Senior UX Architect

The Senior User Experience (UX) Architect is responsible for designing user interfaces and experiences that are intuitive, efficient, and easy to use. The role involves working closely with a cross-functional team to assess product requirements and create interfaces based on a deep understanding of our end users and their goals.

The Sr. UX Architect:

Supports formative research to understand our continuum of end users and what each needs to accomplish their goals.

• Understands product goals and user goals and translates both into an intuitive design structure
• Focused on helping users successfully achieve goals and complete tasks.
• Develops and/or contributes to prototype development so that functional design can be validated by testing with actual users. 
• Communicates functional design to the implementation team.
• Is metric-sensitive and understands that success is based on achieving client satisfaction and revenue goals. 
• Can articulate and execute a strategic vision through persuasion, presentation, internal/external relationships, and leadership by example.

The successful candidate’s portfolio must demonstrate a depth of experience, with an emphasis on UX design for digital applications, including complex, data-driven websites, daily-use products, and mobile apps. 
 
They must consistently translate interaction design concepts across platforms (e.g., desktop, tablet, mobile, etc.) while respecting each platform’s unique interactions and optimizing its benefits.

The Sr. Architect will leverage Interstate, Cox Automotive’s Design System, as appropriate to ensure a familiar user experience across products. The role may also develop new components and design patterns and shepherd them through Interstate’s submission and approval process.

They will aid in mentoring junior and mid-UX Architects within the team.

WHAT YOU'LL DO

• Assist in user research activities, including contextual inquiry, persona and client journey development, heuristic evaluation, usability reviews, etc., to develop a deep understanding of our target customers and business needs.
• Examine web analytics to inform user interactions and designs.
• Establish collaborative working relationships with product, design, content, and development team members to ensure we deliver a highly usable product that generates positive business returns.
• Facilitate user scenario planning and tasks with the Product team.
• Lead the translation of business requirements into simple, highly usable, and compelling interface layouts, defining how the user interacts with site functionality. Create (and lead the development of) comprehensive site maps, user flows, wireframes, and interactive mock-ups/prototypes (lo/high fidelity).
• Integrate personas/segmentations with related deliverables.
• Ensure familiarity with the overall user interface and individual components can be extended and reused.
• Collaborate with technical teams to determine data accessibility and understand technology constraints/advantages for the design structure to ensure products meet performance, scalability, and reliability goals.
• Serve as the primary point-of-contact/facilitator for User Experience on assigned projects.
• Based on research, identify opportunities to create business value and improve the user experience.
• Synthesize findings from usability/heuristic evaluations into actionable improvements. Take recommendations back into the product process.
• Support usability testing by creating working prototypes.
• Provide interactivity expertise and recommendations for existing designs, small projects, and/or 3rd party initiatives.
• Create and support the information architecture of navigation, content, etc.
• Design for mobile devices. Responsive design experience is required.
• Identify strategic opportunities for competitive advantage.
• Design navigational schema based on user needs, content models, and technical constraints.
• Champion user needs and product usability while balancing business and technical constraints.
• Articulate rationale behind interface decisions and how to prioritize interface features.
• Assist in defining Cox Automotive’s evolving user experience standards in the interactive space.
• Experience in A/B Experimentation is a plus.

WHO YOU ARE

Required Qualifications:

• 4+ years of relevant work experience
• Bachelor’s degree or comparable work experience (required)
• Master’s Degree or better in Behavior Science or related discipline (preferred)
• Excellent oral, written, and verbal communication skills, as well as interpersonal skills
• Must be an expert in user-centered design methods, techniques, and principles.
• Ability to arrange and conduct formal and informal usability tests.
• Project experience in working with teams on large-scale, long-term projects.
• Proven ability (portfolio required) to produce user experience documentation:  storyboards, user scenarios/tasks, user flows, wireframes, prototypes, etc.
• The ability to develop network/system architecture diagrams is a plus.
• Proficient to expert use of design software tools such as Figma.
• You must be interested in human beings, their thinking, behaviors, and limitations. You should be able to think like our users.
• Ability to establish user experience methodology, processes, estimates, and deliverables for a project.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills.
• Group facilitation experience is required.
• Ability to work on multiple projects with competing priorities simultaneously.
• Superb organizational skills with the ability to juggle multiple projects in size and complexity, prioritizing time and tasks as needed to meet aggressive deadlines.
• Be able to make intuitive leaps to appropriately hypothesize product design solutions.
• Understand the big picture, along with expert attention to fine detail.
• Convincingly articulate ideas and rationale across the company, including the executive suite.
• Experience in client services and negotiating business decisions.
• Able to deal with ambiguity.
• Knowledge of what’s possible in the digital space.
• Avid learner. Stays current on the latest trends and research in product design, SEO, and web/mobile technologies.
• Must be able to work individually with minimal supervision/mentoring, and as a team.
• Ability to work across multiple internal business units and companies.

TRAVEL REQUIREMENTS: 

Up to 20%