Product Designer, CaliforniaColleges.edu
Product Designer, CaliforniaColleges.edu
Remote
All candidates must live in California.
Posted: 10/3/22
The California College Guidance Initiative
is looking for a Product Designer to join the CaliforniaColleges.edu Team. As part of the team, you will be designing intuitive experiences for 6-12th grade students, parents, and educators on California’s official college and career planning platform.
The ideal person for this team excels in UI design, collaborating across teams, and employing design thinking methods and a user-centered approach to solve complex problems. They also have knowledge and/or curiosity about the needs and behaviors of students, educators, and parents, and a passion for educational equity.
The Product Designer will work directly with the Director of Product Design and UX Researcher, and be heavily involved in the end-to-end design process, to carry out the product vision.
We work to solve large scale, system-level problems. You must be comfortable working with unknowns and ambiguous solutions, as well as passionate about promoting public education and advancing educational equity.
We are looking for two product designers. One will focus more on the student experience and one will focus more on the educator experience on the platform.
What Will You Be Doing?
- Design intuitive experiences that empower our students, educators, and parents to confidently use the tools and resources on CaliforniaColleges.edu.
- Work closely with our UX Researcher to gather feedback and insights from our users by conducting usability testing, user interviews, surveys, etc.
- Make value-driven design decisions, based on user research insights, that translate into clear, simple UI designs.
- Create and present design deliverables (e.g. sketches, wireframes, hi-fidelity mock-ups, user flows, and rapid prototypes) in a way that engenders confidence in you and your solutions within the team and greater organization.
- Work with our product team to ensure that design intent matches feature specs by supporting documentation, designing test case scenarios, etc.
What Technical Skills Do You Need?
- An outstanding portfolio that demonstrates how you have created experiences that solved business and user needs, and highlights the design process for responsive, web apps.
- Minimum of three (3) + years of experience applying user experience principles to visual and interaction design.
- Expert-level skills with current design and prototyping tools. (We’ll be using Figma. We’re open to ramping you up if this is not your primary tool.)
- Ability to gather, analyze, synthesize, and present both quantitative and qualitative information effectively.
- Familiarity with component-based design systems–creating or maintaining a style guide, component library, and pattern library.
- Bachelor’s degree in design or related field, or the equivalent years of relevant experience.
What Intangibles Do You Need?
- Thrive in a collaborative, explorative environment and value being on a diverse team that you can bounce ideas off of, get constructive feedback from, and unite to mature design thinking.
- Practice active listening and contribute to group situations (e.g. brainstorm, feedback, whiteboard sessions, etc.).
- Confidence to make decisions and advance projects without detailed supervision.
- Curious mindset with a relentless desire to validate assumptions and uncover a problem’s root cause by testing, learning, and iterating.
- High tolerance for complex projects with high levels of ambiguity and resilience in the face of obstacles.
- Constantly seek opportunities to promote design thinking with everyone at the organization.
- Strong organizational, project, and time-management skills.
- Excellent communication skills and the ability to connect with people at all levels.
More about the CaliforniaColleges.edu Team
The team is composed of individuals, working remotely across California, who support content, user support, data integrations, and product development (e.g. UX/UI, specification development, quality assurance testing). Not all of us have a product development or technical background, but we believe in continuous learning and are deeply self-motivated.
The team does not include developers. We work closely with a product manager and developers at our vendor to handle this portion of the product.
Those who thrive here exhibit a growth mindset, are interested in improving and/or building their skill sets, and are willing to take initiative to learn more. This role reports to the Director of Product Design.
More about CCGI
The California College Guidance Initiative (CCGI) works to ensure that all 6th-12th grade students in California have access to a systematic baseline of guidance and support as they plan, prepare, and pay for postsecondary education and training.
This baseline is provided by CaliforniaColleges.edu, which provides California students and educators with a wide range of college and career planning information and tools. The site also houses, audits, and transmits student data to help ensure more accurate and efficient decisions regarding admissions, financial aid, and course placement. CCGI provides technical assistance, support, and training to K-12 school districts in order to support students, counselors, and parents with the systematic use of CaliforniaColleges.edu, including its transcript-informed tools.
CCGI forms the core of the college planning and application tools in California’s newly-launched Cradle-to-Career System. Over the next few years, the Cradle-to-Career System will scale CCGI so that all California 6th-12th grade students can have free access to our transcript-informed tools.
CCGI is a positive, diverse, and supportive culture. At our core, we prioritize the needs of students above all else.
Everyone at CCGI works remotely. We are all located in various parts of California. We rarely meet in person. Instead, we make use of tools, such as ZOOM, Slack, and Salesforce, to communicate and document our work.CCGI is housed at the Foundation for California Community Colleges but is an autonomous initiative with its own mission, goals, and leadership team.
The application process will be open until the position is filled.
The Foundation for California Community Colleges (Foundation) is committed to providing an environment of mutual respect where equal employment opportunities (EEO) are available to all employees and applicants without regard to race, color, ancestry, national origin, genetic characteristics, sex, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, marital/parental status, political affiliation, religion, age, disability, pregnancy, childbirth, breastfeeding or veteran status. In addition to federal law requirements, the Foundation for California Community Colleges complies with applicable state and local laws governing nondiscrimination in employment.
The Foundation for California Community Colleges is committed to workplace policies and hiring practices that comply with federal, state, and local law. During the hiring process, the Foundation is interested in hiring qualified candidates who are eligible and authorized to work in the United States. However, at this time, the Foundation is not able to sponsor visas. As a result, the Foundation cannot hire applicants that currently, or in the future, require immigration sponsorship for work authorization (i.e., H1B or F1 Student Visa).
CCGI is housed at the Foundation for California Community Colleges but is an autonomous initiative with its own mission, goals, and leadership team.
The Foundation for California Community Colleges (Foundation) is committed to providing an environment of mutual respect where equal employment opportunities (EEO) are available to all employees and applicants without regard to race, color, ancestry, national origin, genetic characteristics, sex, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, marital/parental status, political affiliation, religion, age, disability, pregnancy, childbirth, breastfeeding or veteran status. In addition to federal law requirements, the Foundation for California Community Colleges complies with applicable state and local laws governing nondiscrimination in employment.
The Foundation for California Community Colleges is committed to workplace policies and hiring practices that comply with federal, state, and local law. During the hiring process, the Foundation is interested in hiring qualified candidates who are eligible and authorized to work in the United States. However, at this time, the Foundation is not able to sponsor visas. As a result, the Foundation cannot hire applicants that currently, or in the future, require immigration sponsorship for work authorization (i.e., H1B or F1 Student Visa).
Application Instructions
- Click the apply button below to be taken to the Foundation for California Community Colleges website, where the application is housed.
- Include both a cover letter and resume with your application.