UI/UX Design Manager

Location: Hybrid Work Model- Van Wert, OH, Dublin, OH

We are a team of employees who are passionate to deliver best in-class customer service and innovation in the industry. It’s because we put Integrity, Relationships and Excellence in all aspects of our work.

Our employees have the opportunity to fully utilize their talents and bring their best self.  We believe that who you are is just as important as what you do!

As a UI/UX Manager, you will be passionate about user experiences. Working alongside our Product Team and Product Leaders, you will leverage research from your team to oversee the design digital interactions and experiences focusing on usability, function, and accessibility that convey our brand image and delight our users.

With your knowledge and expertise, you will serve as a driving creative force, making decisive contributions, helping us grow and design new solutions and offerings for our users.  

How You’ll Make an Impact 

Market Discovery

• Research
  • Coaches team on qualitative user research activities as needed. Lead or coordinate small scale quantitative research projects if needed. Leads research when needed.
  • Coaches team on documenting existing processes and user experiences to be used during design and during future product planning meetings. Documents as needed.
  • Proactively identify gaps in user experience knowledge and propose qualitative and / or quantitative research to close gaps.
  • Research designs for competitive and noncompetitive solutions to find weaknesses and inspiration.

Strategic Planning

• Strategy
  • Ensure your team is actively advocating for users during roadmap planning to ensure Product Management and Development create acceptable user experiences.
  • Coach your team on understanding the most important moments for users and development costs for different user experiences and use this knowledge to selectively highlight the need for improved user experiences.  Coach team to ensure they are advocating for only the most important experiences.

Definition and Viability

• Design
  • Create and manage the organizational strategy around IA structure, labeling, navigation, and search systems. Provide guidance to the team and oversight on individual products or projects. Coordinate the information architecture across your team to ensure consistency.
  • Facilitate design reviews of wireframes and prototypes to ensure consistency and creative collaboration. Establish and documents interaction best practices due to deep understanding of how people interact with technology, accessible to the organization. Identifies, point of contact for, and manages the budget for selected design software used for wireframing and prototyping.
  • Establish and maintains a design system to increase design productivity and consistency.  Ensures team is using system and identifies needed enhancements to system.
  • Stay aligned with visual design trends, tools and techniques and ensure team remains current. Establish and optimize an appropriate, polished aesthetic, documented and accessible to the organization. Actively help designers to adopt and build upon foundation, coaching design skills. Communicate with Marketing - Creative Director on digital brand guidelines and standards. Identify and manage the budget for selected design software.
• Validation
  • Coach your team on assisting with opportunity testing and conduct tests as needed. 
  • Work with Design Researchers and Product Managers to conduct useability tests on information architecture, designs, and prototypes.  Capture and share results with recommendations.
  • Attend Product Management walk throughs and provide feedback.
  • Attend and/or facilitate and lead Design Playbacks.  Summarize and present more complex design solutions (ie user flows, wireframes, prototypes) to large groups of people, adjusting language, technology, and medium for the various audiences. Document feedback, observations, and action items.  Coach team members on techniques for leading effective and efficient Design Playbacks for various audiences.

Sense and Respond

• Performance
  • Product outcomes: Working with UX Design, leverage clickstream data to understand product usage, adoption, and struggles. Make suggestions for product improvements based on adoption and usage metrics. Identify missed KPIs and suggest possible factors and potential improvements.  Suggest tracking events and identify the key moments. Help select and manage product analytics vendors and implementation. Suggest and execute process improvements for tracking and reporting. Coach team on analytics best practices.

People Management

• Sets team priorities ensuring team is prioritizing most critical work items first and notifying management and requestors when team is nearing capacity.
• Build and management Design budget 

What You’ll Bring

• Master’s degree in Visual Design, Human-computer Interaction, or related field and 2 years of direct experience in UX Design
  • Or Bachelor’s degree in Visual Design, Human-computer Interaction, or related field and 4 years of direct experience in UX Design
  • Or 6 years direct experience in UX Design
• Five or more years of experience designing interactions for web and mobile
• A portfolio or samples of work demonstrating experience creating great user-centered design solutions
• Proficient in Adobe Creative Suite design software (Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator)
• Experience with user experience and prototyping tools, such as XD, Sketch, Figma, Overflow, etc.
• Basic HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript skills
• Knowledge of user interface and information design principles
• Exceptional visual design skills
• Experience working in Agile environment
• Experience acting as an advocate for customers, providing design solutions based in user-centered design, user research, and customer analytics
• Good interpersonal and communication skills
• Self-motivated, collaborative, and detail-oriented
• Curious (don’t be afraid to ask questions or do additional research)
• Ability to work independently and in a team environment
• Ability to constructively critique and provide feedback to teammates on Designs
• Ability to mentor and lead a team
• Ability to develop team members