The Jackson Laboratory (JAX) is at the forefront of ground-breaking research whose purpose is to to rid the world of its most vexing and debilitating diseases, from cancer to diabetes to Alzheimer’s. The User Experience Designer crafts meaningful, engaging digital experiences that measurably advance the lab’s key initiatives and business goals. You play a central role in shaping how JAX’s diverse constituents perceive and interact with the lab across its numerous digital platforms.
Reporting to the Senior Web Architect, the successful UX Designer will build and maintain strong working relationships with a cross section of the lab, establishing a leadership role in the evolution of JAX’s digital experiences.
Those who get to know you well will observe that:
- You are a great listener and also a great advocate for user-centered design.
- You are able to translate complex business requirements into elegant user interfaces.
- You are both near and far-sighted: detail oriented but also aware of the bigger picture.
- You are equally comfortable communicating with (and often being the bridge between) business stakeholders, research scientists, and web developers.
- You are up to date and fluent in the latest UX best practices and tools.
Responsibilities
Research &Analysis
Research &Analysis
- Gain a thorough understanding of JAX’s competitors and peers and learn how they have approached and attempted to solve similar design problems.
- Interview internal users, external users, and various stakeholders to gain key insights based on their subjective, first-hand experiences.
- Communicate research goals, methods, and findings to stakeholders, employing journey maps, user persona diagrams, empathy maps, storyboards, stakeholder maps, and other visualizations.
- Define metrics to measure the success of released products. Gather real-world data to validate or refute assumptions.
- Effectively communicate your findings and use them to materially improve current and future products.
Experience Design
- Work with product managers and other stakeholders to gather and document detailed product requirements, relying upon the findings of your research.
- Apply your deep knowledge of emerging technologies and UI frameworks to design digital experiences that are responsive and adaptive.
- Create, present, and test high-fidelity mockups and functional prototypes;iterate on them, incorporating stakeholder, user, and customer feedback.
- Produce feature-complete, pixel-perfect design artifacts, covering all key use cases and including all final assets, for hand off to the development team.
- Provide guidance to the development team and communicate clearly with developers to address any design issues uncovered in the development process.
Design Leadership
- Lead identification of and advocacy for user needs to the JAX IT technology teams, product management teams, and business leadership.
- Spearhead the creation and adoption of comprehensive, organization-wide design standards and resources, in close collaboration with product managers, designers and developers.
- Facilitate collaborative design activities to drive insights and consensus among decision makers in order to support user-centered digital experiences.
- Drive continuous innovation and improvement of JAX’s digital experiences. Make excellence repeatable, collaborating on and clearly communicating a coherent design process.
- Anticipate the value of emerging UX technologies and practices, recognize those that might benefit JAX, and share and apply your vision.
Qualifications
- College diploma or university degree in the field of design, visual design, or digital/software design. Masters in Fine Art (MFA) preferred.
- Effective written, oral, interpersonal, and relationship-building skills.
- 6+ years of experience as an experience designer, with at least 2 years in a role where the designer worked in a leadership capacity.
- Strong ability to synthesize divergent research and insights and communicate clearly to developers and product management.
- Experience with and ability to lead others in the use of tools and techniques to drive collaborative design, communications, prototyping, and visual representations of user experience.
- Design thinking, LeanUX or similar, certifications showing coaching and practitioner level (or equivalent)
- Ability to lead small projects, coach designers and developers, and communicate with IT and business leaders.
- Proven ability to design exceptional user experiences.
About JAX
The Jackson Laboratory (JAX) is an independent, nonprofit biomedical research institution with more than 2,400 employees. Headquartered in Bar Harbor, Maine, it has a National Cancer Institute-designated Cancer Center in Augusta, Maine, a genomic medicine institute in Farmington, Connecticut, and facilities in Ellsworth, Maine, Sacramento, California, and Shanghai, China. Its mission is to discover precise genomic solutions for disease and empower the global biomedical community in the shared quest to improve human health.
JAX employees work in a collaborative, value-driven, and team-based environment where the focus is on advancing science and improving patients’ lives. Researchers apply genetics to increase the understanding of human disease and advance treatments and cures for cancer, neurological and immune disorders, diabetes, aging, and heart disease. JAX was voted among the top 15 “Best Places to Work in Academia” in the United States in a poll conducted by The Scientist magazine!
EEO Statement
The Jackson Laboratory provides equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants for employment in all job classifications without regard to race, color, religion, age, mental disability, physical disability, medical condition, gender, sexual orientation, genetic information, ancestry, marital status, national origin, veteran status, and other classifications protected by applicable state and local non-discrimination laws.