MBTA is hiringUX Designer
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At the Customer Technology Department (CTD), our mission is to apply modern principles of research, design, and technology to make our transit system easy for all riders to use. Effective and equitable public transit is essential to the social, economic, and environmental progress of Greater Boston.
The MBTA Customer Technology team is working to transform how people get around the Boston area.
We are a team of designers, engineers, product and content specialists charged with bringing novel ideas, modern standards and a user-centered approach to technology at the T. As the MBTA works to reinvent itself, we have a rare opportunity to craft the future of transportation for Boston and communities all around Eastern Massachusetts, as well as pioneer innovations for other transit agencies around the country.
Do you want to improve the daily transportation experience for 400 million annual riders? Ready for the challenge? Then read on.
About this position
This role has the opportunity to impact the daily lives of our bus operators and train motor persons – a large team that is critical to the continued success of mass transit in Boston. We are looking for a User Experience Designer who will bring empathy and curiosity to the challenge of developing elegant and intuitive operator facing products.
This is a UX generalist position, with a strong focus on usability research, information architecture, and interaction design. Day to day, you will:
• Work with Product and Engineering teams in an agile environment;
• Collaborate with transit experts to research user needs and build user journeys;
• Help define and prioritize features;
• Help construct the information architecture for the new experience;
• Develop wireframes and prototypes;
• Manage usability tests;
• Design new features in partnership with Product Management and Engineering.
You will be part of the Product Design and Content Strategy team – a cross-functional team reporting to the Head of Product Design. This group supports one another with brainstorms, work reviews, and ongoing promotion of best practices and emerging methodologies.
What you can expect from your first 90 days at CTD:
- Dive into the MBTA system: We don’t expect everyone who walks into CTD to understand the ins and outs of how our transit system operates. You will begin learning the details of how the MBTA’s rail, bus, and ferry network helps move a million people around Greater Boston every day.
- Scheduling Tools for Transit Officials: You’ll immerse yourself in the ecosystem of tools and processes that transit operators currently use to select their work. You will pair with the Product and Engineering leads to understand the system architecture and map needs to a research plan.
We want to hear from you if you have these capabilities:
- Information Architecture and Systems Thinking: You have a good sense of how to break a large system into smaller parts. You can partner with Engineering to audit existing systems and plan user flows for a new system. You can help develop a sitemap, pages, and modules. You can help identify necessary content for each section.
- Interaction Design & Usability Testing: You can create wireframes, workflows, prototypes, and production design assets to support the development of digital products. You’re able to conduct usability tests using a variety of qualitative and quantitative remote usability methods. (Note: we hope to reincorporate in-person research and testing methods into our toolbox only when it is safe to do so.)
- Cross-discipline collaboration: CTD teams are generally interdisciplinary, so you’re able to work closely with Product Management, Engineering, data specialists, and Content in an agile environment. As a Designer, you’ll help communicate design and content intent across product teams to ensure rider-facing information is rendered consistently.
And are this kind of person:
- Empathetic: You think about end users constantly and are always looking for ways to understand their lived experience.
- Communicative: CTD is an interdisciplinary team sitting within a large public agency. You’re able to take design prototypes, feature ideas, research & testing results, and other design outputs, and communicate them to internal stakeholders clearly and effectively.
- Systems thinker: The MBTA is a complex, 120-year old transit agency with a huge number of moving parts. In order to design the right solutions, our team needs to understand the complexities of running transit services, the business operations of the MBTA, and how riders and staff interact with the system.
Work experience guidelines:
- Although we’re mostly interested in your ability to do the work listed above as demonstrated in your portfolio, here are some guidelines on the capabilities and experience we think might be most suited for this role. Please keep in mind that these are advisory, and not required.
- 3-5 years of professional experience in user experience, visual design, interaction design, or a related field
- Expertise in design tools like Sketch or Adobe Creative Suite
- Experience working in an agile development environment
- Experience using online collaboration tools (e.g. Slack, Asana, etc.)
- Working familiarity with HTML and CSS
- Solid understanding of accessible design principles for the web and for physical spaces
- Familiarity with the MBTA transit system as a rider
- Formal education in design, usability, fine art, writing, or a related field (This could be a college degree, a bootcamp, a certificate program, or something else entirely)
This is a full-time hourly position within the Customer Technology Department at the MBTA. We work with payroll vendors that offer benefits such as pre-taxed health insurance, 401k options, and paid sick time. After at least one year on the job, there may be an opportunity to become a salaried employee with the MBTA.
Diversity and inclusion are essential to us at CTD. We believe that we can only design and build tools for our riders if our team reflects the wide variety of people who use MBTA services all over eastern Massachusetts. We strive to be inclusive in our approach to both hiring and product development, and we strongly encourage applicants from historically underrepresented groups to apply for this position.
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