Senior Design Research Lead

• Autonomously lead multidisciplinary teams of senior leaders through strategic transformational frameworks and iterative delivery of designed experiences in pursuit of discovery and innovation in highly complex cross-divisional and enterprise level efforts.
• Support work teams to achieve clear problem statement definition, define big ideas and capabilities, and pressure-test ideas through design research, test and learn methodologies, and value evaluation for return on investment.
• Effectively communicate in verbal and written venues to senior level leaders to present strategic opportunities, align to firm strategy/goals/objectives, define business cases, and develop strategic roadmaps that clearly articulate the journey toward an ideal client experience.
• Quickly build trusting relationships. Provide leader-level coaching, performance feedback and guidance to squad members (including senior leaders) and multi-disciplinary peers in formal and informal relationships.
• Lead alignment between design, business, and delivery workstreams to integrate business analytics, business capabilities, user and market research into the solutioning process to ensure outcomes delivered appropriately balance user value, business value, and feasibility.

The senior design lead will:

• • Evaluate a range of potential capabilities including change management, design thinking, process design, process improvement, and project/program management to achieve the project’s desired outcome.
  • Gather and evaluate necessary perspective to independently make decisions without input from higher levels.
  • Investigate and resolve escalations with varying and high degrees of complexity and impact.
  • Identify and mitigate risks associated with designed experiences delivering on user needs and business outcomes.
• Lead the development and/or improvement of experiences that have firm-wide benefits, changing the fundamental way the firm creates, captures, and/or delivers value for a particular client or colleague segment or strategy.

• Identify major detailed project tasks, resources, and coordinate the efforts of internal and external parties necessary to see successful project completion including external consulting firms or partnerships.

Comprehensive Research & Impactful Insight Generation:

• Develop a deep understanding of the business needs and identify opportunities for impactful support through user research and testing methodologies.

• High degree of proficiency in developing innovative and creative research approaches to uncover user needs and insights that help business areas within the firm solve novel and complex problems for the enterprise.

• Expertly articulate the value of user research, demonstrating its potential to significantly affect business outcomes. Collaborate closely with others to integrate user insights into business strategies.

Insights Synthesis:

• Ability to integrate insights from various disciplines (e.g., psychology, anthropology, economics) to create a more holistic understanding of user behaviors and market trends, and strengthen decision making by grounding recommendations in research findings.

Storytelling & Communication:

• Employ creative storytelling abilities to communicate research findings in a manner that provokes thought and emotion, making complex insights accessible and engaging through writing, visuals, verbal communication, stories, videos, experiences, and exhibits.