UX Designer

Here at Planet Argon, our team is our product, so when we decided to start looking for another designer to throw into the mix we knew we were going to need to find someone special.

A design dynamo with a wide range of skills and interests. A person with an undeniable passion for the web and a curious mind always looking for new ways to learn and grow. Someone who can move from design strategy discussions, to HTML and CSS implementation, to creating stellar visual designs, all in one day. If you have the skills to pull this off, the energy to work with a highly collaborative team, and the drive to deliver your best at every turn… then read on!

Core Skills…

Visual Design (layout + graphics)
Information Architecture (organization + findability)
Interaction Design (activity/task flows + interaction patterns)
Information Design (presentation + language)
User Research (collection + analysis)
HTML/CSS (and some JavaScript too)

Bonus Points for Experience With…

Copywriting
User Testing
Ethnographic Research
Marketing
Ruby on Rails, Agile development, and/or source control (we use Git)
Web Analytics
SEO

What Else We Are Looking For…

The ability to empathize with users
Understand the role of business objectives
Imaginative and curious (about almost everything!)
Quick to grasp new concepts and learn new skills
The ability (and desire) to communicate rationale for ideas
Provide and accept constructive feedback
Collaborative work style
Good listening and communication skills
Comfortable exploring ambiguous ideas, and knowing when to move from ambiguity to detailed definition
Deep enough understanding of technology to know what can and can't be done, and how easy something will be
Thirst for knowledge and a strong desire to grow skillset

Technology/Software You Should Be Comfortable With…

Mac OS - no Windows machines in this office!
Textmate for handcoded HTML/CSS
Terminal for source control, among other things
Omnigraffle and/or Fireworks for task flows and wireframes
Fireworks and/or Photoshop for visual design elements
Google Docs

Designer Challenge

We have put together a small exercise for new applicants. It shouldn't take you more than 15 minutes (unless you choose to spend more time on it), and we are looking for basic text responses at minimum. Please look over the following instructions and then answer the "big three questions" at the end.

You have been asked to redesign a form for a recipe application and the client has given you the following list of design constraints:

The wireframe for adding a recipe.
The site's color palette.
The client really likes Flickr's sign up button.
You may modify the copy and field labels, but the number of fields (and the information collected) must stay the same.

The big three questions:

What would you do to improve the experience of interacting with the form?
How would you create an aesthetically appealing page?
How would you markup the page with HTML and CSS?

Your responses to the above questions can be as simple as a few sentences of explanation, or—if you feel so inclined—you may want to visually demonstrate your changes using HTML/CSS. How you choose to respond is up to you, we are more interested in the content of your answers than the presentation itself.

How to Apply…

Please send us an email with the following:

Cover letter
Resume
Challenge response
Bonus points for a video response.

This position was posted on December 3rd, 2009.

Planet Argon is an equal-opportunity employer.

Planet Argon Perks…

TriMet pass (we love public transit!)
Benefits after 90 days:
- Medical insurance
- Dental insurance
- Simple IRA
- 3 weeks of paid vacation (accrued over the year)
Friendly, creative, relaxed-professional work environment
Downtown/Chinatown area, near Powell’s Technical Bookstore, Ground Kontrol, and Backspace.