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Key Responsibilities and Required Skills for Interaction Architect

💰 $110,000 - $160,000

UX DesignInteraction DesignProductDesign Systems

🎯 Role Definition

As an Interaction Architect, you will define and shape the way users interact with products and services across platforms. You will translate product strategy into coherent interaction models, componentized design systems, and validated prototypes that guide engineering and product teams. The role requires deep expertise in interaction design, information architecture, usability testing, and design systems, combined with strong stakeholder leadership to drive cross-functional alignment and measurable user outcomes.

📈 Career Progression

Typical Career Path

Entry Point From:

  • Senior Interaction Designer with a proven portfolio of complex product experiences
  • Senior UX / Product Designer who led cross-platform interaction work
  • Senior Information Architect or Service Designer transitioning to product-focused interaction work

Advancement To:

  • Lead Interaction Architect / Principal Interaction Architect
  • Director of UX / Head of Design
  • Product Design Manager or Head of Product Experience

Lateral Moves:

  • Senior UX Researcher (with deep research + IA focus)
  • Design Systems Lead / UX Engineering Lead

Core Responsibilities

Primary Functions

  • Lead the end-to-end interaction design of multi-platform products, defining interaction models, navigation patterns, and behavioral rules that scale across web, mobile, and embedded contexts.
  • Create high-fidelity, interactive prototypes (using Figma, Framer, ProtoPie, or similar) to validate complex workflows, microinteractions, and animations with product teams and users.
  • Architect and maintain a modular design system and component library that ensures consistency, accessibility, and performance across multiple product lines.
  • Develop and document information architecture, taxonomy, and content models that enable findability and coherent content relationships across products and channels.
  • Translate business and product requirements into clear interaction specifications, annotated wireframes, and developer-facing documentation to accelerate implementation.
  • Lead and conduct usability studies, remote and in-person testing, heuristic evaluations, and continuous user validation to iteratively improve interaction patterns and task completion rates.
  • Define interaction guidelines and pattern libraries for responsive behaviors, states, transitions, and microinteractions, ensuring a consistent user experience across breakpoints.
  • Collaborate closely with product managers to align interaction decisions with business metrics, OKRs, and prioritized roadmaps; establish measurable success criteria for interaction changes.
  • Partner with engineering to ensure interaction fidelity during implementation, provide acceptance criteria, and support front-end performance and accessibility trade-offs.
  • Drive cross-disciplinary workshops (design sprints, co-creation sessions, journey mapping) to uncover user needs, align stakeholders, and accelerate decision-making.
  • Conduct accessibility audits and implement WCAG-compliant interaction patterns, keyboard navigation, screen reader behaviors, and motion-reduction alternatives.
  • Define and measure quantitative and qualitative interaction KPIs (task success, error rate, time-on-task, NPS) and use analytics to identify friction and opportunity areas.
  • Mentor and coach mid-level and junior designers, providing critique, portfolio guidance, and best practices for scalable interaction design.
  • Advocate for and operationalize motion design principles and microinteraction patterns that enhance usability and delight while maintaining performance budgets.
  • Serve as the subject matter expert on interaction patterns for new product initiatives, pilot programs, and platform migrations; ensure reuse of proven solutions.
  • Lead cross-functional handoffs and review cycles, maintaining a clear versioned source of truth for interaction decisions and design artifacts.
  • Establish and steward conventions for interaction documentation, naming, and tokenization (spacing, timing, easing curves) to support design–engineering collaboration.
  • Collaborate with research and analytics teams to synthesize insights into actionable interaction improvements and identify A/B test opportunities.
  • Evaluate third-party interaction frameworks, component libraries, and accessibility tooling; recommend vendor or open-source options when appropriate.
  • Translate complex system constraints (security, privacy, performance) into interaction affordances and user-friendly error states that reduce cognitive load.
  • Drive continuous improvement of the interaction practice by introducing process changes, tooling enhancements, and cross-team education on interaction thinking.

