Director, User Experience Design

Collaborates with partners to ensure consistent design quality and provides oversight for adherence to inclusive design principles and accessibility guidelines. Collaborates with senior research leaders on advancements for research and qualitative and quantitative methods to inform the development of design solution strategies. Establishes communication and design strategy to gain alignment with stakeholders as well as presents to peers and leadership on concepts, vision, and progress towards business goals. Oversees the utilization and preparation of product design testing methods to analyze and synthesize results to inform the development of effective solutions and ensures alignment with strategic objectives. Develops and oversees the implementation of plans and processes for identifying and defining expectations, requirements, and objectives to inform product design solutions and ensure alignment with business outcomes and key results. Sets the UX product design vision and strategy as well as determines plans and processes for identifying, defining, and translating business needs and requirements to ensure alignment on overall look, feel, and behavior of a product and communicates information across departments (e.g., engineering, product development, editorial review, and accessibility). Defines guidelines and standards for design ideation review and analysis to ensure alignment of product design ideas with long-term business objectives, UX goals, and stakeholder requirements.

Essential Responsibilities:

• Prepares individuals for growth opportunities and advancement; builds internal collaborative networks for self and others. Solicits and acts on performance feedback; drives collaboration to set goals and provide open feedback and coaching to foster performance improvement. Demonstrates continuous learning; oversees the recruitment, selection, and development of talent; ensures performance management guidelines and expectations to achieve business needs. Stays up to date with organizational best practices, processes, benchmarks, and industry trends; shares best practices within and across teams. Motivates and empowers teams; maintains a highly skilled and engaged workforce by aligning resource plans with business objectives. Provides guidance when difficult decisions need to be made; creates opportunities for expanded scope of decision making and impact.


• Oversees the operation of multiple units within a department by identifying member and operational needs; ensures the management of work assignment completion; translates business strategy into actionable business requirements; ensures products and/or services meet member requirements and expectations while aligning with organizational strategies. Gains cross-functional support for business plans and priorities; assumes responsibility for decision making; sets standards, measures progress, and fosters resolution of escalated issues. Communicates goals and objectives; analyzes resources, costs, and forecasts and incorporates them into business plans; prioritizes and distributes resources. Removes obstacles that impact performance; guides performance and develops contingency plans accordingly; ensures teams accomplish business objectives.


• Identifies and understands needs of the user, key stakeholders, and business by: developing and overseeing the implementation of plans and processes for identifying and defining expectations, requirements, and objectives into solutions to inform product design and ensure alignment with Objectives and Key Results (OKRs); setting the user experience product design vision and strategy as well as plans and processes for identifying, defining, and translating business needs and requirements to ensure alignment on overall look, feel, and behavior of a product and communicates information across departments (e.g., engineering, product development, editorial review, and accessibility); and collaborating with business partners to assess the value, costs, and benefits of proposed solutions in relation to user needs as it relates to projects across departments.


• Contributes to the delivery of design collateral and documents by: evaluating the holistic vision for the design process and ensuring consistency across channels, applications, and experiences; establishing communication and design strategy to gain alignment with stakeholders as well as presenting to peers and leadership on concepts, vision, and progress towards business goals; and overseeing the utilization and preparation of product design testing methods and utilizing testing results to inform the vision as well as advising senior management on future direction.


• Inspires new and better design solutions by: directing teams on expectations and initiatives as well as
  
  reviewing concepts from team to connect ideas to broad organizational goals and strategy; and creating guidelines and standards for design ideation review and analysis to ensure alignment of product design ideas with long-term business objectives, user experience goals, and stakeholder requirements.


• Creates high-quality product designs by: collaborating with partners to ensure consistent design quality across the organization and overseeing teams adherence to and setting expectations, standards, and strategies for product design considering user value, engagement, and success; ensuring processes are aligned across departments and advancing expertise of design methods to shape improvement strategies that impact product design quality and processes; collaborating with senior leaders to ensure a user-centered and data-driven iterative design process across the organization and communicating processes to teams; and providing oversight for adherence to inclusive design principles and regulations regarding accessibility guidelines (e.g., Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, Android and iOS Mobile Guidelines, etc.).


• Contributes to discovery activities when needed to ensure iterative design process by: establishing and coaching team members on standards and processes for identifying the problem(s) within products to ensure current and future understanding of users experience; collaborating with senior research leaders to identify advancements for research processes and leveraging qualitative and quantitative methods (e.g., interviews, observation, surveys, analytics, market research, etc.) to inform the development of design solution strategies; and connecting user experience maps and flows to the overall user experience across journeys, channels, and platforms as well as ensuring alignment across departments.

Qualifications:

• Minimum two (2) years of experience managing operational or project budgets.


• Minimum three (3) years of experience in a leadership role with direct reports.


• Minimum six (6) years of experience in user experience (UX) design.


• Minimum six (6) years of experience designing for Web or Application platforms.


• Minimum six (6) years of experience working with relevant user experience design tools.


• Minimum six (6) years of experience in the design and delivery of enterprise applications or products.


• Minimum six (6) years of experience working with user data and insights.


• Associates degree in Applied Science, Social Sciences, Arts, Humanities, Design, Software Dev, Business, or related field AND minimum eleven (11) years professional experience including internship experience OR minimum twelve (12) years professional experience including internship experience.

• Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities (KSAs): Technical Documentation; Consulting; Interpersonal Skills; Relationship Building; Stakeholder Management; User Experience (UX); Product Design; Product Development Life Cycle; Product Engineering; Product Performance; Production Support; Agile Methodologies; Product Development Quality; Experimental Design; User Experience Research; Persuasion; Design Thinking; User Interface Design; User Experience Customer Data; Information Architecture