Interaction Designer

ART Lab; San Mateo (CA); On-site; USD 90,000 - 140,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Founding team opportunity

World-class team

Advisor guidance

Job summary

ART Lab in the San Francisco Bay Area is seeking an interaction designer who builds with their hands. You will shape people’s experience with our robots, prototyping physical, spatial, and screen-based interactions and using AI tools to ship working prototypes.

You’ll work directly with the founding team to craft moment-to-moment interactions, motion, timing, and personality. The role starts as a short-term contract with intent to convert to full-time, in-person collaboration is essential.

Qualifications

• 1–5 years designing interactions, products, or experiences with a shipped/built portfolio.
• Fluent with AI coding agents (Claude Code, Codex, Gemini) and prototyping on your own.
• Real-world prototyper who builds physical, spatial, or improvised prototypes.
• Strong instincts for interaction, motion, and feel (timing ~100ms).
• Clever, curious, and fun to work with; collaboration across hardware, robotics, and ML teams.

Responsibilities

• Prototype in the real world with hardware to test interactions on actual devices.
• Prototype on screen using flows, states, and motion in Figma or code.
• Use AI tools to ship working prototypes without dependence on others.
• Design the feel of human-robot interaction, including motion, timing, and behavior.
• Turn open questions into testable bets and run live tests with real users.
• Collaborate across hardware, robotics, and ML engineers to unify the user experience.

Skills

Interaction design

Prototyping

AI coding agents

Motion design

Team collaboration

Tools

Figma

Front-end coding

p5

TouchDesigner

openFrameworks

Arduino

Raspberry Pi

Job description

About Us

ART Lab (AI Robot Technology) is building novel and unexpected endpoints for AI in everyday spaces. We believe that in the AI revolution, we won’t only be accessing intelligence through glass screens on our desks and in our pockets. ART Lab has invented a new type of AI model called VLIs — vision-language-interaction models — that can be used to power human-robot interactions across a range of robots. The team has backgrounds at Amazon (robotics), Apple, Logitech, Google (AI and robotics) and Humans since 1982. The company is advised by leaders from Stanford, LEGO, Nike, and Google.

The Role

We’re looking for an interaction designer who thinks with their hands. When your medium is a robot that people share physical space with, you can’t design it on a screen alone — you have to build it, hold it, and feel how the interaction lands in the real world.

You’ll work directly with the founding team to shape how people experience our robots: the moment-to-moment feel of an interaction, the motion, the timing, the personality. One day you’re prototyping a flow on screen; the next you’re taping together a physical rig and running it live to see if it actually works. You’ll use AI coding tools to build working prototypes yourself, so your ideas show up as real, testable things instead of static mockups.

This starts as a short contract so we can both find out quickly whether it clicks — with the intent to convert to a full‑time role.

What You’ll Do

• Prototype in the real world: Build physical, spatial, and Wizard-of-Oz prototypes to test interactions with actual hardware — paper, cardboard, off‑the‑shelf parts, whatever gets the idea real fastest
• Prototype on screen: Design and iterate flows, states, and motion in Figma, code, or whatever’s fastest
• Build with AI, not just design: Use Claude Code, Codex, Gemini, and similar tools as a native part of your workflow to ship working prototypes without waiting on someone else
• Design the feel of human-robot interaction: Sweat the motion, timing, and behavior that make a robot feel alive, legible, and delightful to be around
• Turn fuzzy problems into concrete bets: Take open‑ended questions, make them testable, get them in front of real people — and kill the ones that don’t work
• Partner across the stack: Work shoulder‑to‑shoulder with hardware, robotics, and ML engineers to make the whole experience real

Who You Are

Required:

• 1–5 years designing interactions, products, or experiences, with a portfolio of things you actually shipped or built — not just pixels
• Fluent with AI coding agents — you’ve genuinely built with Claude Code, Codex, Gemini, or similar, and can go from idea to working prototype on your own
• A real‑world prototyper — you make physical, spatial, or improvised prototypes to test ideas, not just Figma files
• Strong instincts for interaction, motion, and feel — you notice the 100ms that makes something feel right or wrong
• Clever, curious, and genuinely fun to work with — you ask good questions, chase weird ideas, and make the team better by being in the room
• Based in or willing to relocate to the San Francisco Bay Area (in‑person collaboration is essential for hardware work)

Preferred:

• Comfort with code — front‑end, creative coding (p5, TouchDesigner, openFrameworks), or hardware/microcontrollers (Arduino, Raspberry Pi)
• Experience designing motion, animation, or character/robot behavior
• Experience running prototype tests with real users and iterating fast
• Background in industrial design, HRI, physical computing, or hardware/consumer products
• A side project, a strange demo, or a thing you made just because you had to

This Role Might Not Be For You If:

• You only want to work in Figma and hand off to someone else to build
• You need well‑defined specs and established infrastructure
• You’re looking for a remote‑only position

Contract:

Full‑time contractor, ~3-month contract with intent to convert to permanent · Start ASAP

Why ART Lab

• Founding team opportunity: Join early and shape how people experience our robots
• World‑class team: Work alongside veterans from Google, Amazon, Apple, and Logitech
• Exceptional advisors: Guidance from leaders at Stanford, LEGO, Nike, and Google
• Uncommon problem space: Design robots that people actually want in their spaces — products that are functional, beautiful, and surprising