a product marketer, and a visual communicator offers unique value to your team. Please note as a part of your application, you will receive an email requesting you to upload an attachment or submit a link to your portfolio. Please email careers@ithaka.org if you have any questions. Responsibilities Interaction design, UI Design craft, and Brand expression. Conceive and produce product concepts. Produce effective prototypes at high fidelity, break down a user experience into concrete interaction design steps to simplify, reduce, and optimize the user flow, leveraging and staying tightly aligned with existing design trends and paradigms. Goal setting and problem framing, end-to-end storytelling, concept generation. Work with a team to crystallize user goals, generate product concepts, and illustrate how details fit into the bigger picture for the user of the product, as well as design thinking and framing. User understanding, empathy, and advocacy. Regular collaboration with researchers, PMs, engineers, and other partners as the voice for user needs across the organization. Define the product from an define the product value from an end user's perspective. Participate in user research goal setting, analysis, and occasional facilitation when necessary. Use research and evaluation techniques to further an understanding of user behaviors, needs, and motivations. Execute and deliver. Deliver final design assets that communicate the essence of the product, including user storyboards, sketches, low- and high-fidelity prototypes, and UI specifications for development during agile sprints. Design the UI and branded components. Present the product with positioning, great copy, and an eye towards clarity and product simplification. Follow design patterns and create new ones when needed. Communicate, collaborate, and advocate. Be a strong champion of best practices for design and usability across platforms and form factors-desktop, responsive, and mobile web. Experience and Skills 2-6 years of experience in Product Design, UX / UI or related digital design position. Experience working on product marketing and highlighting unique benefits within a digital product, app, or website. Demonstrated success owning final interface design of engaging, useful, coherent products that delight end users. Experience creating meaningful and delightful infographics is a plus. Proficiency with Figma, Sketch, InVision, and other industry tools for creating responsive web and mobile products. Strong project and time management skills with a demonstrated ability to work independently. Superb teamwork skills, excelling at creative work, communication, and maintaining healthy working relationships, able to motivate and co-create with teams distributed over multiple locations. Degree or relevant background / certification in UX design, graphic design, product design, interaction design, or related field. Work Authorization and Sponsorship ITHAKA is not currently considering candidates who require any type of immigration sponsorship (additional work authorization or permanent work authorization) now or in the future to work in the United States. Compensation and Benefits At ITHAKA we believe in openness and equity. Part of living those values is our commitment to clarity about salary ranges, so candidates know what to expect. The starting salary for this position ranges from $88, 000- $110, 000. Starting pay may vary with job-related knowledge, skills, and experience. At present, our total compensation package for benefits-eligible employees includes medical, dental, and vision plans, an employer-paid 10% retirement contribution, paid parental and caregiver leave, 22 days of paid time off, 11 paid holidays, up to 12 sick days, wellness benefits, and more. Please note that ITHAKA, at its discretion, may make changes to its benefits programs from time to time. #LI-JS1 #LI-REMOTE Work for ITHAKA We are committed to our organizational values of belonging, evidence, speed, teamwork, and trust. We take inclusion seriously. Belonging is one of our core values, and it shows in our vibrant culture. People from a wide range of backgrounds work at ITHAKA, and we believe that unique perspectives help us realize new insights and build better solutions. We want to work with people who are passionate about ideas like these and who wish to contribute their perspectives and talents to ITHAKA's mission. We enthusiastically welcome applications from people of all underrepresented backgrounds and credentials. We want to hear your story and include your perspective in the transformative work we aim to do. Learn more about Working at ITHAKA . Apply Now: Although ITHAKA has physical offices in New York and Ann Arbor, Michigan, our employees are distributed across the continental United States. At this time, we're not considering candidates who are unable to work and reside in the continental U.S. Candidates may apply by submitting an application online through our career site, if you have any questions about your application, please contact us at careers@ithaka.org . ITHAKA is committed to providing reasonable accommodations, i f there's anything we can do to accommodate any portion of the application or hiring process, please contact us at accommodations@ithaka.org . We are proud to be an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action employer. All qualified applicants receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, sex, national origin, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, religion, domestic violence victim status, veteran status, disability, history of disability or perceived disability, or other status protected by law. We invite you to read our Equal Employment Opportunity and Affirmative Action Statement . ITHAKA cares about your privacy, learn more about our Applicant Privacy Notice . Equal Opportunity Employer - minorities/females/veterans/individuals with disabilities/sexual orientation/gender identity Minimum Salary: 0.00 Maximum Salary: 0.00 Salary Unit: Yearly