NGS UX

NGS UX

verified
Remote
Washington, USCluj-Napoca, RO
Elevate one another
Great team off-sites
Put the user first
Always be learning
Focus on impact
Mission driven

Introduce us to your team

The  UX team at National Geographic Society works on a variety of products that serve our staff, grant seekers and recipients (fondly known as Explorers), educators, learners, museum goers, and donors.

Luke Miller
Luke Miller
UX Director
Pauline Munga
Pauline Munga
Sr UX Designer
Anna Benami
Anna Benami
UX Designer
Brian Murphy
Brian Murphy
Sr Director of Product
Sarah Bohn
Sarah Bohn
Sr UX Designer

What are your team rituals?

The UX team starts each week off with an afternoon check in to sync up on projects and find time to collaborate where needed. We end each week with a cooldown.

UX Designers are dedicated to Pods that each have their own PM, Eng team, and meeting cadence. In general you can expect daily stand-ups, planning sessions and other scrum ceremonies to be early on in the day to coordinate with our colleagues in Eastern Europe.

Two UX designers testing their prototypes with two National Geographic Explorers

All together the different Pods do demo days and operational meetings together to share learnings, launches, and stay connected to the rest of the Society.

We also have several smaller communities of practice that meet to discuss interdisciplinary technology topics like mapping, data & analytics, and our design system.

Our most important ceremonies though are our org wide mission moments. The true joy of being a part of the non profit National Geographic Society is hearing from our amazing Explorers.

What benefits does your team offer?

With the move to remote at the end of 2021 for our Product Management and UX Design staff, we instituted regular team building retreats back at Nat Geo Base Camp in Washington, DC every two months. Travel and lodging is covered by Nat Geo.

Our salaries are in the 50th percentile and not as competitive with for-profit tech giants, but  our mission and culture are. We still have room for growth on the UX maturity scale, but helping to illuminate the wonder of the world is part of our daily activities.

More benefits

  • MacBook Pro & 4K Monitor

  • Access to eCornell learning

  • $1500 Conference budget

  • $1000 additional professional development budget

  • Museum, Explorer Festival, and Storytellers summit access

What values does your team share?

How do you ensure diversity on the team?

We believe we can only achieve our mission when we actualize our commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion in every aspect of our work.

As an organization guided by science and innovation, we recognize that research shows the very best ideas result from teams with a wide range of backgrounds and experiences working together effectively to harness the creative power and ingenuity of diversity.

Championing all voices and ensuring members of the Society community are empowered to bring their unique perspective and story to bear on our mission work is critical to pushing us to a brighter future.

What does your team's product development process look like?

We use a scrum based agile process within our product pods. Each pod has their own roadmap that is informed by close collaborations with between UX, PM, Engineering, and their stakeholders.

As a general rule we follow the double diamond model, where an initial remit is researched and analyzed to identify smaller, validated opportunities that are then explored through concepting, prototyping, and finally usability testing.

What design tools do you use day to day?

These are the tools we most commonly use but are always open to trying out new things.

Comms & Project mgmt

  • Google Workplace

  • Slack

  • Jira

  • Confluence

Design

  • Miro

  • Figma

Research

  • TryMyUI

  • Optimal Workshop

  • Crazy Egg

  • Heap