[Sigia-l] New project - Director of UX ­ tech start up ­ Manhattan - $150-200k

[Ben Tregoing]

Director of UX – tech start up – Manhattan - $150-200k

Hello everyone,

I know a lot of you have secret (or not so secret) desires to try your hand at defining and implementing a user centered design process in a product / tech start up environment; to see the results of your work immediately and dramatically influence not only the direction of a product, but the fortunes of a whole company. Who wouldn’t want that level of visibility and rapid professional gratification?

But navigating your way through the start-up scene in NYC can be a time consuming and tiring experience; how do you find the companies with a solid business plan, stable funding, a clear vision, and the desire and understanding to actually do UX ‘right’? Our new client, based in Manhattan, could be just the company to consider.

What do they make:
The product is pretty fascinating; based around insanely complex semantic algorithms, using ‘big data’, natural language analysis and computational linguistics, the product aims to take the guesswork out of creating engaging and effective marketing copy. When generating marketing content and copy, the process mostly involves taking a ‘best guess’ at what will work; what will engage customers, what will achieve the desired effect, perhaps by looking at limited data sets of similar content. By modeling millions of pieces of content (defined as the ‘semantic space’), mapping this space to the emotions that will most effectively engage or persuade customers to act, and identifying the absolute best copy by way of complex statistical analysis, this product not only highlights the most effective copy format, but also provides insight into exactly which emotions and drivers are most important to customers.

The product, up until recently, was used solely internally by expert users, with no end user in mind outside of the company. But the core components of this technology can now be made available to the outside world, with the scope to completely change the way any sort of copy is created, for any purpose. Now that the opportunity is there to push this out to an external market, design and UX is a central consideration.

How do they make it:
The whole company, from the founders down, is aligned in recognizing the importance now of having a beautifully designed, intuitive product, fit for the external market. Everybody is ready to invest the time and money in achieving this. Whilst they are looking for someone to own the UX discipline, they also completely appreciate that for a design and UX discipline to have an impact, collaboration and cohesion are essential.

They are looking for someone to implement a transparent and collaborative UX process, and to own that process from research and requirements (user and business), through distillation and insights (working closely with tech, business, users etc..), to concept and ideation (collaborating with all key stakeholders), detailed design and specification (sketches, wireframes, flows and product maps), and all usability and testing efforts, all within a rapid, agile framework.

What are they looking for:
Whilst there is no design or UX team in place yet, someone with experience of leading teams and projects is essential. You don’t necessarily have to have built whole departments from scratch, but must have led projects (allocating resources, hiring and managing teams, defining process and approach, leading all stages of the UX process from beginning to end).

Also, agency experience is not enormously useful, unless you have been part of product focused agile development cycles, worked on data driven design projects (as opposed to ‘insights’ or creative / strategy led process’), and had ownership of a product post launch.

If you happened to have a working knowledge of HTML and CSS, could prototype your own design concepts, had a working knowledge of visual and UI design, knew your way around Photoshop, and were an expert data visualizer then, well, that would be just dandy (these things are not essential to the brief but, hey, it’s a start-up. All purple unicorns are welcome).

Drop me a note for more info.


Kind regards,

See me and the UXPA discuss how to create your UX portfolio: http://bit.ly/XIzrf0

Ben Tregoing | Founding Partner & Director - TDA-Digital Inc.

M: 917 208 0812
E: ben at tda-digital.com<mailto:304467ben at tda-digital.com>
US: 68 Jay Street | Suite 413 | Brooklyn | NY 11201
UK: 69-85 Tabernacle Street | London | EC2A 4BD

Happy to connect: [cid:C04B0950-5956-4A06-A27E-F1DA78476E8F] <http://uk.linkedin.com/in/bentregoing>   [cid:C5D86E2A-A09F-484C-82FB-F0F534F11026] <https://twitter.com/TDA_NYC>

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