Human Center Design Specialist JR

Overview: We are seeking a highly skilled and experienced Senior UI/UX Expert to join our dynamic team. The ideal candidate will be a UI/UX Subject Matter Expert with comprehensive expertise in Human-Centered Design (HCD) and design thinking. This role requires a candidate who can provide detailed and useful interface design specifications to development teams, ensuring the creation of intuitive, user-friendly applications.

Key Responsibilities:

• Provide UI/UX Subject Matter Expertise with deep knowledge of Human-Centered Design and design thinking methodologies.
• Provide expert guidance on user experience (UX) design direction and strategy.
• Provide subject matter expertise in User Experience Design (e.g., Human Centered Design, User Research, User Personas, User Journeys, Developing, Prototyping, Design Mock-ups, and Evaluating Usability)
• Create and deliver a User Experience (UX) Research Plan and Outcomes for each use case, which shall include a research write-up documenting goals, anticipated outcomes, research questions, hypotheses, methodology, recruiting needs, synthesis, and next steps.
• Facilitate discovery activities, to include generative research with users and business stakeholders, an assessment of current related features, a content review,  an accessibility review, a business process review; and collection of any available data and analytics and provide in a User Experience Research Checklist.
• Partner with other Product Teams to ensure that the new tool or service fits into the existing structure.
• Lead the design and development of user interfaces for various applications, ensuring they are visually appealing, user-friendly, and efficient.
• Provide clear and actionable interface design specifications to development teams.
• Develop dynamic forms and other complex UI components, including rich cards and drag & drop features.
• Define and maintain UX frameworks and templates for developers to use during the coding process.
• Apply insights from user experience research studies to describe product functionality, including epics and user stories, as well as operational, business, functional, technical, data, and integration requirements.
• Support design synthesis activities and generate insights and opportunities for improvement. Communicate research findings through a variety of formats (such as insight reports, stories, videos, storyboards, etc.) to maximize relevance and impact.
• Perform requirements analysis based on User Experience Research, obtaining stakeholder input from internal users and external users.
• Develop User Personas to represent user types that have wants and needs of our applications and products, and who might use our applications and products in a similar way.
• Create Customer and User Journey Maps and capture related data.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams, including product owners, developers, and other designers.
• Conduct usability testing sessions to gather feedback on designs and apply results to refine designs.
• Create prototypes to help visualize design.
• Write and edit plain language content for Development Teams.
• Create and test low-, medium-, and high-fidelity wireframes and prototypes in collaboration with stakeholders.
• Craft, test, and deploy design deliverables, including wireframes, low- and high-fidelity prototypes, or interactive web forms to facilitate usability testing and agile development of health products.
• As appropriate, create and update prototypes to conduct facilitated demos or usability testing to elicit feedback for improvements to the design.
• Lead user testing sessions and conduct thorough analysis to inform design improvements.
• Establish and uphold design standards across projects.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams to ensure seamless integration of UI/UX designs.
• Work with ReactJS, JavaScript, CSS, and Tailwind to develop and refine user interfaces.
• Design within a micro-service architecture to create scalable and maintainable solutions.

Qualifications:

• Experience in front-end development and specifically in ReactJS and JavaScript development.
• Experience in software engineering and design architectures.
• Experience and understanding of best practices regarding system security measures.
• Experience with building and migration software and IT services to align to strategic business needs and goals.
• Experience in conducting research for advanced technologies to determining how IT can support business needs leveraging software, hardware, or infrastructure.
• Experience in Adobe XD, Axure, Balsamiq, Invision, UXPin, InDesign, Sketch.
• Experience in usability testing tools.
• Excellent problem-solving skills and the ability to think critically.
• Strong communication skills, with the ability to articulate design concepts and decisions to stakeholders.
• Ability to work effectively in a fast-paced environment.
• Proven track record of delivering scalable and reliable software solutions.
• A portfolio demonstrating expertise in UI/UX design and relevant projects.

Must Have:

• A bachelor’s degree in a related field with a minimum of (5) years of professional experience or Masters degree with three (13) years experience in a user focused production environment.
• Strong experience in UX Design, including a deep understanding of UX Design Thinking and Principles.
• Proven experience in designing dynamic forms with a strong emphasis on intuitive user experience and efficient design.
• Proficiency with HTML, JavaScript, CSS, Tailwind, and related technologies.
• Extensive experience in creating CSS cards and drag & drop functionality.
• Experience with ReactJS and JavaScript.
• Creating user scenarios, user flow, low fidelity and high-fidelity wireframes
• Experience on UX strategy, user researcher, user interviews, surveys, and usability study. Builds personas, user journey map, empathy maps.
• Experience on UX analysis to conduct competitive analysis, market assessments and heuristic evaluations.
• Experience on web analytics and feedback data to inform infrastructure changes and design.
• Extensive hands-on experience in developing and testing wireframes and prototypes.
• Experience with Interaction Design, interaction modeling, and mental modeling.
• Proven experience in UI/UX design, with a focus on Human-Centered Design principles.
• Experience on web analytics and feedback data to inform infrastructure changes and design.
• Experience on usability test - usability test script, method, collect feedback and design improvement.
• Detailed knowledge of Section 508 requirements, and experience designing interfaces to be 508 compliant.
• Demonstrated ability to generate innovative solutions to complex design problems.
• Solid background in defining and maintaining design standards.

Nice to Have:

• Experience in unit testing and providing code coverage.
• Familiarity with version control systems (GitLab preferred) and CI/CD pipelines.
• Experience working within a micro-service architecture.
• Knowledge of cloud platforms and services (e.g., Azure, AWS, etc).
• Familiarity with DevOps practices and tools.
• Understanding of Agile methodologies.

Communication and Organizational

• Excellent presentation and communication (oral and written) skills.
• Consultant mindset with the ability to work with high level customer stakeholders and build excellent customer relationship.
• Experience identifying and applying industry tools, solutions, methods best practices, and emerging technologies.
• Strong analytical skills and problem-solving skills with the ability to formulate and communicate recommendations for improvement.
• Experienced with process design and documentation methodologies, and design and production of quality deliverables, process and use case modeling, business case development.
• Demonstrated ability to work effectively, independently, and as part of a team.
• Strong project management, leadership & meeting facilitation skill with knowledge of Project Life Cycle