Senior Service Designer

At Northwestern Mutual, we are strong, innovative and growing. We invest in our people. We care and make a positive difference.

Our Mission

Northwestern Mutual has 160 years of history providing financial security to millions of people. Continuing that tradition means changing to meet the needs of our clients and financial advisors. We are a strong, innovative, and growing company that invests in people who care and make a positive impact. The Product Design team guides and informs the way by creating human, simple, and engaging products to help people plan, track, and protect their financial goals.

The role

A Service Designer is a pivotal design role in the EXD (Enterprise Experience Design) team. The person in this role will help to develop a holistic view of the end-to-end series of touchpoints and interactions involved in the Northwestern Mutual brand experience. The person in this role will help the design team to make sense of the dynamics of how human interactions with systems and processes inform and shape a front stage experience for clients, field representatives, and home office employees. This person will use their human-centered design skills to help identify insights that support the design team in problem-finding AND problem-solving to improve Northwestern Mutual’s brand experience. We are a shaping digital transformation, and our Service Designer can expect to play a critical hands-on role in developing design artifacts that play a direct role in driving our organization’s total success. It’s expected that the person in this role is comfortable translating researched-derived insights into principles and artifacts that play an integral role in the design process.

What You’ll Be Doing

• Working with our research team to uncover insights.
• Convert insights into clearly framed problem statements
• Create and illustrate current state interactions and exchanges, as well as future state
• Ideate multiple perspectives into mockups & prototypes utilizing best in class tools, methods, and processes.
• Collaborate with partner-stakeholders (product manager, developers, other designers), contributing to design’s focus on both design quality and the people whom we serve.
• Drive design through to execution and delivery with stakeholders.
• As a service designer you may be working on more than one project at a time.

Bring your best! What this role needs

A qualified Service Designer will have the following experience & skills:

• You have experience working on a diverse set of complex interactions and exchanges that inform front-stage product and service experiences.
• Demonstrate a well-rounded set of digital design skills with primary emphasis on journey mapping and service blueprinting with strong secondary abilities in graphic/visual design and user research.
• Demonstrate a strong understanding of relevant psychological and other social science topics and their application to product design.
• You are a strong advocate for design process and methods, and have experience and comfort working with non-designers and teams to adopt human-centered design practices.
• While you are responsive to direction and you are also able to set your own direction in order to meet co-designed success criteria.
• You are strategic and outcome oriented and present your work based on a critical eye to the needs of the business and stakeholders.
• You are not only proficient in relevant tools of the trade but explore tools & tooling in order to always be ready to switch to the next best in class tool.
• You use your communications and social skills to influence partners, peers, superiors, and stakeholders, as well as to clearly communicate requirements, requests, and responses.

Preferred Qualifications

• Service design prototyping experience
• Storyboarding and user storytelling
• Experience with direct work in a product/service organization in a product design role
• Experience in a regulated industry like financial/banking, insurance, &/or healthcare

Leadership

Things that we value:

• Solution-oriented
• Outcomes-Focused
• Leaning in and contributing
• Transparency and Openness

Performance

• Passion for the craft
• A strong point of view with a healthy dose of humility
• A collaborative mindset, thick skin and a great sense of humor
• Ability to navigate ambiguity successfully
• Willingness to take risks and bounce back
• Expect work to be done on time

Personal Development

• Growth Mindset
• Curious minds and an appetite for learning
• Be engaged and present

This job is not covered by the existing Collective Bargaining Agreement.
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We are an equal opportunity/affirmative action employer and all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, disability, age or status as a protected veteran, or any other characteristic protected by law.