Design & User Research Lead

About the role

You will be the first design hire at Whym, joining a small founding team. You will own visual design, interaction design, user research, and brand expression across the product, marketing site, and any other surface where users encounter Whym.

This is not a production role. You will set the design direction for a product that helps people make time for what matters most. You will run the research that tells us whether we’re right. You will shape what Whym looks and feels like, how it behaves, and how users understand it.

You should be excited by ambiguity. We are building something new. The interaction models are evolving fast. AI is changing what interfaces can do and how people relate to software. You should have strong opinions about where those changes lead and how to design for them.

This is a tiny startup. Everyone wears many hats. Everyone at Whym does customer support, including the CEO and CTO. You will too. Some weeks you will be running user research. Other weeks you will be tweaking marketing copy, reviewing pull requests, or responding to a user who had a bad experience. You should find that appealing, not beneath you.

What you will work on

• User research and insight. Plan and run research across the product lifecycle: moderated prototype tests, field studies, diary studies, interviews. Own the research calendar and recruit participants. Synthesize findings into clear recommendations that shape the roadmap. Stay close enough to the data to know what it means and push the team to act on it.
• Interaction and UX design. Design core product flows for mobile and web. Own information architecture, navigation, and the moment-to-moment experience of using Whym. Think carefully about how people share context with an AI, browse suggestions, coordinate plans with friends, and build habits around the product. Design for emerging interaction patterns, including conversational UI, voice input, agent-driven coordination, and notification-based experiences.
• Visual design and brand. Define and maintain Whym's visual identity: color, typography, iconography, illustration style, motion. Build and evolve a design system that keeps the product coherent as it grows. Translate brand principles into pixel-level craft. Make the product feel warm, trustworthy, and distinct. This extends to marketing pages and any external-facing material, though it is not a marketing-heavy role.
• Prototyping and validation. Build interactive prototypes to test ideas before engineering commits. Use code, Figma, or AI-assisted tools, whatever gets the clearest signal fastest. Run rapid experiments to resolve design questions. Bias toward testing over debating.
• Partner with engineering. Work directly with engineers on implementation. Review pull requests for design fidelity. Pair with the CTO on feasibility and tradeoffs. Inform product strategy with research findings and design intuition.
• Design operations. Establish design processes that work for a small, fast team. Maintain a component library. Document patterns and decisions. Create the infrastructure that lets design scale without losing quality.

What we’re looking for

• 8+ years in product design, with meaningful time leading both design and user research.
• A portfolio that shows range: strong visual craft, thoughtful UX, and evidence of research-driven decisions. We want to see work you're proud of and hear about the thinking behind it.
• Deep experience planning and running qualitative research. You know how to design a study, moderate without leading, and extract insight from messy data.
• Fluent across platforms. You have shipped on mobile (iOS and Android) and web. You understand the constraints and opportunities of each.
• AI-native. You already use AI tools in your design and research workflows. You adopt new techniques before they are mainstream. You have opinions about which tools are worth using and can articulate why. You see AI as a way to do better work, not just faster work.
• Strong product instinct. You think about why a feature matters, not just how it looks. You can identify the highest-leverage design problem in a noisy backlog.
• Strong communicator. You present your work clearly and defend your decisions without ego. You write well. You give direct feedback and receive it gracefully. You know what AI-generated slop looks like and you don't turn it in as final work.
• Comfortable with ambiguity. You thrive in early-stage environments where scope is fluid and priorities shift. You focus on what matters most and let the rest wait.
• High agency. You notice what needs doing and do it without waiting to be asked.

Strong pluses

• Consumer app experience, especially social products, coordination tools, or local discovery.
• Experience building or contributing to design systems from scratch.
• Familiarity with recommendation systems, feeds, or ranking-driven products.
• Experience with voice interfaces or multimodal input.
• Background in behavioral science, psychology, or a related field.
• A point of view on how AI is changing interaction models: conversational UI, agent-driven experiences, and what comes next.
• Experience at an early-stage startup where you wore many hats.
• Systems thinker. You build processes that scale. You choose tools deliberately. You document what you build.

Location and working model

Whym is a hybrid team based in the Bay Area, California and Bend, Oregon. We work together in person three days a week and reserve the other days for focused remote work. We prefer candidates who can work with us at our hubs, but will make room for exceptional candidates who want to be fully remote. Bend-based and remote teammates travel to the Bay Area regularly so the whole team can spend time together.

About Whym

Whym is an AI-powered app that helps people make time for what matters most. We suggest activities aligned with your values and help you coordinate plans with close friends. We are a two-person founding team with experience from Google, LinkedIn, Lyft, and earlier-stage startups. Whym is a Delaware C-Corp Public Benefit Corporation, pre-seed.