Manager, Experience Design
CURRENT SITUATION
Ari Agency is looking for a Manager, Experience Design who can quarterback the Product Design team. The Associate Director is looking for his right-hand person to lead strategic UX design and research within the organization. This is a new role based on the growth of two website and mobile products. Key projects for 2022-23 include: (1) Bringing sold listings to a website (2) Partnering with another company’s initiatives across each province.
As a natural collaborator, you’ll work closely with a broad group of stakeholders and subject matter experts to inspire and lead discussions both internally with colleagues and externally with customers. You’ll lead a collaborative team of Business Analysts and UX/UI Designers and partner with product managers, software architects, engineering leads, and other job functions, to deliver industry-leading experiences across the client’s products and services.
You must have excellent communication skills, energy, and thoughtfulness to build and deliver the best experiences in the world for our users. You will be reporting to the Associate Director.
BACKGROUND
Based in Ottawa, The Client is the national voice and an impassioned advocate for homeowners. The organization plays an important role in assessing and influencing important economic, policy and social issues. The client is one of Canada’s largest single-industry associations. Their membership includes more than 150,000 real estate brokers, agents and salespeople working through 78 real estate boards and associations across Canada. There are over 160 full-time employees, and are expanding quickly with 21 new hires (full-time and contract) since March 2022.
Encouraging, empowering, and enabling realtors in support of Canadian real estate journeys by:
Encouraging policy in support of homeownership by mobilizing our members’ collective voice.
Amplifying and strengthening what it means to be a realtor and the value of using one by, fostering professionalism and providing modern technology solutions.
WHY WORK FOR THE CLIENT
As the Experience Design Manager, you will lead and manage a growing team of user experience (UX) and user interface (UI) designers, and business analysts to advocate for the customer by designing holistic and intuitive experiences across digital platforms including web and mobile apps.
JOB REQUIREMENTS & EXPECTATIONS
Responsibilities:
Lead, manage and grow a team of talented UX and UI Designers and business analysts that support our digital agile teams and digital products (web, mobile, apps, etc.).
Expand the value of UX within the organization and across all products and establish design metrics that show the value of UX.
Advocate the value of UX and continuously communicate with stakeholders up, down, and across the organization regarding key deliverables resulting in positive customer outcomes.
Define and own the user research vision and roadmap, and drive research priorities that contribute to delivering compelling product experiences.
Conduct and/or partner on user research studies and present findings that will inform improvements in the customer experience.
Discover customer and business needs through contextual inquiries, generative and quantitative research, and identify solutions to meet those needs.
Be a fast-paced innovator who can prototype rapidly in multiple mediums and levels of interactivity (physical, digital, low, and hi-fidelity, from conceptual to tangible).
Provide stellar leadership and mentor your team on best practices in UX design and research to scale the team's processes.
Grow design competency through identifying and tracking training and development needs in your team and finding different ways to satisfy those needs.
Manage team capacity across the portfolio against multiple release schedules.
Partner with Product Management to ensure customer requirements are met and incorporated into our products from concept to delivery.
Facilitate workshops, design sprints, and stakeholder sessions in the context of agile delivery.
Present research findings and experience visions to executive and their leadership teams.
Champion the ongoing development and use of the website design system.
Where:
Based in Ottawa, with a hybrid model of working in person and virtually. 1-2 days a week in office.
What You Bring:
8+ years experience in a user experience designer role, designing intuitive digital experiences for both web and mobile apps.
You are seasoned in fast-paced design research with 5+ years of experience leading and conducting user research.
Strong leadership, team management, communication, and organization skills with a passion for growing and developing people.
Complete UX skills: Workshop facilitation, problem discovery, solution generation, concept creation, wireframing, user testing, synthesis, iteration, prototyping, heuristic evaluation, competitive analysis, customer journey mapping, applying design systems and producing deliverables for development.
Significant experience working with development teams, participating in scrum, working within the agile methodology.
Expert knowledge of design and prototyping tools like Figma, Invision or others.
Proven ability to work within a fast-paced, collaborative design team that takes an insights-driven approach to developing design outcomes for end users.
A passion and curiosity for understanding new digital technologies as they emerge.
Experience with front-end development (HTML/CSS) is not required, but knowledge of the capabilities and constraints of digital standards and platforms would be beneficial.
Bonus Points
Experience in media design (graphic arts, audio/video, typography) and content development (copywriting, social media) is not required but would be beneficial.
French language skills are an asset.
Additional Company Benefits
3 weeks’ vacation
The client pays for full group insurance (health, dental, mental health coverage)
$350 a year for fitness (can go towards membership, equipment, running shoes)
Professional development courses and conferences covered
Wellness committee with a focus on nutrition, fitness and mental health
Pension plan match of 6%
Team BBQs with food trucks, lunch and learns, holiday parties
Formal watercooler chats
DEI and LGBTQ+ friendly
MUST HAVE/NICE TO HAVE
Must have:
Design leadership skills: Leading teams and projects, a strategic UX design leader with an eye for visual design.
UX research: You use a research-based approach to building digital products by taking the guess work out of product decisions and bringing this to the product team. You’re a strong facilitator and well versed in all areas of user research.
Teamwork skills: Managing and mentoring teams is a strength.
Communications skills: An excellent communicator and ability to educate the executive team and broader organization on UX design principles and processes.
Agile and adaptable: Have experience working in a fast-paced and agile environment.
Nice to have:
French
Real estate industry experience
PERSONALITY/FIT/SOFT SKILLS
Candidates must have the following soft skills:
Human whisperer: You are someone who has a high degree of emotional intelligence and can read and interact with people. You’re a nice human being.
Hungry and passionate: You don’t need to be perfect in tech or tools, as long as you remain curious, and inspired to learn and grow.
Motivated: You are eager to learn and do great work and build a strong team.
Open and receptive to feedback: Fit into our culture of continuous and honest feedback.
Email adrienne@ariagency.ca to apply!