Sr. User Experience Designer - MBTA.com

At the Technology Innovation Department (TID), our mission is to apply modern principles of research, design, and technology to make our transit system easy for all riders to use. Effective and equitable public transit is essential to the social, economic, and environmental progress of Greater Boston. The MBTA Technology Innovation team is working to transform how people get around the Boston area. We are a team of designers, engineers, product and content specialists charged with bringing novel ideas, modern standards and a user-centered approach to technology at the T. As the MBTA works to reinvent itself, we have a rare opportunity to craft the future of transportation for Boston and communities all around Eastern Massachusetts, as well as pioneer innovations for other transit agencies around the country. Do you want to improve the daily transportation experience for 4.7 million people in the Boston region? Ready for the challenge? Then read on.
TID is looking for a Senior User Experience Designer to join the Rider Tools team – a group dedicated to improving how we communicate information across digital touch points, from MBTA.com to digital signage in stations. This role will focus on improving the user experience of MBTA.com while also ensuring that it works in concert with the other digital channels that riders use.   Our UX Designers apply best design practices to public transit products. They are comfortable with, but not expert in, every stage of design. As a UX Designer, you will work closely with a product manager and engineers to support MBTA riders. Together, you will translate research into an outcome-based roadmap and define the user experience that supports those outcomes. As the team’s UX Designer, you will work towards defined outcomes by creating tangible, testable designs.  The person in this role needs to be comfortable communicating design requirements for an accessible experience, working with a multilingual website, and being able to design for both mobile and desktop.  

Day to day, you will:

• Work with the product, engineering, and other designers in an agile environment; understand current and near-future needs, plan work, and execute against that plan. 
• Help your team incorporate research findings into the product roadmap; coordinate prioritization discussions and workshops with team members when necessary. 
• Design user flows and features that become the foundation for user experiences and solutions. 
• Create interactive prototypes for usability testing; coordinate and run testing sessions. 
• Synthesize and present research findings to the product team for discussion and interpretation. 
• Contribute to and follow the design standards of the MBTA. 
• Design and communicate interactions and interfaces that engineers can successfully build. 
• Participate in Design, Research, and Content team activities, including operations meetings, knowledge shares, and work reviews. 

What you can expect from your first 90 days at TID:

• Dive into the MBTA system: We certainly don’t expect team members joining TID to understand the operational details of the MBTA. From Day 1, you will begin learning the details of how the MBTA’s network of vehicles moves our riders around Greater Boston every day.  


• Dive into the world of MBTA.com and rider information: TID creates, manages, and distributes realtime and static information to riders. MBTA.com consumes data from various sources and serves riders in various ways. To set you up for success, we’ll onboard you to existing rider research, data sources and the other channels that serve riders information.   

About you:

• You are empathetic: You know how to build trust by centering users. You see users as experts in their field and in their own experience. You seek to collaborate with and empower users in the design process.  


• You are a systems-oriented Designer who brings experience, frameworks, and repeatable approaches to new problem spaces. You understand the value of bespoke design solutions, but you seek to exhaust existing knowledge and options first. 


• You are comfortable with complexity: The MBTA is a 120-year-old transit agency with a huge number of moving parts. To design the right solutions, our team needs to understand the complexities of running transit services, the business operations of the MBTA, and how riders and staff interact with the system. 


• You believe in collaboration across disciplines. CTD teams are generally interdisciplinary, so you’re able to work closely with Product Management, Engineering, Data Specialists, and Content in an agile environment. As a Designer, you’ll help communicate design and content intent to your team members to ensure rider-facing information is rendered consistently. 


• You are communicative: CTD is an interdisciplinary t