Startup job spotlight: UI designer at Tiny Hearts

With startups leading the way in Canadian innovation, every day, BetaKit does its part to help fill the talent gap with our BetaKit Job Board.

To highlight some of the great places prospective employees can work at across Canada, we’ll put one startup in the spotlight each week to find out what makes their company tick.

Right now, Tiny Hearts is hiring a UX/UI designer. We talked to Tiny Hearts founder Robleh Jama about the best parts of working there.

If someone were to come in to work for Tiny Hearts on their first day, what’s the first thing you tell them to get them excited to work there?

We’re passionate about what we do and we sweat all the tiny details that come together to deliver a mind-blowing digital product, whether it’s for an app, game, keyboard, or chat bot. What we offer is the ability to make meaning by making people’s lives better through technology. With millions of users, multiple app-store hits, and an eye towards what’s next, we’re not your typical digital studio. But the best part of it all is that we’ve managed to do all this while still staying true to our values and always finding an excuse to have fun.

What are some company perks that people can expect when working at Tiny Hearts?

When working as part of the UI team, what kind of problems could a UI designer expect to tackle? What makes the team so dynamic?

As a designer, you’ll be expected to deeply empathize with your target users and put yourself in their shoes for the duration of a project. This means on-site visits, Skype calls, and intermittent user testing with participants you’ve recruited. But at the core, we’re solving meaningful problems through design and that encompasses using all of design’s seductive powers of visual systems and emotional appeal to help users accomplish their goals. So if you’re keen on thinking through problems so that the end user never has to, you’ll fit right in.

In what ways do you help to foster personal and/or professional growth in your team?

We all have our own individual strengths and weaknesses and being able to identify, and be aware of them is the first step towards any personal or professional growth. This means helping new employees figure out what part of the process they love, what they would like to get better at, and where they add the most value. A lot of it is through trial-and-error and hands-on experience, and the beauty of working with a small and passionate team of makers is that you get to wear many hats and pick the ones that suit you best.

What’s your favourite part about working with the Tiny Hearts team?

My favourite part about working with the Tiny Hearts team is that we’re all insanely curious about these devices we carry around with us all the time, how we use them, and why. That child-like sense of wonder enables us to discard restraints and dream up ideas for apps, games and so much more, while also having the capabilities to bring them to life and not worry too much about failing. Being able to do that for ourselves and our clients makes it so there’s never a dull moment. It also doesn’t help that we play as hard as we work, so there’s always plenty of nerf-gun battles, video games, board games, and Lego to go around.