Specifications UI UX Designer.pdf

Specifications for ITS87 IT Staff Augmentation Posting ITS87 Category 1

Rate Card Title: UI UX Designer Functional Job Title: Experience Design and Research Lead

☒New Posting ☐ RePosting: ☐ No suitable resumes received, reposted with no changes (please do not resubmit resumes) ☐Reposted with skill set edits ☐ Reposted with different title, higher maximum rate ☐Posting with same requirements as recent posting <enter COMMBUYS number or other unique identifier>, do not resubmit resumes submitted in response to that posting.

General Requirements:

CORI requirements: ☒After candidate selection ☒ Other (including special requirements): Vendor is required to conduct CORI check after candidate selection.

Interview requirements: ☒Initial contact by phone, interview may be in person or video conference ☐Other:

Maximum acceptable hourly bill rate: $115

May be filled PRIOR TO CLOSE DATE: ☒Yes ☐No

Additional Resume Submission Specifications and Requirements:

• Total number of positions sought: 1

• Maximum number of resumes per ITS87 Vendor: 2

• All Bidders must complete line item on Candidate Bid Sheet for each resume submitted

• ☐Resumes must be submitted via COMMBUYS OR

☒Respond via email to: jennifer.warren@mass.gov with subject line <Experience Design and Research Lead, EPIC Project> OR ☐Both of the above

• No phone calls please – email questions to: jennifer.warren@mass.gov

• Rates are all-inclusive (travel and any additional expenses are included in the rate)

Remote work allowed? ☒Yes ☐No

100% remote work allowed? ☐Yes ☒No If other remote work arrangements, specify: The work schedule for this position is Monday through Friday, 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM Eastern Time, in a flexible hybrid remote arrangement. The primary work location is the McCormack Building, 1 Ashburton Place, Boston, MA. Candidates must be able to work onsite when requested by the EPIC project team, including attending executive meetings, mandatory project meetings, required training, and other project activities that require in-person participation.

Worksite Address: McCormack Building, 1 Ashburton Place, Boston, MA 02108

Engagement Length: Through 6/30/2027 Renewable: ☒Yes ☒No Project(s) Duration: 2028 Hours per Week: 40 hours/week mailto:jennifer.warren@mass.gov mailto:jennifer.warren@mass.gov

Experience Design and Research Lead eProcurement Transformation Initiative

Massachusetts is ready to transform how the state buys the goods, services, and technology state agencies needed to deliver public services...and to streamline and improve how Massachusetts businesses can engage with our government.

The Operational Services Division (OSD) is hiring an Experience Design and Research Lead to help lead our eProcurement Transformation Initiative (EPIC) to reimagine how the state finds vendors, manages contracts, makes purchases, and ensures public money is spent fairly and responsibly. This role will help drive a more people-centered, transparent, data-driven, and continuously evolving procurement platform that serves state agencies, vendors, local governments, and the public. This is not a conventional software replacement effort. The Commonwealth is not simply looking to buy a static, one-size-fits-all product and adapt its work to fit the system. EPIC is focused on building a fit-for-purpose procurement ecosystem - one that may combine configurable platforms, custom capabilities, integrations, data services, and modern engineering practices - to create a solution designed around how our people actually work.

The future platform is expected to streamline procurement workflows, improve internal and external constituent experiences and outcomes, improve integration and reporting, support Commonwealth procurement requirements, strengthen transparency and trust, and provide a flexible foundation for long-term modernization.

Why This Role Is Different This is a rare opportunity to help shape a next-generation public procurement experience and platform, not simply oversee implementation of an off-the-shelf product. EPIC seeks to use modern technology not only within the platform itself, but also in the way the platform is designed, developed, migrated, maintained, and improved over time. The Commonwealth places particular emphasis on iterative people centered design and development and AI-enabled and automation-supported development practices that can accelerate delivery, improve quality, reduce long-term cost, and help move from legacy systems to a more adaptive digital enabled services and technology environment.

