UX Strategy Manager

At VyStar, we offer competitive pay, an excellent benefit package that includes a 401(k) Plan, an extensive paid technical and on-the-job training program, and tuition reimbursement--available to all full and part time employees. Part time positions start at a minimum of 30 hours per week.

We encourage you to become a part of VyStar Credit Union's family of employees.

UX Strategy Manager

As Manager, UX Strategy, you will guide your team in ensuring our User Experience Design practice serves member and business needs and creates useful, innovative experiences. You will be responsible for managing the design process and design strategy while developing and growing a talented team of designers in the application of UX design, research, and prototyping methods. You will assist your team in developing insights and strategies, concepts and presenting designs from the user perspective, usability testing, and hindsight projects.

You will collaborate with junior and senior UX team members, UX agency partners, Product Owners, business stakeholders (including VPs and up), Marketing, and IT, to identify opportunities and develop design strategies that are feasible yet remain member-centered and achieve challenging user experience and business goals.

To succeed you will need a strategic mindset and skills in leadership, coaching, user research, and multiple design disciplines. A successful candidate will recognize the value of experiences that can be measured, demonstrate an aptitude for quality and excellence, and have a passion for creating seamless and consistent experiences across multiple channels.

In this new role you will join our newly formed Digital User Experience & Analytics team and have the opportunity not just to lead a team and manage the UX for VyStar's digital products, but to co-create and evolve the operational models for how the UX discipline continues to grow and integrates into the product development process.

The UX, Design and Analytics team is part of the larger Digital Member Experience (DMX) organization. DMX owns the experience for most member-facing digital products including the public sites, Online & Mobile banking, member acquisition and account opening applications. This is a rapidly growing, fast-moving team (from 1 to 17 in just 3 years) with strong investment and support from Senior Leadership. It is our vision to "develop and foster meaningful member relationships that empower and delight" through innovation, problem solving and an emphasis on doing what's right for our members.

ESSENTIAL RESPONSIBILIES

Design Process Management

• Design lifecycle management including design intake processes, planning, execution, and delivery phases for UX deliverables across multiple digital products
• Using lean UX principles and ensuring research, design, and UX content are integrated into the Agile development process as needed
• Establish official UX playbook used to educate stakeholders and partners across the organization
• Identify opportunities for user research and usability testing to inform prototypes, concepts, current and competitive experiences
• Conduct design workshops within the UX team and with cross-functional partners including Product, Marketing, Stakeholders, Business, and IT
• Identifying potential problems and points of friction and working to find solutions in order to maximize efficiency and revenue
• Overseeing workload by assigning projects to design staff and outside contractors as needed
• Establishing standards for documenting processes and research findings

Team Leadership & Strategy

• Lead and grow a team of multidisciplinary designers in UX Research, UX Strategy, and other UX practices such as UI design, interaction design and prototyping (includes immediate recruiting and hiring for 3 open positions)

• Overseeing the strategy on day-to-day operations of project deliverables, and problem resolution across multiple digital products
• Coaching teams and participating in journey and user story mapping
• Working closely with cross-functional partners to foster an environment of multidisciplinary collaboration and creative problem-solving
• Ensuring a holistic/consistent experience across our product ecosystem, looking for opportunities to leverage and scale experiences
• Ensure quality design outputs from team that articulate UX requirements or concepts using static and interactive low- to high-fidelity prototypes
• Influences project direction by acting as integral part of design team
• Present your work or the team's work to key stakeholders from a user and business perspective

Design System Management & UX Tooling

• Contribute to, maintain, and evolve the digital design system and establish contribution and review processes (we are in early, intermediary stages and need continued governance and growth in this area)
• Defining and managing roadmap for continued growth
• Manage tooling used across the team and agency partners for design, prototyping, collaboration, and user research
• Develop a consistent suite of tools to be leveraged by the team and ensure adherence to standards and delivery practices

Design Culture

• Mentor team in the development of their career, including both design and behavioral skills, with a focus on serving member and business needs while supporting their personal career goals
• Understanding industry, user interface, and technology trends, and promote them where relevant within the UX, Business, Marketing and IT groups
• Provides experiences and training that maintains highest level of competency among the team
• Promoting member/user-first approach to solving problems and establishing regular cadence of knowledge sharing across the organization

Digital Experience Evangelization

• Evangelize the importance of user experience, content optimization, and messaging by serving as a subject matter expert and trusted advisor across teams on how content impacts every phase of the member journey

Project Management

• Work within Agile Scrum and/or iterative software delivery processes to deliver content throughout the iterative development of digital products (e.g. public website, digital banking application)

JOB QUALIFCATONS

• 5 - 7 years of experience with, or management of, user research/usability testing, information architecture, prototyping, and/or visual design for web and native applications
• 3+ years of experience working in an Agile development environment
• 3+ years of experience with journey and user story mapping
• 2+ years experience leading a cross-functional team of internal and external team members
• Experience designing for large enterprise applications
• Expert in articulating complex customer and business needs in easy to understand concept expressions and presentations
• Ability to plan and lead design workshops/sprints
• Familiarity with using or creating a design system or style guides
• Develop, evolve, and design customer personas, archetypes, journeys, and user flows
• Familiarity with WCAG 2.0 Accessibility Requirements
• Knowledgeable in the capabilities of web, native (iOS + Android), and upcoming technologies
• Organizational Knowledge: Understand how to work collaboratively and navigate complex relationships throughout different parts of the organization
• Demonstrate proficiency in user research, user-centered design methods, and excellent analytical problem-solving skills coupled with strong written and verbal communication
• Demonstrated ability to understand and influence the measurement of experience from qualitative and quantitative perspectives, and clearly connect this information to design solutions
• Experience working on a team of designers, strategists, and developers

EDUCATION AND EXPERIENCE

• Degree in Human Centered Design, Psychology, Computer Science or equivalent experience preferred

KNOWLEDGE, SKILLS, AND ABILITIES

• User research and usability testing
• Information architecture
• Interaction design
• Low to high-fidelity design and prototyping using tools such as Sketch, Figma, Axure, UXPin InVision, etc.
• Understanding and ability to leverage Human Centric Design principles.
• Data-driven, and familiar with both qualitative and quantitative user research
• Familiar with Analytics and A/B Testing Tools (e.g. Google Analytics/Tag Manager, Adobe Target, Optimizely,, Tealium, etc.)
• Willing to think out of the box and be a strong voice to build strategies and solutions that are thoughtful and meaningful
• Positive outlook, strong work ethic, and responsiveness to all internal and external stakeholders.
• Familiar with current and emerging digital banking, electronic payments, or finance
• Ability to manage content agency relationships, including freelancers
• Strong project management skills, with ability to juggle multiple projects while still working effectively
• Ability to set priorities, meet deadlines, and work independently
• Strong proficiency in Microsoft Suite (Word, Excel, PowerPoint)
• Digital design and research tools (e.g. Figma, Sketch, Balsamiq, Axure, UXPin, InVision, UserTesting, Optimal Workshop)
• Google Analytics / Adobe Analytics

DISCLAIMERS AND WORK ENVIRONMENT

• Nothing in this position description is an implied contract for employment. The position description is intended to be an accurate account of the essential functions. The functions are not all encompassing and are subject to change at any time by management.
• The work environment characteristics described are representative of those that an employee encounters while performing the essential functions of this job. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions.
• As required or requested, may exert up to 20 pounds of force occasionally and/or a negligible amount of force constantly to lift, carry, push, pull or otherwise move objects.