Product Designer job description

Product design — Product Designer
Owns end-to-end design for a feature with little oversight.

RESPONSIBILITIES
- Build a prototype with conditional logic and data that behaves convincingly enough to fool a first-time tester.
- Plan a single-method study for a narrow question, including how you get informed consent, and have a mentor check the plan.
- Run a scripted interview on your own, keep it on time, and probe an unexpected answer instead of moving straight to the next question.
- Design tasks and success criteria for moderated or unmoderated tests that include disabled participants, and separate a usability problem from one person's preference.
- Turn a set of session notes into themes and a short write-up the team can read.
- Run a comparison across a given set of products for a given problem and write up the patterns you find.

REQUIREMENTS
- Experience at the Junior Product Designer level (level 1 of 5) or equivalent

REQUIRED SKILLS
Research
- User Research Planning — You can plan a single-method study for a narrow question, including how you get informed consent, and have a mentor check the plan.
- Qualitative User Interviewing — You can run a scripted interview on your own, keep it on time, and probe an unexpected answer instead of moving straight to the next question.
- Usability Testing — You can design tasks and success criteria for moderated or unmoderated tests that include disabled participants, and separate a usability problem from one person's preference.
- Research Synthesis and Insight Reporting — You can turn a set of session notes into themes and a short write-up the team can read. You separate what a participant actually did from what you inferred about why.
- Competitive and Comparative Analysis — You can run a comparison across a given set of products for a given problem and write up the patterns you find. You describe how each one behaves rather than which one you like.

Structure & Flow
- Information Architecture — You can build a sitemap or navigation structure for a defined section, and run a simple card sort to check your grouping.
- Interaction and Flow Design — You can design a complex flow with branching logic and edge cases on your own, and you catch the edge cases a specification missed.
- User Journey Mapping — You can build a journey map for one flow from research notes, showing the touchpoints and the moments where users get stuck. You update the map when new sessions contradict it.
- Wireframing — You can wireframe a complex screen with many states and conditions, and use wireframes to explore several layout options quickly before committing.
- Interactive Prototyping — You can build a prototype with conditional logic and data that behaves convincingly enough to fool a first-time tester.

Visual & UI Design
- Visual Design — You can design visually for a whole feature with consistent hierarchy and tone, and give visual feedback that improves someone else's work.
- User Interface Design — You can design new UI patterns when the system has no component that fits, and specify their states precisely enough that engineering does not have to guess.
- Design Systems and Component Libraries — You can propose and design a new component to a defined pattern, documenting its states and variants for the system.
- Responsive and Adaptive Layout — You can design one layout that works across screen sizes and input methods, including at 400% zoom.

Accessibility
- Accessible Interface Design — You can design a screen to WCAG 2.2 AA from the start without being told to.
- Inclusive Design Practice — You can design for needs beyond the default user, such as low vision, a slow connection or a second language, when those needs are known. You raise them before sign-off rather than after build.
- Assistive Technology Evaluation — You can test a flow with a screen reader, the keyboard and a screen magnifier, and write each failure so a developer can reproduce it unaided.

Content & Handover
- UX Writing and Content Design — You can write the copy for a screen or short flow, including error and empty states, in the established voice and with terms used elsewhere in the product.
- Design Critique Facilitation — You can take part in a critique and give feedback on a specific part of a design rather than a general reaction. You ask what problem the designer was solving before offering an opinion.
- Design Rationale and Storytelling — You can present a design to your team, walk through the options you considered and say why you dropped them. You answer straightforward challenges without abandoning the decision on the spot.
- Engineering Handover and Specification — You can spec a whole feature with all its variants, and agree with engineering what lives in code.
- Design QA During Build — You can run design QA for a feature before release and decide which drift blocks it.

Design Leadership
- Design Strategy — You can align a feature's design to your team's goals and name one risk or opportunity that design can address.

Delivery
- Project Management — You can organize a small piece of work into steps, put them in a sensible order, and finish it by the date you agreed, raising problems before they cause a delay.
- Planning & Estimation — You can estimate your own work with reasonable accuracy and keep a steady enough pace that other people can plan around you.
- Ownership & Accountability — You can pick up a problem that has no obvious owner and make yourself accountable for it, including the parts nobody enjoys.
- Quality Focus — You can define what good enough means for a project, put checks in place to show it has been met, and hold work back when it falls short.

Craft
- Problem Solving — You can break a large, ambiguous problem into pieces and weigh the options for each against the evidence.
- Domain Expertise — You can work confidently with the tools and methods your team uses daily, and you can explain how your work serves the team's goals.
- Continuous Learning — You can pick up an unfamiliar area fast enough to be useful in it, and you turn what you learned into something others can reuse.

Communication
- Communication — You can explain a complex topic to people with very different backgrounds, adjusting the detail to the audience without talking down to them.
- Collaboration — You can build working relationships beyond your own team and get things done through people who do not report to you.
- Writing & Documentation — You can write for a defined audience, whether a proposal, a policy, a report, or a decision record, and make the reasoning as clear as the conclusion.
- Stakeholder Management — You can identify who is affected by your work and keep them updated at a level of detail and a frequency that suits them.

Leadership
- Leadership — You can spot a problem and propose a way forward unprompted, and you take a small leading role such as running a working group.
- Mentoring — You can help someone new settle into your team's work, answer their questions patiently, and give feedback specific enough to act on.
- Strategic Thinking — You can connect your team's work to its goals and question a task that does not appear to serve them.