Senior UX/UI Visual Designer

Retreat Guru is looking for a Senior UX/UI Designer to join its growing team based in the picturesque mountain town of Nelson, British Columbia (remote candidates will be considered). You are our first design hire, and we'll look to you to define the interface between the company and the user.

In this role, you should be an analytical and creative designer who has the experience and instincts to run our user research process to deeply understand user needs, and have the design capabilities to create a delightful and intuitive user experience to address those needs. A strong portfolio of successful UX research, desigh, and other technical projects is essential. Ultimately, you will make our product more user-friendly and intuitive to attract and retain customers.

You combine your eye for intuitive design with intelligent user data to create fresh and effective approaches to the look, feel and function of our products. You have incredible attention to detail, move quickly and demonstrate strong empathy for your audience. Your experience, both as a leader and a digital designer, allow you to competently advocate for your decisions—even unpopular ones. You have the experience to back it up and are able to synthesize complex products into simple and beautiful experiences. Your deep understanding of and empathy for our users helps us to build better products.

You have at least five years of experience designing online and/or mobile consumer applications. Your portfolio is filled with creativity and shows a consistent progression of keeping ahead of trends in design. You lead by example, love rolling your shirt sleeves up, and are comfortable moving from ideation to prototype to high fidelity design.

Key responsibilities include

• Understand product specifications and user psychology
• Conduct concept and usability testing and gather feedback
• Create personas through user research and data
• Define the right interaction model and evaluate its success
• Develop wireframes and prototypes around customer needs
• Drive our user research process
• Find creative ways to solve UX problems (e.g. usability, findability)
• Work with UI designers to implement attractive designs
• Communicate design ideas and prototypes to developers
• Keep abreast of competitor products and industry trends
• Depending on the candidate, you may also be responsible to create and deliver a cohesive visual identity system

Must have:

• 5+ years professional experience in the software/design/digital world.
• Designing online and/or mobile consumer applications: 5 years (Required)
• Proven UX/UI experience with a strong portfolio that demonstrates your work.
• Familiarity with user research methodologies and experience running user research processes
• A broad understanding of web/mobile UI standards, usability, and practical experience in design and development of user interfaces for web and mobile applications.
• Proficiency with design/prototyping applications such as Sketch, Adobe Creative Cloud & Adobe XD.
• Excellent communication, presentation and collaboration skills.
• Experience with UX design within an Agile software development lifecycle

Nice to have:

• Experience and expertise in graphic design
• Experience defining visual identity and driving creative direction

You love:

• Researching user behaviour, collecting feedback and translating it into better performing experiences.
• Whiteboarding ideas, sketching out wire-frames, building user flows and refining everything into beautiful high-fidelity designs.
• Getting into the mind of the user and turning user empathy into simple and easy-to-use interfaces.
• Taking initiative, working independently and you are an expert collaborator.
• Presenting ideas to the team and using your expertise and design leadership to get buy-in on new opportunities.
• Building visual identity systems and comprehensive UX/UI libraries to enable the engineering teams to move quickly and efficiently.

You are:

• an open minded individual and love both learning and teaching others
• curious and entrepreneurial
• very comfortable giving and receiving feedback
• capable of making informed critical decisions—you’re not afraid to make a tough call
• comfortable giving opinions—you ask questions and are willing to suggest a better solution
• incredibly organized and capable of prioritizing conflicting demands and tasks
• self-motivated with a great attitude
• friendly—you love people and working on a team
• willing to take risks for the good of the product and company
• excited about building a product that solves real problems and seeing it used by real people

Nature of Position: full time

Location: Nelson, BC - Remote candidates considered. Remote employees must be willing to travel to our Nelson office as necessary.

Salary and Benefits:

Negotiable based on the candidate

We provide healthcare benefits to all of our employees and their families

How to apply

Send your resume and optional cover letter explaining why you are interested in working with us to Michelle, michelle@retreat.guru

More information about our company is here.