Packback's Product Team is seeking a User Experience Designer to join our team of passionate education-focused product designers and engineers!

Responsibilities of the Role:

As Packback’s UX Designer, you will be responsible for designing effective solutions to user experience needs laid out on our product roadmap. 

In this role, you will work within the “platform development” team and be responsible for designing exceptional user experiences to fulfill the functional project goals laid out by the Product Manager in the form of user stories.

You will work in close collaboration with your direct manager, the Product Manager for the platform development team, to continuously refine and define scope and solution for projects.

Your primary duty in this role will be to design the most effective, simple, and understandable solutions to various projects outlined on the product roadmap, through the use of user interviews, analysis of historical data, prototypes, user flow diagrams. You will deliver your final designs in the form of a clickable prototype, along with any supplemental documents or visualizations required to illustrate the desired user experience. 

As the project progresses, you may also be responsible for reworking or rescoping designs based on learnings to ensure the overall project goals are met.

To ensure the successful delivery of projects under your area of accountability, you will also be responsible for performing QA and sign off to ensure the delivered code fulfills your user experience design requirements. 

Requirements:

• 3+ years of past work experience as a product UX designer, including prioritization, user research, and design.
   
• Demonstrated knowledge and ability to apply user experience best practices to solve tangible user (and business) problems through design, including demonstration of the ability to seamlessly build upon existing design styles.
   
• Demonstrated ability in taking planned user flows and user stories and designing effective user experiences to fulfill those product requirements in partnership with the product manager.  
   
• Usability testing experience, and user interviewing experience, using both qualitative and quantitative methods to assess a design's efficacy.
   
• Demonstrated understanding and application of Accessibility and universal design principles in past work.
  • Note: We will check portfolio pieces for accessibility. If any of your work in your portfolio is not accessible in accordance with WCAG 2.0 standards, it would benefit your application to make note of this. This will show us your experience in and understanding of what makes an accessible design.
     
• Proficient with any UI design software of your choice (Sketch, AI, Figma), leveraging the tools available in your software of choice to make your work efficient, repeatable, and consistent.
   
• Excellent interpersonal communication to collaborate with a team to work towards the desired deliverable and timeline, while inspiring the team to be creative, challenge designs, and look for simpler solutions.
   
• Some technical knowledge preferred (for prototyping and effective specification-writing).
  • While coding is not a requirement for this role, a foundational understanding of how software is built and the ability to quickly understand what makes a specific design solution easy (or hard) to implement is valuable.
     
• Effective UI copywriting skills.
   
• Nice to have: Illustration skills using vector-based illustration programs.

What will make someone successful in this role:

• You should care deeply about understanding the purpose of Packback (to awaken and fuel lifelong student curiosity) and have every decision made in your designs work to ultimately serve that purpose. To do this, we want someone to join our team who is curious about learning how to design educational learning experiences for students, understanding student motivation, and understanding professor needs and pain points.
   
• You should be excited by the prospect of working on projects that iteratively reduce "UX friction" throughout the entire user experience on Packback and actively work to remediate “design debt” through their work.
   
• You will need to be comfortable with ruthlessly avoiding scope creep to solve the specific problem at hand. We are a startup with a small product team and deliver our product iteratively to our users. There are many problems to be solved, but only one team to solve them. Prioritizing the core needs of the user experience is key.
   
• Your personal values should naturally align with the company values, to ensure that this work environment aligns with the kind of work you want to deliver and the way you want to work.
   

What is Packback?

Packback exists to awaken and fuel lifelong curiosity in every student. We are a social learning platform powered by a proprietary A.I. that college professors use to help their students fall in love with the subject matter, drive personalized learning, and most importantly, quantify and improve student critical thinking skills. Packback has served over a quarter million students since the launch of our flagship product, Packback Questions, in late 2016.

Named as a 2014 Chicago Innovation Award winner, Packback has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, the New York Times, Chicago Tribune, and the Washington Post, while its founders have been named as Crain’s Chicago 20 in their 20’s, the Techweek 100, and Chicago Inno’s 50 on Fire.

Job Details & Benefits

Start Date: September 1, 2020

Design-founded organization & Design-focused product/engineering team: Join a team with a focus on design as a differentiator from the very first days of the organization. Our engineers are part of the product division at Packback and works closely and collaboratively with the designers at Packback.

Competitive Salary: Our salary ranges are competitive, and have clear expectations for professional growth.

Remote Flexible work environment: Our office is located in downtown Chicago, but we are happy to consider partially or fully remote team members for this role.

A culture that you can be proud to build: We work hard at building a culture of curiosity and continuous learning at Packback, where every voice matters and can make an enormous impact on the business.

A company that invests in you and your family: Packback offers 6 weeks fully paid, gender non-specific extended leave policy (for either parent welcoming a new child through birth or adoption, to care for a family member in need, or for bereavement).

Benefits for your health and well-being: Health insurance, Short-term disability insurance; option for dental, vision, and life, Health Savings Account, and Commuter Benefits Account.

Flexible "Unlimited" Vacation Policy: Packback offers a flexible vacation policy, with a minimum of 10 vacation days recommended. We really want our employees to take time for travel, discovery, and self-care.

Cultural programming: Access to creative and educational events hosted both virtually and (when possible again) at the Packback office, like Makespace and "A more curious Chicago" 

And of course, our office pup, Pepper!

Our commitment to diversity:

Working in the Education Technology space, Packback believes it is an ethical necessity for us to work to build a diverse and inclusive team, to help us better consider the needs of our diverse audience of students with a wide range of educational backgrounds and educational needs.

We are an equal opportunity employer and value diversity in our company. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status.