Experience Design Specialist

Job Purpose

Designs and creates enhanced digital experiences while applying human-centered design techniques. Identifies unique and creative approaches to problem-solving. Evaluates challenges from a business process perspective with input and feedback from users. Engages and utilizes internal (community members and business users) and external teams (industry, governmental, etc.) the KAUST community in the iterative design process to deliver the experiences.

Major Accountabilities

•            Drives ideation by challenging assumptions and creating ideas for innovative holistic solutions that enhance experiences.

•            Leads alignment and design thinking sessions that empathize with users, define their needs and collect ideas, problems, and opportunities.

•            Engages with stakeholders and users throughout the experience design process to learn, test and refine concepts.

•            Works with internal (community members and business users) and external teams (suppliers, service providers) to develop an understanding of users’ pain points or unarticulated needs.

•            Promotes an innovation and entrepreneurship culture by applying agile, lean startup approaches and methodologies that emphasize experimentation and managed risk- taking to achieve quick results.

•            Organizes workshops on topics such as creativity, user design and prototyping.

•            Designs and develops journey maps, and storyboards and other artifacts of end-to-end experiences spanning multiple touch points and multiple stakeholders.

•            Applies visual design techniques to storytelling.

•            Leads focus group sessions to evaluate and assess early concepts.

•            Conducts field research and collects and analyzes users’ interactions and touch points.

•            Researches new technology and design trends, and benchmarks against known entities and organizations.

•            Applies the principles of business process mapping and optimization to experience design.

•            Facilitates workshops and drives and influences change in process, adoption of new approaches, or the experimentation of new concepts.

•            Identifies, manages and fosters required stakeholders’ engagement throughout the KAUST Smart innovation journey

•            Works closely with software and mobile app developers to prioritize and apply user design concepts to early prototypes.

•            Collaborates with enterprise solution architects to design an end-to-end experience and to integrate it with other experiences and building blocks.

•            Presents outcomes and results at conferences or seminars and helps promote best practices in experience design.

•            May supervise junior team members on assignments.

•            Mentors young talent and new recruits to scale best practices and to influence the culture of innovation and experimentation.

•            Perform other applicable tasks and duties assigned within the realm of the employee’s knowledge, skills and abilities in the field of his/her position.

Person Requirements

Competencies

Essential:

•            Strong background and proven track record in human-centered design, process mapping, business analysis, product design, or business user engagement.

•            Deep empathy and listening skills.

•            Strong analytical and problem solving skills.

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•            Strong communications and facilitation skills, and the ability to effectively drive change in people, processes and technology.

•            Goal and results orientation, and persistence to achieve desired outcomes.

•            Must possess design talent, creative energy, organizational skills, and be details oriented.

Preferred:

•            Visual or graphics design experience.

Qualifications

Essential:

•            Bachelor’s degree in computer science, information systems, digital design, graphics design, or related disciplines.

•            Excellent English speaking, presentation, and writing skills.

Preferred:

•            Design thinking and/or process improvement training or certifications.

Experience

Essential:

•            6+ years of experience with proven track record in information technology, user design, business process, agile practices, or innovation methodologies.

Preferred:

•            Experience in design thinking and human-centric design.