Packback's mission is to empower every student to be fearlessly curious and find their unique voice.
These few words shape everything we do at Packback from the smallest decision to the largest. Over the last decade since our company's founding, our team has seen first-hand the power of giving students intentionally designed spaces in their learning experience to be autonomous and curious. We have also seen the incredible benefits of using AI technology to shorten feedback loops and help students revise their work before they submit.
Packback is a pedagogy partner that uses technology as a "means to an end" to shorten feedback loops for students and instructors, improve writing and critical thinking skills, and cultivate student-centered, trust-based educational learning environments.
Who we are
Packback team members are passionate, mission-driven lifelong learners. Many of us spent time as educators in classrooms and have experienced first hand just how draining the day to day of educating can be. We have seen the gap between the most and least prepared students grow wider every year. The pressure to close that gap has once rested directly on our shoulders, and we understand the enormous cost of addressing that gap, and also not addressing that gap .
Some of us were intrinsically motivated students, the "teacher's pets" who never want to stop learning. Some of us were the distracted or unmotivated students who wished their instructors would have adopted the pedagogy behind Packback. But all of us share a passionate commitment to our purpose.
About The Role
As a User Experience Designer at Packback's, you will be responsible for designing effective and inspiring user experiences for projects on our product roadmap and building an experience that brings our company's purpose to life.
UX Design is a highly strategic position at Packback and works at the intersection of product, engineering, and business goals.
In this role, you will work within the product team and be responsible for designing exceptional user experiences which meet the functional requirements, achieve the desired outcome metrics/goals, and-most importantly-create an inspiring experience on Packback for educators and students that brings our company purpose to life.
You'll be responsible for research initiatives that span across the entire duration of the project, which help to scope the project (user discovery research, market research), refine the proposed solution (usability research, prototyping), and test the results of research (designing roll-out plans, and experimental approaches to test the impact of designs).
You'll be responsible for considering and improving the complete platform experience as an overall experience. In this role, your core deliverable will most often be design prototypes (typically in Figma), but you will also use other tools and methods to communicating design goals (written descriptions of interaction designs, animations, pairing with engineers to live-workshop a UI or interaction, etc.) to ensure that the right user experience is brought to life in the code. In this role, you are responsible for the outcome of the designs on the platform, not just the design artifacts you produce.
You will be an active participant in ensuring that the "right" solution is released to users, including developing iterations on initial designs and performing design QA to ensure that the final product fully delivers on the design vision and functional requirements for the project.
You will be responsible for the design experience from initial designs all the way to their live launch in the platform and the monitoring of their performance after launch.
What will success look like in this role?
You should care deeply about understanding the purpose of Packback (to awaken and fuel lifelong student curiosity) and have every decision made in your designs work to ultimately serve that purpose. To do this, we want someone to join our team who is curious about learning how to design educational learning experiences for students, understanding student motivation, and understanding professor needs and pain points.
You should be excited by the prospect of working on projects that iteratively reduce "UX friction" throughout the entire user experience on Packback and actively work to remediate "design debt" through their work.
You will need to be comfortable with ruthlessly avoiding scope creep to solve the specific problem at hand. We are a startup with a small product team and deliver our product iteratively to our users. There are many problems to be solved, but only one team to solve them. Prioritizing the core needs of the user experience is key.
Your personal values should naturally align with the company values, to ensure that this work environment aligns with the
Qualifications
4-5 years of past work experience as a product UX designer, including prioritization, user research, and design.
Demonstrated knowledge and ability to apply user experience best practices to solve tangible user (and business) problems through design, including demonstration of the ability to seamlessly build upon existing design styles.
Demonstrated ability in taking planned user flows and user stories and designing effective user experiences to fulfill product requirements
Proficient with Figma, usability testing experience, and user interviewing experience, using both qualitative and quantitative methods to assess a design's efficacy.
Demonstrated understanding and application of Accessibility and universal design principles in past work.
Note: We will check portfolio pieces for accessibility. If any of your work in your portfolio is not accessible in accordance with WCAG 2.0 standards, it would benefit your application to make note of this. This will show us your experience in and understanding of what makes an accessible design.
Excellent interpersonal communication to collaborate with a team to work towards the desired deliverable and timeline, while inspiring the team to be creative, challenge designs, and look for simpler solutions.
Effective UI copywriting skills.
Nice to have: Illustration skills using vector-based illustration programs and some technical knowledge preferred (for prototyping and effective specification-writing).
While coding is not a requirement for this role, a foundational understanding of how software is built and the ability to quickly understand what makes a specific design solution easy (or hard) to implement is valuable.
Why work at Packback?
Build a meaningful career while innovating the future of education as a part of a company culture that fosters the growth, safety, and creativity of its employees.
Intentional Culture
Packback knows that the single most important part of any company is its people. We take building and maintaining a conscious and intentional culture of open communication, curiosity, and leadership extremely seriously. We work hard to make Packback a safe environment where people can focus on doing great work instead of dealing with drama.
Career Development
Packback's career development tracks present a unique balance between clarity and guidance around defined paths, and room for our team to forge their own path. Each team has its own career development tracks with support and training, and still allow for customization of these paths to create a role where a team member's full passions and abilities are put to use!
Thoughtful Benefits
Generous leave policies for welcoming new children or family care
Multiple Health and Welfare Benefit Options (Medical, Dental, Vision)
401k plan (with employer matching)
Flexible + Remote Work Opportunities
Unlimited PTO
Employer Assistance Program (EAP)
Calm and DoorDash subscriptions
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