As the premier global provider of Strategic Enterprise Education (SEE), InStride enables employers to provide career-boosting degrees to their employees, through leading global academic institutions across the U.S., Mexico, Europe and Australia. InStride helps organizations achieve transformative business and social impact by unlocking the power of education, through advanced technology-enabled experiences for learners and corporate partners alike.

Role Overview

We are looking for a data-driven Interaction Designer to join the InStride team located in Los Angeles, CA.

The Interaction Designer will craft a meaningful, personalized, ongoing dialogue between learners and the InStride platform. The ideal candidate is part anthropologist and part information architect who thinks in terms of system flow and draws upon principles of psychology, design, art, and emotion map the rich mental models of humans as they relate to technology and products. 

Responsibilities

• Investigate and understand the needs, wants, and problems our learners, corporate partners, and university partners have to drive the exploration and articulation of a system design and narrative flow that will truly help solve their problems.
• Wrestle a noisy, difficult, bureaucratic, and chaotic problem space into a coherent narrative that inspires the InStride design and content team to create solutions that keep the learner at the center of what we do.
• Be willing to throw themselves into all things research and synthesis and immediately hit the ground running when it comes to assisting and leading research initiatives, and participating in rigorous design synthesis.
• Plan, prioritize, and conduct qualitative and quantitative design research: contextual inquiry, moderated and unmoderated usability testing, eye tracking, A/B testing, heat mapping, field studies, stakeholder interviews, learner interviews, concept validation, card sorting, surveys, and relevant secondary desk research. 
• Creates eloquent, compelling, and succinct research and testing reports.
• Produce in-depth personas, ecosystem diagrams, journey maps, service blueprints, storyboards, scenarios, user flows, wireframes, design annotations, prototypes, or design specifications.
• Excellent at creating low to medium fidelity UX artifacts that are appropriate to the context, needs, goals of both the learner and the business. Excellent means: attention to detail, annotation of key business and interaction rules, professional and legible, fast/efficient in production.
• Internalizes and can speak to the majority of interaction conventions and design patterns for mobile and desktop sites. 
• Be proficient in at least one prototyping software, ideally Flinto (synced with Figma).
• Lead internal design reviews, explain and discuss design decisions eloquently, and give actionable design feedback.
• Be able to provide detailed and thorough and appropriate screen documentation.
• Work closely with product management, design, and technology teams to ensure that the design requirements are achieved. 

Ideal Profile

• 3-5 years experience with interaction design, human factors, and/or qualitative/ethnographic design research for a design company or in-house corporate team preferred.
• Has a strong passion for and understanding of human-centered design processes, systemic thinking, and interaction design principles.
• Has experience shipping multiple high impact, successful digital products.
• Advanced level skills using Sketch, Figma, Flinto, and Google Suite (Slides to Docs to Sheets).
• A mind for best practices, paired with a willingness to try something just crazy enough to work.
• Able to multi-task and perform well under pressure.
• Willingness to travel. 
• Actively seek out opportunities for self-development. 
• Listens and asks clarifying questions before offering a solution or subjective opinion. 
• Has a good attitude and keeps the team focused even in times of stress. 
• Willing to admit when they do not have the answer to something.
• Willingness to clearly express themselves in writing.
• Proactive: acts without being told what to do.
• Aggressive: moves and takes a stand without being overly abrasive.
• Curiosity, humility, and a passion for doing great work.
• Strong portfolio that demonstrates originality and innovation.
• Strong sense of ethics, and responsibility in understanding the way the work we do influences the world around us (learners, corporate partners, learning partners).
• High EQ, comfort with ambiguity and a “no job too small” startup mentality.

InStride is proud to be an Equal Employment Opportunity employer. We do not discriminate based upon race, ethnicity, religious creed, color, national origin, ancestry, gender (including pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions), gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, marital status, age, status as a protected veteran, status as an individual with a disability, medical condition, or any other category protected by applicable federal and state law, including the City of Los Angeles’ Fair Chance Initiative for Hiring Ordinance relating to an applicant's criminal history.