Job no: 682148
Work type: Support Staff
Pay Grade: 13
Major Administrative Unit / College: University Communications
Department: Mktg, Public Rel, And Digital Strategy 10063701
Sub Area: AP- Professionals
Salary: Salary Commensurate with Experience
Location: East Lansing
Categories: Full Time (90-100%), Administrative Professionals- AP, Information Technology, Union
Working/Functional Title

Senior UX Designer

Position Summary

Overview

MSU University Communications is looking for a forward-thinking innovator to help us with a cross-campus digital transformation, that will enable our campus partners to deliver compelling, seamless digital experiences to MSU audiences with cutting-edge, enterprise-grade technology. We strive to provide a differentiated customer experience and exceed the expectations of our audiences while setting us up for the next generation campus experience.

We are seeking individuals to join our team of talented digital marketers, content strategists and designers who share a never-ending passion and an unwavering focus on our customer experience. You will help our communications team with a continuous innovation model of site optimization and personalization to continue to drive outcomes with our audiences. You will possess a deep understanding of UX, web best practices and digital experience technologies and share a never-ending passion with unwavering focus on our customer experience vision. You will be comfortable and thrive working in an agile, cross-functional team environment. You will have demonstrated experience creating compelling, outstanding user experiences that drive business outcomes and make our websites human and emotionally engaging for our audiences and know enough about website development to know what is possible from a technical standpoint. You are the right fit for MSU because you like to roll up your sleeves and contribute to the success of our digital products, and you are a team player who works collaboratively while also providing leadership for web excellence across campus.

Position Summary

The UX Designer will play a critical role in improving user experience for high-profile, high-impact MSU websites. The position will be responsible for understanding user and university goals, motivations and aspirations to inform user experience design, evaluating current UX for projects involving existing websites, making recommendations for UX improvements with rationale for improvements, and creating wireframes for critical pages and user flows. The position will work closely with an experienced team of UX, content, analytics and marketing technology professionals in an effort to transform the way MSU engages with audiences online. The position also represents University Communications in the MSU campus community regarding website UX best practices.

Duties and Responsibilities

User Experience Design

Understands audiences to improve their web and omni-channel digital experience while driving business results. Helps make our websites work harder to emotionally connect and engage with our audiences while creating more seamless online digital campus experience.

Helps oversee and evolve the UX-driven product process model across MSU, ensuring best practices are employed across different teams, while becoming familiar with our digital experience platform and processes.

Becomes familiar with our design system (pattern library), understanding its reuse and scale, and knowing when to contribute to make it better.

Reviews analytics, benchmarks, personas, user patterns and other information to determine the wants and needs of the target users. Evaluates existing websites and identifies potential challenges and problems.

Reviews and assists in the development of user experience research deliverables including but not limited to personas, user interviews, usability testing, heuristic and competitive analysis.

Develops ideas, hypothesis and suggestions for improvements for our sites based on UX analysis and platform knowledge foundation.

Develops user interfaces that will bring an exceptional and seamless user experience across the MSU brand.

Translates research into concepts, user flows, wireframes, mockups, and prototypes that are targeted for multi-device screens, sites and applications, in collaboration with team members, that also lead to intuitive and excellent user experiences that are also supportive of our overarching product vision and strategy.

Collaborates with digital strategist, product owner, marketing communications managers, campus communicators, designers, analytics, and development staff as a critical partner to connect great design and development with business strategy.

Evaluates ongoing metrics to use as insight and inspiration for better UX moving forward.

Organizes content, site structures and top-down information architecture.

Digital, Content & Creative

Collaborates with our content teams to ensure site integrity and content strategies are aligned, as well as timely delivery and execution.

Crafts high fidelity UX page comps, layouts and campaigns as needed based on our enterprise pattern library.

Assists creative efforts in contributing content recommendations and ideas.

Participates in creative and content reviews with our content owners.

Helps team create future visions through high fidelity presentations, storyboards, illustrations, and prototypes of next generation experiences.

Develops deep understanding of our enterprise digital experience platform.

Helps the digital team provide digital experience platform thought leadership to stakeholders and other units across campus.

