UX Summer Associate [CHI]

JOB DESCRIPTION
As a UX Researcher and Designer Summer Associate at Startup Summer, you will play a critical role in shaping the overall success of the product your startup team is building. Your work will focus on both understanding users deeply and designing a solution that meets their needs. To really know your audience, you must leave the computer and get out and meet the end user. You will know the end users better than anyone and you will champion their needs to the product owner, engineers, graphic and UI designer, and business professionals. You will design, build, and use simple prototypes to inform yourself and your team of the path to an elegant solution-one that ensures a seamless, intuitive experience. Delivery of wireframes for the rest of your team to work from will be key.
You will fearlessly and repeatedly ask, "Why?" to get to the root cause of the problem and ensure that your team is solving the right problem. Ultimately, your mission is to combine thorough research with thoughtful process design, ensuring the product solves the core problem elegantly.
You will:

• Work with your team to come up with ideas for a product and/or service.
• Collaborate with your teammates to name your product/startup.
• Work with your team and a graphic designer to develop the product/startup's logo(s).
• Review business team members' market research and analyses against your understanding of the space. Provide relevant feedback.
• Conduct user research through methods such as interviews and usability testing to uncover insights and validate assumptions; reframe the problem as needed.
• Lead the team in gathering customer feedback and translating it into actionable insights.
• Analyze findings to clearly define user needs and translate them into actionable design goals.
• Advocate for the end users throughout the design process by presenting findings and design recommendations to the team.
• Iterate on designs based on feedback from users, stakeholders, and team members.
• Identify and refine the problem the product/service is solving by writing and iteratively improving an increasingly tighter problem statement.
• Develop user personas and user journeys to guide design decisions.
• Collaborate with the product owner to define problems, ideate solutions, and prioritize features based on user and business needs.
• Assist with defining minimum viable products, prototypes, and methods to test/validate the product and/or services' key unique feature/selling point.
• Work with the graphic designer to ensure all visual elements align with the intended experience and the product's brand identity.
• Design and deliver user process flows, prototypes, mockups and wireframes optimized for the domain of relevant devices and interfaces.
• Use the prototypes and wireframes to test and validate the product's/service's features.
• Make strategic design and user-experience decisions for all features and functionalities.
• Work closely with the product owner; support the product's vision development through research, brainstorming, and user validation testing, etc.
• Collaborate with engineers and the product owner to prioritize product enhancements.
• Assist with testing and QA of the product/service to improve your understanding of the space.
• Work with your team to write and deliver pitch and demo day materials, including decks and marketing collateral.
• Participate with your team in presenting at Pitch Day and Demo Day events.

QUALIFICATIONS

• Currently pursuing or recently completed a Bachelor's or advanced degree from a top-tier university/college, or able to demonstrate significant professional work experience.
• An entrepreneurial work style, you're a self-starter with a bias toward action.
• Excellent organizational skills.
• Open minded. You know what you don't know.
• A portfolio showing wireframes, project work, etc.
• You must have a good sense of and know the fundamentals of design.
• A relentless curiosity to understand "why" and get to the root of problems.
• Ability to empathize with users and a strong ability to anticipate their needs.
• Comfort with ambiguity and a willingness to experiment and iterate.
• Comfortable in a fast-paced and dynamic work environment.
• Strong communication skills to articulate design-based decisions and advocate for user-centric solutions.
• You must be fully available-onsite-from 19 May 2025 through 15 August 2025.

COMPENSATION & PERKS

• Competitive salary based on experience
• Opportunities for travel
• Social and team-building events
• Fully stocked kitchen with assorted drinks & snacks
• Professional development through mentors, training, and networking
• Future opportunities-simplified pathway to employment