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Human-Centered Design (HCD) Strategist
Location: Hybrid (3-4 times a week) at Naval Support Facility, Arlington, VA
Availability: Immediate ________________________________________
Job Summary: We are seeking a passionate and experienced Human-Centered Design (HCD) Strategist to join our dynamic team. The ideal candidate will have a strong background in Design Thinking, User Experience (UX) Research, User Interface (UI), Section 508 compliance, and Strategic Business Planning. As an HCD Strategist, you will play a crucial role in shaping our design process flows, ensuring that our products and services meet the needs and expectations of our client. * Portfolio Required for Interview
Key Responsibilities: • Own the design strategy, client management and communication efforts related to a portfolio of projects.
• Work within agile cross-functional teams to capture key insights, pain points and opportunities for transformation of business processes, capabilities, systems and applications.
• Help inform graphical depictions of relative content as it pertains to process improvement such as experience maps, personas, Insights reports or other graphical depictions to inform about current state. Visualize data and insights.
• Ideate an optimized future state by formulating recommendations for improvements and increased efficiency.
• Conduct research and analysis.
• Provide consultation to teams on Human-Centered Design strategies and methodologies.
• Identify operational improvements based on research and analysis.
• Identify customer desires and help elicit their requirements. • Evaluate success metrics.
• Translate expertise into learning experiences to teach others how to fish.
• Create compelling user interface content designs of the Navy Sailor user experiences across online and mobile devices.
• Produce best-in-class content strategy and help shepherd it from concept through launch collaborating with multi-disciplinary teams, product managers and internal and external technology partners.
• Prototype/draft rapidly and iteratively to identify experience issues and to drive toward elegant, simplified design solutions.
• Help to establish and continually refine our client’s business systems and processes that provide for agility, nimbleness and quality in meeting partner needs and designing successful digital channel solutions.
• Leading the solution from a Design point of view.
• Provide creative directions to the design team to align with the client expectations and vision of the engagement.
• Presenting designs for all the UX queries to the client for the stakeholder engagement.
• Use design thinking techniques and Agile processes to engage stakeholders, iteratively deliver, and pivot when needed.
• Conduct stakeholder analysis.
• Analyze the user experience, process, and data/systems.
• Create visuals (e.g. Experience Maps) to show current state to include pain points, areas for innovation and processes to streamline.
• Conduct user research activities to gain insights into user needs, preferences, and pain points.
• Utilize cross-functional Integrated Agile Teams (MIL/CIV/CTR personnel) to engage with users; develop Epic stories, testable and verifiable requirements to inform design and prototyping, and test methods to verify requirements (a verification method for each unique requirement).
• Utilize best industry techniques (e.g. interviews, observations, functional/subject matter expert (SME) engagement).
• Experience working with Navy or DoD programs is a plus.
Qualifications:
• Bachelor’s degree in design, Human-Computer Interaction, Psychology, or related field. • Proven experience 5+ years in human-centered design, UI/UX research, business process, or a similar role. • Expertise with design thinking methodologies and user-centered principles. • Strong storytelling and communication skills to share user insights effectively. • Strong portfolio showcasing your design thinking process, user research, and design solutions. • Excellent communication, organization, and presentation skills, with the ability to articulate complex ideas clearly and persuasively. • Proficiency in tools such as Sketch, Figma, Visio, or similar. • Proficiency in online whiteboarding tools such as Mural, Miro, or similar. • Experience with qualitative and quantitative research methods. • Ability to work collaboratively in a fast-paced, highly matrixed Agile environment. • Strong problem-solving skills and a user-centric mindset. • Adobe Creative Suite (Illustrator, Photoshop InDesign)
Preferred Skills: • Familiarity and experience with Navy or other DOD system and processes
• Familiarity with data analytics and how to leverage data to inform design decisions. • Familiarity with Agile development practices. • Experience working with diverse communities and global teams. • Experience with usability and A/B testing. Security Clearance
• Active Secret Security Clearance preferred.