Design Thinking Strategist

STRATEGIC STAFFING SOLUTIONS (S3) HAS AN OPENING!

Design Thinking Strategist
Charlotte, NC (Hybrid/Onsite 3 days per week)
12+ Months
W2 Contract role

Position Summary

In this role, you will serve as a leader in the product and services space, helping teams discover new solutions that people love and drive value to the business. Your tasks will include framing opportunities with clients, structuring, and running research activities, planning and facilitating collaborative workshops driving problem definition and concept explorations, collaborating to create impactful solutions, and validating those solutions through testing.

Role Responsibilities

• Partner closely with clients, cultivating shared understanding and alignment to ensure our work meets their business needs, and they understand the value of our human centered approach.
• Foster a culture of curiosity and creativity that manifests in how projects are framed and executed, considering unique variables and constraints. Coach and support product leadership with strategic decision-making.
• Scope and design research plans based on business requirements and technical feasibility.
• Plan, conduct, and interpret research to inform user interaction, visual direction and technical feasibility of a product or service. Research methods include user and business stakeholder interviews, usability evaluations, and concept validation.
• Plan and host collaborative cross functional workshops and work sessions with internal and external teams to support ideation, decision making and requirements gathering.
• During research phase, guide your team in communicating complex concepts in written and visual formats to foster shared understanding and alignment with relevant stakeholders. Also, serve as as central point-of-contact as it relates to design direction for a project team.

Role Qualifications

• 3-5 years' experience in design research, product strategy and design and/or service design. Your story/portfolio reflects a full understanding of the entire product cycle, from initial conception through build and into deployment.
• Experience in business strategy and value assessment a plus to align product strategy to business objectives.
• Be able to understand the business needs and how to use value to drive research to achieve outcomes.
• Extensive experience planning and facilitating cross functional workshops at various levels of leadership in a corporate setting.
• Comfort with developing narratives and storytelling to influence and guide leaders and relevant stakeholders throughout product cycle.

Desired Skills and Traits

• Consultant mindset. Creative problem solving with decisiveness while leading research efforts through ambiguous spaces. Embraces the unknown with a bias towards action in ambiguous environments.
• You roll up your sleeves, explore new ideas and when there's extra work needed, you get it done.
• Plan and Facilitate - Lead research efforts to better understand people and their environments. Analyze and synthesize research into actionable insights and recommendations.
• Structure and lead workshops that align research insights to defined business goals, determine priorities, and leverage artifacts to make your ideas clearly understood.
• Team Player - Collaborative maker with experience creating psychologically safe environments where people can innovate.
• You coach to product mindset, articulate problems and solutions clearly, striving for alignment.

*Beware of scams. S3 never asks for money during its onboarding process