Secondary Functions

  • Provide consultative support for adjacent product teams, advising on interaction implications of new features or platform changes.
  • Produce executive summaries and interaction "impact statements" to communicate trade-offs, timelines, and expected business outcomes to senior leaders.
  • Support recruitment and interviewing for interaction and UX roles by evaluating portfolios and conducting design exercises.
  • Contribute to roadmaps and backlog grooming by estimating interaction-level effort and prioritizing technical debt in the UX layer.
  • Prepare handoff packages and QA checklists to validate production releases against interaction specifications and accessibility requirements.
  • Act as an internal evangelist for human-centered design, holding brown-bag sessions and design critiques to raise interaction standards across the organization.

Required Skills & Competencies

Hard Skills (Technical)

  • Interaction design: deep experience designing complex flows, stateful interactions, navigation systems, and transactional workflows.
  • Information architecture: proven ability to create taxonomies, navigation hierarchies, and content models for complex products.
  • Prototyping tools: expert-level use of Figma, Sketch, Adobe XD, Framer, ProtoPie, or Axure for creating interactive, testable prototypes.
  • Design systems: experience building and maintaining component libraries, tokens, and pattern documentation for multi-team reuse.
  • Usability research & testing: planning and moderating usability tests, interpreting results, and synthesizing insights into design decisions.
  • Accessibility (WCAG): practical knowledge of accessibility standards and implementation of keyboard, screen reader, and reduced-motion interactions.
  • Front-end familiarity: working knowledge of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript to communicate constraints and support hand-off discussions with engineers.
  • Analytics & experimentation: ability to use analytics (Mixpanel, Amplitude, GA) and A/B testing tools to measure interaction impact and iterate.
  • Motion and microinteractions: understanding of timing, easing, and animation principles to design meaningful microinteractions.
  • Documentation & specifications: skill in creating clear interaction specs, acceptance criteria, and developer-ready documentation for implementation.
  • Cross-platform design: experience designing consistent interactions across web, mobile, tablet, and native apps (and optionally voice/AR/IoT).

Soft Skills

  • Strategic thinking: able to align interaction decisions to business goals and user outcomes.
  • Strong communication: articulate interaction rationale to stakeholders, engineers, and executives in written and verbal form.
  • Collaboration: works effectively in cross-functional teams, balancing trade-offs between design, product, and engineering.
  • Facilitation: runs workshops, design sprints, and alignment sessions to drive consensus and accelerate delivery.
  • Problem-solving: breaks down complex problems into testable, iterative interaction hypotheses.
  • Empathy: user-first mindset with an ability to advocate for diverse user needs and accessibility.
  • Mentorship: coaches and develops other designers, providing constructive feedback and career guidance.
  • Attention to detail: meticulous about interaction states, edge cases, and documentation versioning.
  • Time management: prioritizes competing requests and delivers high-quality interaction work on schedule.
  • Adaptability: responds to changing product priorities and technical constraints while preserving UX integrity.

Education & Experience

Educational Background

Minimum Education:

  • Bachelor's degree in Interaction Design, Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), Graphic Design, Computer Science, Psychology, Industrial Design, or related field.

Preferred Education:

  • Master's degree or graduate certificate in HCI, Interaction Design, Human Factors, Service Design, or equivalent professional training.

Relevant Fields of Study:

  • Human-Computer Interaction (HCI)
  • Interaction / UX Design
  • Cognitive Psychology / Human Factors
  • Information Architecture
  • Industrial or Product Design

Experience Requirements

Typical Experience Range:

  • 5–8 years of professional experience in interaction design, information architecture, or UX with a strong portfolio demonstrating complex interaction work.

Preferred:

  • 7+ years with end-to-end ownership of interaction strategy, design systems experience, and demonstrated cross-functional leadership. Portfolio must include interactive prototypes, design system artifacts, and measurable outcomes from usability testing and analytics.
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