Lead UX Researcher/Service Designer

Agile Six is looking for a dedicated Lead UX Researcher and Service Designer to join a new, highly collaborative team (CX Catalog) partnering with the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Veterans Experience Services (VES) to research and create a series of service blueprints. These service blueprints will describe the steps in every major task-to-be-done (“Task”) by Veterans and other people interacting with VA. As part of the work, you will help VES identify the best way to organize, store, search, and display the service blueprints, and develop a backlog of potential service blueprints to add to the catalog.

The important work done by the CX Catalog team will be used by VES and stakeholders across the VA to understand the roles that IT systems, people, and processes play in supporting the Veteran CX. We are searching for someone who has a passion for working on important problems that have a lasting impact on millions of users and make a difference in our government!

Responsibilities

• Bring both product ownership and research expertise to the project
  • Clearly define the objectives of creating service blueprints and involve relevant stakeholders from the beginning to understand their needs and expectations
  • Ensure that the blueprints align with VA’s organizational goals
• Leverage your expertise in human-centered design (including extensive experience conducting user research, creating personas, and designing intuitive interfaces) to consistently and efficiently develop service blueprints that meet user needs
• Drive the Veteran-facing user experience for CX Catalog by:
  • Leading user research efforts, including discovery, synthesis and documenting the results and findings
  • Collaboratively creating and evolving user stories and acceptance criteria
  • Owning the design by leveraging and extending an existing component-based design system
  • Clearly articulating your design vision through verbal and written explanation, sketching, or quick mock-ups to small or large groups, from designers to the leadership team
• Communicating and collaborate with stakeholders and team members across a range of disciplines throughout the Department of Veterans Affairs

Basic Qualifications

• 8+ years of experience working as UX designer/researcher in collaboration with digital product or service teams (enterprise environment a plus, as is service design experience)
• Expertise with service blueprints and the service design process
• Demonstrated ability to own a product as UX Research Lead
• Demonstrated experience analyzing/dissecting complex systems in order to quickly identify pain points, bottlenecks and areas for improvement.
• Experience conducting user research, creating personas, and designing intuitive interfaces in order to consistently and efficiently develop service blueprints that meet user needs.
• Portfolio illustrating your process and samples of native product or service design work driven by quantitative and qualitative user research
• Understands human centered design, interaction design fundamentals, and UI design best practices, including accessibility
• Proficient in Sketch and modern prototyping tools
• Experience collaborating with cross-functional partners and other designers, seeking and providing feedback in an Agile environment
• Is adaptive, empathetic, collaborative and holds a positive mindset
• Ability to take initiative in solving complex problems

Additional Desired Qualifications

• Experience working with government agencies
• You are a U.S. Veteran