Work With 4ourth Mobile

Do you have the skills, interest and attitude to help 4ourth Mobile provide services to our clients? Read through, see if you agree (and have the skills) and maybe we can work together. Need more info, or want to apply for one, just contact us.

Open Needs

UX Designer - Staff Augmentation - San Diego

Full time, on-site in a Fortune 100 client office, creating, reviewing and assisting concepts and detailed design work.

This is distinctly UX work. The organization has a team doing UI and setting standards for it, but need to bring it together, be more consistent, and start thinking about interaction, IA, ID.

This is not a web only position, but on every platform. Desktop and mobile web, mobile apps, Windows and macOS apps, embedded controllers, email, SMS, printed manuals and quick-start cards, and packaging. Maybe more. This is ecosystem design at it's best.

4ourth Mobile already has someone in San Diego you'll work with all the time, and you'll get to talk to others on the team (via Skype, etc.) at least weekly. We won't leave you high and dry with the client, but you'll be part of a team effort to pursue this design.

Philosophy

If you know (or know of) me at all, you know that I have strongly held beliefs around design, what devices we design for, how important the user is in the process, and what makes a good design document. This article covers key principles of design, and others Steven wrote may be worth perusing as well to see if you agree with the way we pursue design work. The following principles of design work should help you understand if you'd like to work with us:

• Be empathetic to your customers, your clients, your co-workers. No Nazis. Not kidding.
• Be open and sharing, early and often - Reveal ideas and concepts early. Make plans, and tell everyone about it. If you are going to miss a deadline, tell everyone immediately.
• Write down your tasks - Make sure you actually do everything you promised to do.
• Design is documenting - We draw, and we specify. We create design documents that are efficient, useful, clear, and will make sense years from now. You should (ideally!) not have to verbally explain anything in a specification document.
• Design for all scales - We do good and high fidelity design, but never "pixel perfect." Don't pick your favorite platform and do that first, or only.
• Prototyping is fine also - But it's not final.
• The right platform is whatever the business and user needs. Web? App? Both probably. iOS, Android? Probably both, but whichever one the end users work with most.
• Don't be swayed by personal opinion or biases.
• Divorce data from opinion - You can have opinions, but most of the time when you argue a point with the product team, it is based on observation, research, or principles.
• Don't assume everyone's data is yours - Get data about how our users of this product work.
• Play to your strengths - Build for devices and ways of working people actually use.
• Let computers do computery things, so people can do human things - Don't make people enter data we have or type in specific formats.
• Design systems to be resilient - Components, connections, and data will fail you. Plan on it, without having to write error messages.
• Create a hierarchy of tasks and stick to it - Extend IA into the view level, and make it consistent across the product.

This article outlines are some really good practices as well. Call it a roadmap for your career if you wish, but I also find it's a mindset thing and you don't need to have been doing this for twenty years to have these attributes.

Terms

4ourth Mobile gets contracts with clients to perform work, based on a rate and hours. For most of the above needs, you are not an employee, but an independent subcontractor of ours, performing work for hire.

Wait, so you don't actually hire people?

Traditionally, agencies hire you on full time and give you business cards and a desk, then fire you when the work disappears. Been there. I don't think it fosters a good environment, and I don't want to promise you full time employment if I can't give it. So these are contract/free-lance type jobs, even the full time ones. When I am confident the work is regular and persistent enough I can offer full time actual employment, and you want that, then I will.

Also notice that some of the work is for proposed projects, and I (probably) get the contract once I find a person. I have to go that direction, annoyingly. That means if you like one, and agree to work it, some time passes between that and actually working, or you do related work but maybe not exactly what what we both want for a bit. We'll discuss that before you have to commit to anything./

So, that may make me look like a shady jerk, but I am very deliberately doing that now so I don't have to either string you along, or fire you without notice (or both) later on. Questions? Ask away!

How much do you pay?

Rate, and most everything, is negotiable. Tell me what you think you are worth an hour and we'll talk about it.

I am happy to work with you as an individual, or as a company. There can be tax benefits to setting up a little company for yourself, so more often than not individuals do that. It's fine with me.

We Cover...

Yeah, no benefits because you work for yourself. Think about that when you ask for your rate.

We do pay for directly work related expenses, such as software you may not have.

Basic work stuff, we usually do not. You have to have internet and a computer for example. Commuting is on you, but travel like to another city for a research project is an expense you submit.

If any of that is confusing, just ask.