At Productive Edge, we bring humanity to technology. We’re experts at aligning the needs of our clients’ businesses with the ultimate goal of empowering the people who use their products and services. We care deeply about our clients and their customers, and work closely with them to create meaningful, usable, and useful experiences.

If you’re looking for a truly exciting opportunity to lead the delivery and execution of client-facing UX design, strategy, and research work while being a core part of a small (but rapidly growing) team of smart, talented, and passionate designers, this role may just be perfect for you. Read on!

Here are a few things you can expect to do in this role:

• Co-create design deliverables with clients, members of our UX Design team, and key stakeholders on your Productive Edge Delivery teams. 
• Lead and participate in service and interaction design and strategy activities on projects, including (but not limited to) client workshops, brainstorming activities, design definitions, and visioning exercises.

• Plan and conduct UX research.
• Conduct empathy research to develop deep insights, generate concepts, and craft how people will interact with the products and experiences you and your team will design.
• Demonstrate expertise in how you frame and tell the story of the team’s design solutions. Involves skillful verbal and visual presentation of research findings, conceptual ideas, detailed designs, and design rationale.
• Conduct iterative usability studies to validate design decisions for products and experiences that you or other team members have created. 

• Analyze customer data.
• Understand how and when to integrate quantitative data into the UX process, to support project objectives and give greater depth to qualitative research insights. 
• Work with clients to gather and analyze the data necessary to making informed design decisions throughout a project’s lifecycle. 

• Design and prototype useful, usable, desirable visual artifacts that you’re comfortable presenting to key internal and external stakeholders.
• Create experience maps, user journeys and service blueprints, interaction models, flows, wireframes, and fully fleshed-out visual designs.
• Employ and execute on a rapid prototyping and iterative usability testing methodology, ranging from paper prototypes and guerrilla testing to digital prototypes and in-lab testing.
• Explain, discuss, and justify design decisions eloquently.

• Write meaningful, understandable, concise interface content.
• Treat the content in your designs as an opportunity to have a conversation with the user about their goals. Your designs should facilitate that conversation. 

• Lead projects from inception through to delivery. 
• Utilize experience with Agile software development paradigms to help drive projects and manage/coordinate multiple initiatives and development teams (including offshore)
• Facilitate core Agile meetings with one or more teams (Sprint Planning, Daily Stand-up, Demo, Retrospective, and Backlog Grooming)
• Report on project status, budget, schedule, and Agile metrics such as velocity and cycle time
• Participate in collaboration sessions with customers to formulate creative and practical solutions to their challenges
• Identify dependencies and remove impediments to ensure that deliverables are achieved on time and within budget
• Interface and effectively communicate with both business and technical resources, both on-site at the client and remotely
• Develop, coach, and mentor team members on standards and best practices for Agile software delivery

So who are you? 

Probably someone whose colleagues and friends describe as:

• A master communicator who brings clarity to confusion.
• A storyteller who communicates exceptionally well through both words and visual artifacts.
• A strategic thinker who takes an empathetic, user-centered approach to problem solving. 
• A confident person who’s humble, and never pretends to be someone s/he’s not.
• An intensely creative, curious person driven by a desire to constantly learn. 
• A natural leader who sparks conversations, speaks clearly, and invites others into his/her creative process.
• A positive person who has fun with their work, and who brings this energy and enthusiasm to the team on a daily basis.

So far in your career, you’ve:

• Led the application of user-centered design processes to solve complex problems, while working collaboratively with cross-functional teams.
• 6-10 years of experience working in the field of UX 
• Led efforts in designing and implementing large software systems, and working with distributed teams to deliver them in a timely manner without sacrificing quality.
• Demonstrated expertise in a speciality area within the broader design landscape, including (but not limited to) UX research, visual design, content design, or UX strategy. 
• Created experience maps, user journeys and service blueprints, interaction models, flows, wireframes, and fully fleshed-out visual designs for initiatives you’ve been a part of. 
• Employed rapid prototyping and iterative usability testing methodology, ranging from paper prototypes and guerrilla testing to digital prototypes and in-lab testing. 
• Drive the creation of product and sprint backlogs, and manages their effective execution.
• A Masters Degree in HCI is preferred

About Productive Edge:
Productive Edge is a Chicago-based leader in digital transformation. As digital business consultants, we focus on digital strategy, customer experience, operations improvement, and product & services enablement. How do we do this? Through launching solutions for Data and Artificial Intelligence (AI), Intelligent Automation (IA), Internet of Things (IoT), and Cloud Native Solutions. Sounds fun, right? It gets better...and that’s where you come in! 

Productive Edge offers the dynamic opportunity to use your talents in a progressive, highly-collaborative environment that values innovation and creativity. We are a culture that stays on the cusp of today’s developing and emerging technologies. Our passion, ingenuity, and dedication sets us apart from other consultants (as does our modern work atmosphere with fun outings, foosball, stocked fridge and other activities). Because we work with and develop solutions for some of the world’s most exciting brands, we are actively searching for individuals who are ready to change the way the world operates. 

And if that’s not enough, Productive Edge has been featured as one of Chicago’s 101 Best and Brightest Companies to Work For, included in Crain’s Fast 50, and is a regular on Inc. 5000.