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.

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. The following principles of design and of design work should help you understand if you'd like to work with me:

• Be empathetic to your customers, your clients, your co-workers. No Nazis.
• 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.
• We don't build error messages - And exception messages should be rare also.
• Design systems to be resilient - Components, connections, and data will fail you. Plan on it.
• 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.

Open Needs

UX Designers - Indiana

Immediate need for UX designer to work on site with a project team at a Fortune 200 in Central Indiana. Work is expected both in Indy and at a client site within an hour of the city.

Work on site may be up to full time, but is expected to be more like 2 days on site now.

You will perform IA, interaction, and interface design. Products we work on are mobile apps for Android and iOS, on phones and tablets, Web for desktop and mobile, Win32, and embedded controllers. These are mostly connected products, used truly globally, some are IoT and connect via Bluetooth to other types of systems, some have big data and intelligence, and probably more big buzzwords I missed.

If tools help, we mostly use Axure for Web, InDesign for mobile and other systems, Balsamiq for Windows, and lots of boring things like Visio, Office, Google Sheets, and so on.

Some of us work remotely for this client, and visit monthly, some never visit. There is one full time Indiana person already but most work is now remote. Some client teams are set up to better use on-site people, so we need more locals as well as more designers generally. You will interact with software developers, data architects, and the business owners. You must be able to make design decisions, and be able to defend them. Documentation and communications is critical.

4ourth Mobile has many projects with this same client at this location. You will likely be engaged on several of them, so will work on a variety of interesting stuff and we'll find you something else to do when one project does end.

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.