Product Designer

Sago Mini is an award-winning publisher of preschool apps and toys worldwide. We are supported by a team of artists, designers, developers, product managers, thinkers, and doers devoted to play.

We’ve brought together a family of iconic, award-winning brands—including Toca Boca, Sago Mini, and Originator—along with a growing portfolio of other beloved IPs, all hosted within our single subscription experience: Piknik. With over 100 million downloads across our suite of 10+ apps, Piknik invites endless play by uniting the world's best content for kids.
 

About the Role

Sago Mini is looking for a Product 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. 

We are looking for a designer who is adept at working with diverse IPs across our Piknik suite, pairing product strategy with an exceptional standard for visual design execution. 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 remote, but offers flexibility to attend our downtown, Toronto studio.

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

• Craft playful user experiences for children ages 2-8, that are simple, intuitive, and align with our brand standards.
• Set a high bar for visual excellence, creating delightful and pixel-perfect interfaces that bring our brands to life
• 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 Design: Drive the user experience from concept to execution, alongside product management, through simple and playful design.
• Visual Design: Demonstrate mastery of visual craft with an exceptional eye for detail, typography, and color to create beautiful, polished interfaces.
• Game Design: Collaborate with artists and developers to leverage gamification techniques to craft play experiences, focusing on player curiosity and open-ended discovery.
• Project Management: Capable of prioritizing and meeting deadlines in fast-paced environments.
• Detail-Oriented: Precise in design and documentation.
• Communication: Excellent verbal and written skills, with a knack for storytelling.
• Experience: 5+ years in user experience design, visual 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.
• Education: Degree in interaction design, visual design, or related field.

Nice to Haves

• Experience with gamification principals and practice
• Experience working in Ed tech
• 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.