Lead UX Designer & Strategist (part time)

Coalition for Seamless Access

Lead UX Designer & Strategist – estimated .25 FTE for 12 months; Location: remote

The Coalition for Seamless Access seeks a strategically minded senior UX practitioner who can use UX research and design activities to help evolve and improve adoption of the SeamlessAccess.org service. The Coalition is actively collaborating with service providers who are implementing the SeamlessAccess persistence service, button, and/or central identity provider discovery service in a Beta Phase. The UX designer is expected to take a lead role providing design guidance and consulting with the UX teams of implementing organizations, as well as plan and help execute ongoing validation of existing and evolving design recommendations, including usability testing, user research and analytics.

Success in this role will require close collaboration with the development team and a diverse set of stakeholders from multiple organizations.

Main tasks and responsibilities:

• Lead the development of appropriate design recommendations that will work across a broad-spectrum of implementation use-cases, based on a deep understanding of implementers’ use cases and design constraints. Ensure solution meets accessibility standards.
• Together with SeamlessAccess Product Manager, drive the ideation, creation, and review of UX designs and facilitate decision-making. Define appropriate methods to validate the value and usability of design solutions. Serve as the advocate for the end user by performing user research, conducting user task analysis, developing use cases, and communicating user needs to stakeholders.
• Help ensure an ongoing dialog with SeamlessAccess users, integrators, and community by facilitating workshops, running design reviews and other collaborative working experiences.
• Advocate and articulate the SeamlessAccess.org design principles, patterns, and recommendations to product teams at implementing organizations.
• Update and maintain UX guidelines documentation (see Seamlessaccess.org/documentation)
• Participate in regular design reviews and provide and receive constructive feedback.
• Effectively convey interaction design elements and interactions to the development team, including responsive and visual design specifications as needed.
• Design and help implement aspects of the branding, information site and other collateral for the Coalition.

Skills and experience:

• 8 or more years of industry experience in UX design, interaction design, information architecture, UX strategy, user research or similar field.
• Strong portfolio of work demonstrating experience applying user centered design, user analysis techniques, and responsive web design. Experience creating and applying design patterns a plus.
• Demonstrated experience leading complex projects with multiple stakeholders.
• Able to produce design artifacts with tools such as Adobe XD, Sketch, Photoshop, etc.
• Experience designing to meet current WCAG accessibility standards; ability to interpret and validate that a product meets global accessibility standards.
• Able to take complex information and communicate it clearly, concisely, and accurately.
• Good presentation skills.
• Experience in authentication and identity management technologies a plus.
• Familiarity with scholarly communications and publishing a plus.
• Ability to work effectively with remote, global teams.
• Fluent in English.

Employment conditions

This position will be subject to a temporary consultancy contract with STM Solutions against a fixed or not-to-exceed fee and will not entail an employment contract. The first contract will be for 6 months at 0.25 FTE, open to further extensions and possibly at a different work-factor as the project requires.

About the Coalition for Seamless Access

The Coalition for Seamless Access is a collaboration between four organizations: GÉANT, Internet2, the National Information Standards Organization (NISO), and the International Association of STM Publishers (STM). SeamlessAccess is a service designed to help foster a more streamlined online access experience when using scholarly collaboration tools, information resources, and shared research infrastructure. The service promotes digital authentication leveraging an existing single-sign-on infrastructure through one’s home institution, while maintaining an environment that protects personal data and privacy.

To apply

To apply, please email your resume and a cover letter highlighting your relevant skills and experience and how it applies to the role and requirements outlined, to Hylke Koers, Program Director SeamlessAccess (hylke@stm-solutions.org)