The Experience Design and Research Lead will help further define a bold business, constituent experience, and technology vision and translate that practical experience designs, solution architectures, experience and outcome-based roadmaps, and implementation. The successful candidate will work at the intersection of constituent/user experience, business transformation, data strategy, AI-enabled development, integration architecture, vendor management, and public-sector service delivery.

This role is ideal for someone excited about showing how government can innovate effectively and responsibly and deliver technology solutions differently: more iteratively, more people-centered, more intelligently, more transparently, and with a stronger focus on constituent/user experience and long-term value.

Position Overview We are seeking a highly motivated, organized, and strategic Experience Design and Research Lead to lead the application of people-centered design and research strategies and best practices to support the eProcurement System Replacement Project Team - EPIC.

The ideal candidate is energized by large-scale people centered digitally enabled transformation and excited by the opportunity to help build and delivery something that does not yet fully exist. They are comfortable moving between strategic vision and implementation detail and are relentlessly focused on delivering better service experiences and outcomes.

In this role, you’ll: help refine and distill an actionable understanding of diverse constituent/user needs, journeys, and end-to-end service experiences; collaborate on the definition of a future state experience vision, experience architecture, and product roadmap; and guide the iterative design, evaluation, and refinement of user experience concepts and solutions for the e-procurement platform. You’ll also help us define, measure, and monitor constituent experience quality and impact metrics to assess progress and outcomes and inform product decisions and guide continuous improvement.

Assignment Type and Location This is a full-time contract role supporting the Agency's eProcurement System Replacement Project - EPIC. This is not a Commonwealth employee appointment.

The work schedule for this position is Monday through Friday, 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM Eastern Time, in a flexible hybrid remote. The primary work location is the McCormack Building, 1 Ashburton Place, Boston, MA 02108. Candidates must be able to work onsite when requested by the EPIC project team, including attending executive meetings, mandatory project meetings, required training, and other project activities that require in-person participation.

Role Responsibilities

• Lead experience strategy, experience research, experience architecture/design, and service design work for the e-procurement platform, aligning diverse constituent needs, business process goals, service workflows policy requirements, accessibility expectations, and technical feasibility.

• Lead and help develop and maintain useful best practice constituent experience artifacts and models to inform the design and optimization of the e-procurement platform and the end-to-end service experience (e.g., constituent journey maps, experience models, service blueprints, information architecture models, scenario/task flows, wireframes, prototypes, and experience requirements).

• Lead and help conduct and gain actionable insights from iterative constituent experience and service research to evaluate designs, prototypes, and functional solutions and inform design and implementation decisions

• Partner closely with senior initiative team members, including the product manager/product owner, technical solution architect, business leaders, and vendors to plan discovery activities, inform the product roadmap, facilitate design workshops, frame service and experience design decisions, and ensure constituent experiences are aligned to support prioritized initiative outcomes.

• Translate complex procurement service workflows, policy needs, stakeholder feedback, and experience research findings into clear design recommendations and actionable experience guidance.

• Establish constituent experience quality standards, accessibility expectations, content and interaction patterns, and experience quality criteria and outcome/success metrics

• Review project team and vendor design deliverables for alignment with constituent needs, Commonwealth requirements, accessibility standards, technical feasibility, and operational readiness.

• Surface constituent experience risks, open questions, experience assessment/usability findings, design tradeoffs, and decisions needed to project leadership; document constituent experience decisions and ensure follow-through across project workstreams.

Minimum Qualifications

• Eight or more years of experience in planning, leading and doing experience in design and research work to support the delivery of large scale, complex digital products, platforms, and solutions.

• Expertise in all key facets of people-centered design including experience architecture, interaction/product design, experience research, and service design, rapid prototyping, content design, and accessible/inclusive design.

