Lead UX/UI Designer

Yoto
Yoto is a company founded by experienced entrepreneurs that aims to change the way children access audio content. We are building a safe, digital audio platform made for kids from the ground up, and featuring a curated library of music, stories, radio, podcasts and learning activities for children aged 2-8. Yoto features its own carefully connected smart speaker that children control with physical card.

Designed by families for families and inspired by Montessori principles, Yoto gives youngsters autonomy over what they listen to or play – from their favourite nursery rhymes to learning the alphabet through phonics, and provides an exciting alternative to excessive screentime.

Yoto launched its first hardware product on Kickstarter in November 2017, reaching its funding target after only 5 days, and has won a Red Dot Design award. The product shipped for Christmas 2018 to a great customer reaction. We have already partnered with the Roald Dahl company – to create new content based on his classic stories – as well as publishers including Hachette, HarperCollins, Naxos, StoryNory and more. Luke Kelly, grandson of Roald Dahl and MD of the Roald Dahl Story Company, is on our board.

About us

We’re a small, creative team with a passion for technology, education, music, audiobooks and podcasts. We’ve built companies at scale before (dotmusic – sold to Yahoo, 7digital – IPO in 2014, Bouncepad, and Frukt – sold to Interpublic) and we’re bringing that experience to the world of audio entertainment and learning for children.

As a start-up, we don’t revel in office politics and endless meetings, giving you more time to get on with the more fun part of the job. We all love what we do.

The position
We are looking for a talented UX / UI Designer to help us create meaningful and pleasurable experiences for our customers – both children and adults – across all our touchpoints with them. Our ecosystem comprises physical cards, printed material, a smart speaker, an app, and a web store, and the Yoto experience should have consistency and value for our customers across all areas. We’re not looking for just a wire framer, we’re looking for someone who can think across the whole issue, be organised and pragmatic but have creative flair and a visual style.

We operate under Remote First principles and we strongly value a healthy work-life balance. You can work from our London office or from home/remotely as long as you can make it to London to meet with the team when necessary. With flexible working hours/days to fit your lifestyle and family (most of the team has kids).

You will

• Working directly with the engineering and creative principals to make stuff happen
• be designing UX and UI across different media (mobile, web, email, connected HW, print, voice) – and for different audiences
• make user interactions delightful and intuitive for every user – incl. 2 year olds!
• develop creative ways to quickly validate new ideas
• conduct user research – from selecting user groups and appropriate interview techniques to talking to users
• provide engineering with user stories and wire-frames and ensure they are feasible to implement
• turn mockups into beautiful designs
• iterate based on user feedback, analysing data on user behaviour, A/B testing
• introduce design processes, templates and guides to ensure design consistency can be achieved by all team members

You’ll need

• strong visual design skills
• a track record of creating delightful user-centred experiences
• excellent knowledge of current UX/UI trends and tools
• hands on experience with identifying personas, creating user stories, wire-framing and prototyping
• good understanding of accessibility, responsive design and performance
• excellent knowledge of user psychology and user research techniques

We’re a very small team so you’ll get a chance to play with plenty of different things all the time – bonus points for any experience or desire to dig into any of the following:

• designing experiences beyond mobile and web – e.g. print, connected HW, toys, board games, voice
• working in Agile, Lean, CI/CD environment
• understanding technical aspects of mobile UIs
• ability to turn your designs to life (HTML, CSS)
• latest front-end technologies – React, Redux, ES6/TypeScript
• pixel art, iconography, animation skills
• children’s illustration skills
• information design
• copy writing talent
• SEO best practices

Compensation:

• Full-time, part-time or freelance
• Competitive salary and equity (tax-efficient EMI share options)

Benefits:

• Generous holidays
• Remote working by default with home office costs covered
• Workplace pension
• Childcare Vouchers
• Cycle to work scheme