Designer UX Standard II

Position Summary:
Position Title: Designer UX Standard II (GIS Portfolio Division)
Duration: 6+ Months - Long Term Extensions
Location: Washington, DC 20433

Hybrid Onsite: 4 days per week from Day 1, with a full transition to 100% onsite anticipated soon.

Position Overview: Looking UX Designer for its geospatial portfolio. The contractor will help turn complex information and location-based workflows into clear, accessible, and useful digital experiences. Working with product owners, users, front-end engineers, and other delivery colleagues, the designer will lead work from discovery and interaction concepts through validated, implementation-ready interface designs.

This is a hands-on product design role centered on Figma. The successful candidate must be able to move beyond static screens: from early sketches and user flows to high-fidelity, responsive, component-based interactive prototypes that engineers can implement. The core deliverable is not a set of pictures or Photoshop mockups; it is a coherent design system and fully specified user experience, with working component behaviour, states, and clear handoff guidance.

Essential Job Functions:
Interact directly with business sponsors and subject matter experts to understand business and functional requirements and constraints, and converting them into appealing, highly usable interfaces.
Engage with the business development team and/or customer early in the project lifecycle to seek a deeper appreciation of the customers’ business problems and goals.
Develop an understanding of the end users of the websites/applications to be developed by conducting primary and secondary research, including user interviews, traffic data, existing systems, enterprise guidelines, etc., and communicate findings of user research.
Carry out user modeling and task analysis, and develop personas and scenarios.
Create wireframes and visual design mockups as needed in order to effectively conceptualize and communicate detailed user interaction behaviors.

Ensure application-level consistency with respect to visual design and interaction components.
Prepare low fidelity prototypes of sites/features ranging from draft concepts to wireframes or interactive prototypes for internal review and brainstorming.
Create or advise on content architecture and navigation design, Design page level layout, page flow, and task fulfillment.
Propose design solutions for identified usability problems in existing applications.
Present low and high-fidelity designs/mockups to clients for review, iteration, and approval.
Create and evaluate interaction models, user task flows, screen designs, and UI details that promote ease of use and optimize the user experience.
Make recommendations to solve complex interaction problems and improve overall user experience within an application and across different applications.
Conduct heuristic reviews of websites and web applications.
Educational Qualifications and Experiences:
• Bachelor’s degree in Graphic Design, Fine Arts, Web Design, or similar field
• High level of visual design expertise

Experience with the following:
o Usability design, user centered design
o Information architecture, navigation design
o Interaction design and graphic design
o User modeling and task analysis
o Familiarity with HTML, CSS, JavaScript a plus

Certification Requirements:
• HFI Usability Analyst, Nielsen Norman Group certification, UX Bootcamp diploma, or other applicable credential is desirable.
Required Skills/Abilities:
• Proven experience designing responsive websites.
• Strong visual design skills; Able to explain his/her design philosophy verbally and in writing.
• Advanced skills in Photoshop, UX prototyping, Illustrator, Adobe XD, Sketch, Figma, InVision, wireframing, and other mapping tools.
• Track record of solving cross-browser/cross-platform UI compatibility issues.
• Cutting-edge knowledge of most recent UX/ UI design standards and trends. Advanced knowledge of visual design, and information architecture
• Proficient understanding of the limitations of web and mobile application design, with ideas to flex those boundaries, strong understanding of technical feasibility of their designed prototypes.
• Advanced understanding of the trade-offs between optimum user experience and technical, information security, business constraints, and ability to propose optimized designs within those constraints
• Demonstrable astuteness regarding aesthetics in web design, including layout, grid systems, color theory and typography.
• Capable of working directly with clients in an iterative and agile manner to dramatically improve prototypes in a short time.
• Competency in the following technologies: HTML, HTML5, CSS, CSS3, JavaScript, JQuery, Bootstrap.
• Advanced knowledge of graphic design and accessibility principles
• Advanced understanding of information systems, application development standards and life cycle methodologies, particularly in a large-scale, Agile context
• Knowledge of storyboarding/prototyping, Axure, usability testing, and survey tools
• Knowledge of interaction design
• Familiarity with principles of human computer interaction
• Strong interpersonal, communication skills and a team player
• Ability to produce deliverables within tight deadlines