2 years project with extensions Job Description: In this role, you will serve as a human-centered design leader, helping product and project teams Client new possibilities and business efficiencies, deliver products and re-engineer processes that employees love and that drive value to the business. This leader has a deep empathy for users, while also understanding business and technology, in order to help your team solve problems creatively and holistically. Using systems thinking, you will help your business partners envision strategies that leverage context, insights and trends to find new solutions to old problems. Through your creative partnership with product teams you will ensure clear problem framing, help your teams dream big and deliver on their dreams; design experiments to drive a build/test/learn iterations; and deliver great end-to-end product experiences. You will sit at the portfolio level to help your business partners align behind a vision and integrate a portfolio of products and projects to deliver on that vision. You will work with talented UX/UI designers to ensure the design aligns with user research findings and follows UX best practices. You will also work closely with change management and product analyst to ensure your solutions are adopted and impact is measured. Through your coaching, consulting, and thought leadership, you will help your product team learn human-centered design practices so they understand how design contributes to successful products and can carry forward human-centered design approaches to solve other business problems. You will support the design community through your thought leadership, engagement, and peer mentoring. In this role, you will: 1. Serve as primary design consultant and creative strategy leader, serving as central point-of-contact for a project team, product partners, and decision-makers, including sponsors and stakeholders from the business. 2. Create human-centered designs by gathering customer needs, designing graphic elements, and building delightful user experiences. These experiences may inform data and technical requirements, to be determined alongside data and engineering experts. 3. Connect regularly with various related project and product teams in collaborative development of business efficiencies and employee experience improvements, across multiple areas of a complex and multifaceted business ecosystem. 4. Demonstrate expertise in user research and develop ideas and strategies for all touchpoints (e.g., print, digital, multimedia, etc.) to create holistic end-to-end experiences 5. Be comfortable and proven in the following: a. Understanding users - Discovering needs and perceiving emerging user behaviors b. Understanding business - Helping our clients find new opportunities and connecting business requirements with user requirements c. Understanding technology - knowledgeable and curious about new technologies, and being able to see them from fresh and user-oriented perspective d. Hands-on research expertise – Designing and executing ethnographic and other qualitative methods to quantitative research methods e. Product development - Identifying and delivering on growth opportunities and bringing products or services to market f. Ability to understand business efficiencies to be gained through process improvements and lead the strategy and implementation of process re-engineering g. Ability to learn *** design systems h. Be accountable for overall implementation of user experience for assigned Business Unit i. Understand design at *** and the industry, including both new- and existing-media delivery channels. Understand and comply with *** brand standards. Achieve deep domain knowledge for the business area that you are assigned within *** j. Demonstrate the ability to effectively manage design efforts across several highly complex products with multiple stakeholders simultaneously k. Lead and/or participate in special projects and perform other duties as assigned Tactical Responsibilities: 1. Lead problem framing to ensure problems are effectively articulated and prioritized. 2. Create strategy, execute and synthesize research to inform business strategy and drive decisions based on user research insights 3. Sit at the portfolio level to help your business partners craft strategic vision. Partner with business to test business ideas in order to reduce risk. 4. Ensure consistent experience across products, including user research efforts and interaction design. Ensure a consistent experience across a portfolio that follows brand guidelines and best UX practices. 5. Assist with determining scope, as well as validating assumptions made when identifying solutions. 6. Coordinate with designers at the product level (if available) on execution of product vision to ensure we build products users love. We are looking for a well-rounded candidate that is strong with a few of these skills and methodologies, and capable in others: 1. Design Thinking 2. Innovation Workshops 3. User Research 4. Quantitative and Qualitative Research and Analysis 5. User Experience Design 6. Interaction Design 7. Information Architecture 8. Visual Design 9. Service Design 10. Prototyping (various levels of fidelity) Design Strategist Details: Immediate needs are to support the following: • Growing portfolio of products to help us manage IT as a business • Streamlined tool to manage high level goals and strategy • Defining requirements to drive value for Supply Chain and Business Units impacting and impacted by inventory management • Expanding the features of our portfolio management tool through user research • Do consider - our needs change all the time, so we need people who are hungry learners who are curious about all kinds of tough problems! **About US Tech Solutions:** US Tech Solutions is a global staff augmentation firm providing a wide range of talent on-demand and total workforce solutions. To know more about US Tech Solutions, please visit www.ustechsolutions.com (http://www.ustechsolutionsinc.com) . US Tech Solutions is an Equal Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, or status as a protected veteran.