User Experience Designer (freelance)

News Catalyst is looking to hire a freelance user experience designer to help us build the Tiny News Platform, a core offering of the Tiny News Collective.

News Catalyst is a project based at Temple University’s Klein College of Media and Communication and funded by the Knight-Lenfest Local News Transformation Fund that provides tools, fosters collaboration, and promotes experimentation in service of building digitally sustainable news organizations.

We form the operations team of the Tiny News Collective. The Tiny News Collective is an effort to make journalism entrepreneurship more accessible and achievable for people across the country seeking to serve their communities with quality local news and information. We provide the technology, resources and coaching to help people build sustainable news organizations that reflect and serve their communities.

News Catalyst is looking to hire a freelance user experience designer to help us build the Tiny News Platform, a core offering of the Tiny News Collective. The Tiny News Platform allows members of the Tiny News Collective to create a complete digital news business with web publishing, newsletters, membership, analytics, comments and more.

Our platform includes a full front-end website for news organizations, newsletters, content management tools, analytics dashboards, training material and more. The User Experience Designer will be responsible for creating a unified user experience for these tools.

We will work on defining the user experience for both journalists using our platform to create and readers who engage with the news organizations on our platform. This will require user research and testing, which the User Experience Designer will lead.

From that research, the User Experience Designer will scope out the user experience for each tool, helping define necessary functionality and ideal user flows for each use case. In addition, the User Experience Designer will create a comprehensive style guide that we can apply to tools across the project.

Time permitting, the User Experience Designer may also contribute to the general branding and marketing design of the Tiny News Collective as a whole, rethinking our marketing website and branding approach.

Position Type: Freelance

Compensation: $60,000

Location: Remote

Application deadline: Apr 01, 2022 11:59 pm

Selection timeline:

Responsibilities

Conduct user research to determine user needs on Tiny News Platform tooling
Redesign Tiny News Platform tooling so that tools meet user needs
Create a style guide for the Tiny News Collective that can be used across tooling and outward marketing

Skills, experience and interests

We look for people who share our passion for equipping aspiring founders to build local news organizations, who want to be involved in a deeply collaborative work environment and are invested in building a better future for local journalism.

We are open to applicants from a broad range of professional and education backgrounds and welcome you to apply for positions that you feel are a good fit for your skills and experience.

This position is a great fit for a seasoned user experience designer who is interested in journalism and supporting entrepreneurs in building sustainable news businesses.

Our members are spread across the country and come with a wide variety of experience and backgrounds. Adaptability and clear communication are crucial skills for this role.

We're looking for the following skills:

You can implement interface design in HTML and CSS.
You can craft generalized style guides that can be applied to a wide range of scenarios.
You have taken design projects from conception to completion efficiently and effectively.
You believe in user-centered design and are comfortable leading user testing, research, and other activities to help us craft the technical solutions we build.
You are comfortable working with a remote team.
You proactively communicate about your work.
You are a collaborative listener.
You have the ability to adapt and adjust as we respond to founder needs.

Benefits

How to apply

To apply, send an email to jobs@newscatalyst.org with the subject line "User Experience Designer." Please include a résumé and a portfolio showcasing at least two projects where you acted as a designer on the project.