• Three or more years leading experience design, experience strategy, service design, and experience research and measurement work for complex enterprise systems, workflow-heavy platforms, or public-facing digital services.

• Experience translating experience/user research, stakeholder input, and business requirements into personas, journey maps, service blueprints, information architecture, task flows, wireframes, prototypes, and usability criteria.

• Experience working closely with senior project team members, business SMEs, technical teams, vendors, and stakeholder groups to resolve design decisions and align user experience with delivery plan.

• Experience in working in AI enablement solution design and development environments and initiatives and thoughtfully leveraging AI capabilities to enhance user experiences and outcomes.

• Strong written, verbal, facilitation, analytical, and stakeholder-management skills.

• Ability to work across business and technical teams, communicate tradeoffs clearly, and build alignment in a complex project environment.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with public-sector, procurement, ERP, financial, grants, licensing, permitting, benefits, or other workflow-heavy enterprise platforms.

• Experience helping organizations modernize from legacy systems to cloud-based or modular platforms.

• Experience supporting people-centered modernization in governance-driven environments, including translating stakeholder priorities and executive decisions into experience recommendations and design artifacts.

• Familiarity with Commonwealth procurement requirements, accessibility standards, inclusive design, plain language, privacy, security, records retention, reporting, and public-sector governance.

• Experience using varied experience research methods and analytics to assess and evaluate the quality, adoption/usage, effectiveness and impact of digitally enabled solutions to measure progress and inform continuous improvement.

• Experience evaluating AI-enabled capabilities, automation, analytics, reporting, search, or decision-support features in a governed enterprise environment.

• Experience designing or guiding systems that must serve multiple user communities, including internal operators, external business users, oversight users, and the public.

• Ability to challenge conventional approaches constructively and identify opportunities to build a more flexible, intuitive, and sustainable solution.

About A&F IT and OSD A&F IT is a unit under the Executive Office for Administration & Finance (EOAF) and is overseen by the A&F IT Secretariat Chief Information Officer (A&F SCIO). A&F IT is comprised of 200+ employees working on IT systems and applications for 15 various A&F agencies. A&F IT oversees and provides all the IT application support for these agencies to ensure their IT operations are running effectively and efficiently.

A&F IT works closely with the Executive Office of Technology Services and Security (EOTSS) to enforce and ensure that enterprise wide technology and security policies are adhered to.

OSD is the state’s central procurement office, enabling state government to obtain the goods and services it needs to serve the people of Massachusetts. OSD ensures that state procurements deliver best value and utilize fair, open, and competitive practices. The agency also helps thousands of businesses offer products and services to state agencies, local governments, and other public bodies -creating opportunities that contribute to economic growth and development. We work at the nexus between government and business and are privileged to make connections that support both sectors.

OSD works closely with its Secretariat, EOAF. EOAF provides strategic guidance to the EPIC initiative due to it being a vital solution supporting the whole of state government. This includes fiscal, administrative, technology, and governance support to ensure the project aligns with statewide priorities, cross-agency needs, and long-term sustainability. OSD brings deep procurement policy, operations, vendor and user expertise, and together OSD and EOAF will help shape a more transparent, efficient, and user-centered procurement platform for Massachusetts.

OSD is guided by the values of service, partnership, creative problem solving, and responsiveness. Our flexible, hybrid work environment fosters work-life balance and collaboration, allowing us to effectively serve our state agency and local government partners so they can achieve their goals on behalf of the people of Massachusetts.

Equal Opportunity / Affirmative Action Employer Females, minorities, veterans, and persons with disabilities are strongly encouraged to apply.

The Commonwealth is an Equal Opportunity Employer and does not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, sex, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, age, disability, national origin, veteran status, or any other basis covered by appropriate law. Research suggests that qualified women, Black, Indigenous, and Persons of Color (BIPOC) may self-select out of opportunities if they do not meet 100% of the job requirements. We encourage individuals who believe they have the skills necessary to thrive to apply for this role.