Job Senior Designer in Toronto

Senior Designer | Full Time (1 Year Term)

Digital Public Square seeks a Senior Designer whose eyes light up when they hear about an opportunity to design for whole communities, combat misinformation, and tackle complex global affairs projects.

We are a technology powered non-profit that works to build healthy communities enabled by good technology. We aren’t a tech company that declared a mission. We are a mission based Not-for-Profit that builds great technology. In fact, we don’t define ourselves by what we are “not” (ie: a Not-For-Profit), rather we define ourselves as a For-Impact organization laser focused on helping people who urgently need support.

Our commitment to Diversity, Inclusion, Equity and Belonging are baked into our culture and our technology offering: Equality comes from meaningful participation; Diversity is how we grow.

We pay competitive wages and health benefits and are chock full of intrinsic rewards.

About Digital Public Square

Communities are healthier when they have vibrant spaces and opportunities to cultivate belonging, inclusion, connectedness, and meaningful engagement. Digital Public Square and its founding team have spent the better part of a decade learning how to create tools that generate these outcomes with good technology.

From building platforms that track political accountability; to tackling critical public health issues that impact the world; to empowering new voices countering violent online narratives with evocative campaigns; to creating new ways for neighbourhood communities to reach decisions — Digital Public Square has created tools that enable people to more safely explore complex ideas at scale.

How you work:

• Thoughtful, flexible, and affable
• Thorough and keen attention to detail
• Able to balance priorities of a diverse set of stakeholders on shared projects
• A critical thinker, not afraid to ask questions
• Proactive problem solver
• Result oriented
• Collaborative and communicative
• Continuously Learning
• Outcome and Impact Oriented
• Innovative
• Fosters healthy relationships

What you will do:

Working closely with our project managers, developers, and the Creative Lead, you will join our cross-functional team and contribute in the following ways:

• Designing unique interactive experiences, from static web pages to interactive games, that genuinely engage communities and address their individual needs.
  
• Applying human-centered design principles to influence product strategy and direction.
• Participating in user research to discover insights, define user personas, and map user journeys
• Helping develop user personas, user flows, design concepts, low- and high-fidelity wireframes, prototypes, UI standards documents, and other design documents as needed.
• Breaking down complex messaging into intuitive user experiences
• Collaborating with internal stakeholders and teams to establish a vision for design
• Collaborating with diverse community stakeholders to ensure products meet the needs of the audience
• Collaborating with engineers to create a successful product
• Collaborating with data analysts to measure the effectiveness of marketing and design and make changes based on results
• Ensuring standards and best practices are appropriately communicated and documented.

Who you are:
We strive to build our team with members from a diverse background and skill set, so if any combination of the following skills applies to you, please apply.

• Strong at concept-development and campaign thinking
  
• Demonstrated ux/ui skills
• Experience with design QA
• Ability to create accessible and disability-inclusive designs
• Good communication skills and loves feedback
• Experience working on multiple projects with competing deadlines
• Ability to balance quality with timelines
• Expertise using Adobe Suite and Figma for design
• Familiarity with design systems
• Experience working with front end developers and data analysts
• You’re more interested in growing your career as a leader in the Toronto not-for-profit design space than building a portfolio.

Bonus if you have any of the following (tell us about it in your cover letter!):

• Experience with product design processes
• Demonstrated interest (academic, professional or lived) in global affairs projects
• Interest in the mis/disinformation space
• Experience in digital outreach or digital product development
• Experience working with external design and dev contractors
• Experience navigating different cultural contexts and sensitivities
• Experience designing educational experiences
• Experience designing simple online games
• Illustration skills
• Animation skills

What to expect as a candidate:

We understand that joining a team is one of the most important decisions you make. Adding a team member is one of the most important decisions we make. We want you to get to know us and we want to understand how you approach problems, how you learn, and what makes you tick. Our vision is to build healthy communities that raise the quality of life for everyone, and that includes our team members. While we are never perfect, we have built a process that attempts to foster fairness and help to minimize bias by using structured processes and interviews.

Our goal is that everyone interviewed has a positive experience, regardless of the outcome.

Stage 1: Send us your resume and a note about how your story connects to ours (For LinkedIn you have to put the note and resume in a single file). Feel free to focus on what you have learned rather than just a list of responsibilities. Tell us your story! We believe a resume should be a value proposition rather than simply a list of places you’ve worked. We promise that a human will read each and every story. We’ll aim to tell you quickly if it is not the right fit so you are always informed.

Stage 2: Successful candidates may have a phone or video conversation with Justin Kogler (Creative Lead at DPS). It will be standardized to keep things fair but also with enough room to show your uniqueness. We’ll communicate the salary range now for full transparency. If you like us and we think there is a fit, we’ll invite you to the next stage.

Stage 3: Virtual discussions with the hiring manager and other relevant team members. Come with questions!

Stage 4: We might ask you to participate in a short exercise that gives you a realistic preview of the work and gives us insight into how you operate. No need to prepare, show us what you already know!

Stage 5: If you are offered the position we might need to perform a background check as we work with sensitive data.

What you'll enjoy about DPS:

• You get to help create products that will genuinely help communities who have been marginalized or made more vulnerable.
• You will wear many hats, be a crucial part of company growth, and take on new initiatives from scratch.
• Self Development & Education. Never stop learning! We support and subsidize many conferences, classes, and books.
• Health Care Coverage and flexible personal & sick days. We want our team to be happy and healthy.
• Monthly Creative days! No meetings to give people an opportunity to disconnect from the immediacy of our regular work, and reflect on the bigger challenges that our work contributes to.

Terms:

This is a 12 month term position with health benefits starting immediately with the potential for a permanent position. Due to COVID-19 we are a “digital by default” company with team members working remotely. We are exclusively looking for people legally entitled to work in Canada for any employer, without restriction on a permanent basis AND an Ontario based resident that can join us in the downtown Toronto office.

DPS strongly believes that diversity of experience, perspectives, and background will result in a better environment for our employees and a better product for our users. DPS is an equal opportunity employer. We do not discriminate against applicants based on race, colour, religion, sex, national origin, or disability, or any other status or condition protected by Ontario or local law. DPS is committed to workplace diversity and will provide accommodation to applicants with disabilities throughout the hiring process.