Product Designer

A World-Changing Company
At FreeWroad, we’re passionate about building software that solves problems. We partner with the most important Travel institutions in Africa to transform how they use data and technology.

The Role
The FreeWroad Design Team is responsible for the human experience of using our software. Our team is growing rapidly, but we're committed to creating a tight-knit team environment that fosters trust, integrity, empathy, and growth. We work together in realizing a shared product vision, and regularly give feedback and critique to each other.
Designing at FreeWroad is a varied experience. On a given day, you might be: leading a design sprint for your product team; designing a micro-interaction to make a complex analytical task feel simple; and/or advocating for UX consistency by creating flexible, reusable UI components.

Core Responsibilities

• Interaction and visual design. As a product designer, you'll be involved at every stage of design work. You'll help define early product concepts, flesh out the high-level workflow and micro-interactions of a feature, and execute on a crisp and effective visual design. You should have experience with some of the following mockup and prototyping tools: Sketch, Framer, Principle, Figma, Invision.

• User research. We frequently do informal user research, and value people who can be flexible with research processes and methodologies to achieve the right outcome. You'll often visit customer offices to interview and learn from the users we serve. You'll pair qualitative methods (e.g. scripted usability tests and contextual inquiry) with quantitative information, like product and usage metrics.

• Prototyping. You will prototype—using software like Principle and Framer, or another favorite method—both to communicate your designs and validate your decisions.

• Partnering with engineers. We work closely with product and forward deployed engineers to realize our design ideas. You'll treat engineers as partners and collaborate with them to prototype and build out products.

• Awareness of how software interfaces are built on web and mobile. Familiarity with HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and Typescript is appreciated. You don't need to be an expert—just fluent enough to collaborate with engineers, and know what's possible with frontend technologies. Resources and mentorship are available to designers who want to learn more.
Designers at FreeWroad have great autonomy over their work, so a wide skill set is necessary. However, many designers on the team are also passionate experts in one area. You might be the kind of designer who ships code every week, or the kind of designer who shares detailed user research findings with your team.

What We Value

• An iterative design process. You validate your ideas early (with stakeholders and users) and are thoughtful and intentional in seeking and responding to feedback. You move fast, listen, and adapt. You rapidly incorporate feedback, and prioritize collaboration. You are adept at giving and receiving critiques.
• Collaboration and communication. You can build great relationships with engineers, PMs, and other stakeholders—and convey your design rationale to them. To reach these audiences, you'll communicate your designs through a variety of methods: presenting your mockups, making prototypes, sharing a design spec.
• Thoughtful, intentional work. You know that form informs function and usability—that the surface layer doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Your design decisions are often informed by—and will influence—engineering and business considerations.
• Dedication to the user. You'll design software that changes how people use data in travel, screening, and emergency contexts. You strive to understand our users—who can range from a Kenyan travelling to South Africa, to a travel agency company in Zimbabwe.

Our team has people from a variety of backgrounds—people who studied type design, computer science, psychology; people who joined FreeWroad right after university; and people who joined our team after switching industries. We value skills and mindset over a specific educational background.