UI Designer

Sago Mini is an award-winning company devoted to play. With three subscription services and over 10 million monthly active users, Sago Mini creates apps that seed imagination, grow wonder, and bring thoughtful design to life for preschoolers and parents worldwide. Proudly Canadian, Sago Mini is a subsidiary of Spin Master, a leading global children’s entertainment company. Along with sister studios Toca Boca and Originator, Sago Mini is part of the Piknik bundle – a collection of the world’s best apps for kids in one subscription.

About the Role

Sago Mini is looking for a UI Designer to join our team and contribute to our innovative, playful learning products designed for children. In this role, you'll collaborate with product owners, the principal UX designer, developers, and artists to create engaging and delightful experiences for children ages 2–8 and their parents. You will be a key advocate of the child experience, applying insights and research to establish and iterate on the details of interaction and visual design. This intermediate-level position is ideal for candidates with 5+ years of relevant experience. 

This is a 8-12 month contract position covering maternity leave. 

This role is hybrid and requires the successful candidate to attend our downtown, Toronto studio at least once a week.

You’ll thrive in this role if you…

• Have an eye for design: You love creating playful, interactive, and intuitive experiences with a strong visual design sensibility. Your attention to detail turns good experiences into great ones.
• Are user-centric: You’re empathetic and deeply committed to understanding your users, ensuring that every experience is designed with them in mind.
• Own your work: You take pride in ownership, bringing a proactive and solution-oriented approach to every project.
• Collaborate effortlessly: You work well in a team, valuing collaboration, shared creativity, and collective success.
• Tell compelling stories: You craft your presentations with storytelling at the core, engaging and inspiring your audience.
• Navigate ambiguity: You're naturally exploratory, taking an idea, conducting thorough research, and presenting well-vetted options during solution development.

What You’ll Be Doing

• Design user experiences and interface visuals with a keen eye for visual design, ensuring every interaction is intuitive, playful, and resonates with kids and aligns with our brand.
• Sketch, wireframe, and prototype to quickly develop and implement creative assets for early user testing.
• Collaborate with product managers, UX designers, artists, animators, and developers to shape and refine products.
• Meticulously create interactive and intuitive experiences tailored to platform capabilities, ensuring interactivity and user engagement are at the forefront.
• Present your designs and iterate based on collaborative feedback and insights from user testing.

Qualifications and Skills

• Experience: 5+ years in visual design, experience design, marketing, or a related field, with a portfolio showcasing impactful work.
• Technical Skills: Proficient in Figma, Adobe Illustrator, and Photoshop; expertise in interface design and UX principles.
• Information Architecture: Skilled at turning business and user needs into clear IA artifacts focused on usability.
• Education: Degree in interaction design, visual design, or related field.
• Communication: Excellent verbal and written skills, with a knack for storytelling.
• Detail-Oriented: Precise in design and documentation.
• Project Management: Capable of prioritizing and meeting deadlines in fast-paced environments.

Nice to Haves

• Experience with gamification principals and practice
• Experience working in Ed tech or game design.
• Experience designing for children and families.
• Proficient in video and motion graphics design.

About the Process

• You’ll get an email response confirming we’ve received your application, and we’ll let you know within a few weeks if we’d like to schedule a follow-up.
• If you’re moving ahead, we’ll book a call to learn more about your experience. 
• If that goes well, we’ll send you a short homework assignment to get a better feel for your skillset. 
• If the assignment goes well, we’ll book a few more interviews with you and the hiring team to dive deeper prior to making a decision. 

We welcome and encourage applications from people with disabilities. Accommodations are available upon request for candidates taking part in all aspects of the selection process.  

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Based in Toronto, Sago Sago Toys of Spin Master Limited a leading global children’s entertainment company that creates, designs and manufactures a diversified portfolio of innovative toys, games, products and entertainment properties. We hire humble and collaborative people who care about doing great work. Sago Mini is an equal opportunity employer. We value diversity at our company.