Do you believe that all lives have equal value? Are you passionate about designing experiences to improve the lives of people around the world? Are you interested in applying your expertise to amplify the work being done at the Gates Foundation? If so, you might be a great fit for this exciting role.
We are looking for an experienced Principal User Experience Designer to join our Human Centered Design team embedded within our IT organization. Our team’s mission is to drive deeper understanding and empathy for user needs to drive success within the foundation’s digital experiences. Specifically, we want to lower transaction costs, reduce friction, improve investment development and increase innovation across the ecosystems in which we work.
As a Principal UX Designer at the foundation, you will leverage your experience across the full design stack of user insights & research, service design, information design, interaction and visual design to bring clarity and simplicity to complex business problems. You will turn your research into insights and insights into elegant digital product experiences, often within the constraints of existing enterprise applications and SAAS systems. You will work closely with foundation partners, internal users, and technology team members to define new user experiences expressed through various levels of design, prototyping and user validation. You will evangelize HCD principles, design thinking and thought leadership across IT and throughout the foundation. You will strive to elevate and deliver high quality designs not just by visualizing ideas, but also as a collaborative problem solver who can contribute to all aspects design development, regardless the size of the effort.
You understand the user-centered design process and can both conduct research and facilitate design with clients, customers and team members. The Principal UX Designer we are looking for enjoys collaborating with team members, strategists, product managers, business owners and technologists to shape great experiences to change philanthropy.
Design Strategy, Research and Customer Advocacy
- Lead product and design activities to align a diverse sets of Foundation staff in the creation of a refined list of customer needs, project goals and success criteria
- Champion and lead user research, customer inquiry and advocacy, including needs assessment, validation, synthesis and prioritization
- Evangelize HCD principles with wide variety of colleagues to build understanding and interest in using a human centered approach to designing and developing solutions
- Communicate the design’s vision to clients and customers to test and explore opportunities
Design Leadership
- Bring your research to life through design documentation: personas, customer journeys, insight-opportunity frameworks, system maps, stories, prototypes or final designs
- Identify and collect modern UX patterns and exemplars, articulating their design logic, benefits and tradeoffs
- Develop choices around design and user interfaces that allow cross-discipline teams to solve customer pain points and challenges
- Provide direction and oversight to design vendors and contractors as necessary
Collaboration and Influence
- Contribute to the evolution of strategic design approaches throughout the foundation
- Communicate insights, concepts and design rationales to internal and external audiences
- Contribute to the development of thought leadership across a range of emerging business, technology and design topics
- Strong design portfolio that demonstrates a depth of Human Centered Design process, documentation and outcomes
- Experience leading the end-to-end design process for complex digital applications, particularly within the constraints of form factor (web/mobile), SAAS applications (MS/Salesforce) and localization (languages/currency).
- Deep knowledge of UX/UI, and the when/where/why to use to certain patterns
- Solid understanding of product design and development life cycle
- Experience with ethnographic research (quantitative and qualitative), divergent exploration, conceptual development and industrial design
- Ability to assess existing products in terms of their persuasiveness, emotional design, and usefulness
- A background with prototyping and testing, future visioning and strategy development
- Consultative mindset with the ability to discern when and where you can make the most valuable contribution to a project.
- Experience researching and designing within Lean, Kanban and Agile methodologies
- Strong, confident, compelling presenter with developed communication skills
- Capacity to influence peers / managers and build consensus, while managing through ambiguity and simultaneous projects
- Curiosity and a proven track record of continual learning / self-education in the field of human centered design
Education and Experience
- 10+ years professional experience, variety of industries a plus
- Postgraduate qualification a plus