Assists our digital experience platform experts who will be setting up personalization and tagging, to ensure the experience will align with the goals being configured.

Assists with A/B testing, site optimization and personalization efforts.

Experience Research

Performs heuristic evaluations, expert reviews of sites for improvements.

Participates in research efforts and studies, including but not limited to usability testing, focus groups, surveys and customer feedback – consume data to fuel the design process.

Collaborates on and contributes to moderator guides, user test plans and participate in research study efforts.

Continuously improves knowledge and understanding of user/customer experience research.

Advances knowledge in UX/CX design, modern web technologies, interaction patterns and keeps us on the cutting edge of industry grade digital creative.

Continuously improves knowledge and understanding of higher education space, competitors, non-competitors, market and audiences.

Website Campus Representative

Represents University Communications among MSU website development committees and communities including accessibility, brand continuity, UX and navigation best practices.

Communicates key learnings to University Communications stakeholders.

Helps manage MSU design system, including web style guide, pattern library, standards, and templates. Help manage web brand standards.

Consults with MSU colleges and other units on website accessibility, usability and user experience.

Helps our digital team provide university-wide solutions for websites and digital experiences.

Unit Specific Education/Experience/Skills

Knowledge equivalent to that which normally would be acquired by completing a four-year college degree program in UX, digital design, information technology, interaction design or related field; three to five years of UX experience designing user experiences and interaction design for rich interactive web sites and/or applications; three to five years of visual design experience with high creative aptitude and sensibilities towards audience driven design; five years of related and progressively more responsible work experience supporting the development websites and applications leveraging CMS platforms, with ability to customize experiences leveraging Java Script, HTML and CSS; three to five years of related and progressively more responsible work experience developing, presenting custom digital solutions and UX within an enterprise, digital marketing, professional services and/or advertising agency environment;

Desired Qualifications

Desired: exceptional user interface and experience design skills and an understanding of user-centered design disciplines and principals, as well as an eye for subtle detail; visual creative as well as analytical UX design skills; passion for resolving user pain points through great design; ability to design across all types of communication channels, with a strong focus on native and mobile; experience working with accessibility requirements when designing or developing new websites for desktop, tablet and mobile solutions; ability to translate goals and objectives into actionable and measurable digital marketing solutions; working knowledge of Sketch, Invision and Adobe creative stack, including Adobe XD; prototyping tool experience in UXPin, Axure and diagramming tools a plus; excellent written and verbal communications, interpersonal, management, organizational, leadership and collaboration; excellent communication and influencing skills – able to present and win approval for concepts from senior leadership; passion for results – bringing forward new methods or tools to help advance the user experience; familiarity with the value of design systems/patterns, understanding reuse and scale, and knowing when to contribute to make them better; portfolio showcasing a broad, diverse range of work in interactive, web and brand work.

Experience and related skills should include: responsive design for multiple website platforms including mobile, tablet and desktop; high fidelity, brand-specific designs, comps, artifacts, to show you also have a strong visual and graphic design sensibility to go along with your UX skills; analytics tools and metrics, and quantitative and qualitative UX research to inform design decisions; search and mobile solutions and knowledge of how to leverage each to achieve marketing goals; information architecture, site structures and organizing pages and content to maximize efficiencies and deliver structured, logical, easy to consume and navigate experiences; technical knowledge of development with an in-depth understanding of the inter-workings of dynamic websites, components, pages, structures and integrated technologies including some background in some form of front end coding and configuration; design thinking philosophies in collaborative enterprise settings to deliver exceptional solutions to a range of problems; content auditing, assessing content types and needs in the planning and design phases of website projects; integrated digital marketing and campaign driven experiences, including transactional websites.

Equal Employment Opportunity Statement

All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, citizenship, disability or protected veteran status.

Required Application Materials

Cover Letter

Resume

Three Professional References

Work Hours

STANDARD 8-5

Bidding eligibility ends on 11/24/2020, 11:55 PM

Advertised: Nov 18, 2020 Eastern Standard Time
Applications close: Dec 1, 2020 Eastern Standard Time