Lead Experience Designer
Unit:
Reports to: Design VP – McKinsey Digital Labs
Location:
About McKinsey Digital Labs
McKinsey & Company is one of the world’s premiere management consulting firms with some 8,500 consultants across 89 locations in 50 countries. The Firm provides a full spectrum of consulting services primarily to large corporations but also to governments, international institutions, and non-profit organizations. These organizations include 100 of the top 150 global companies, touching every major industry.
McKinsey Digital Labs (MDL) combines user-centered design with unparalleled business knowledge and world-class agile development skills to deliver impactful digital experiences. Our highly skilled UX designers, digital engagement managers and agile developers deliver service concepts, experiential prototypes and production-ready apps to transform client’s businesses.
Despite being part of a large, multinational organization, MDL works more like a small startup company. Our teams are small, flexible and employ agile methodologies to quickly provide our clients with the solutions they need.
The Role
The lead experience designer’s primary responsibility will be to drive user experience design from end-to-end, including discovery, ideation, concepting, detailed design, prototypes and validation. The lead will be reponsible for the overall quality of deisgn output and its contribution to project objectives. The lead will activley collaborate with McKinsey consultants and development leads to engage clients throughout the project.
User experience lead oversees the daily activities of multiple concurrent design teams and cultivates an environment of sustained creativity and professional growth. The user experience lead may assist on design direction, design process, team effectiveness, and client relationships. They are also expected to play an active, hands-on role in key projects.
Desired Skills & Mindset
Entrepreneurial self-starter who is self-motivated, but also a team player with a professional presence. A Must have a well rounded user-centered design portfolio that spans some combination of web, mobile, tablet, TV and wearables. Ability to get things done, while also collaborating. At the same time, a successful candidate will not only be a good learner, but a good teacher. They should inspire their peers and more junior team members to learn and expand their skill set, guiding them in the right direction.
Team Leadership
- Oversee the creative quality and output of your team.
- Monitor and drive an ideal balance in the available skills and personality of the team towards the needs of our clients.
- Monitor and drive the team to utilize the best and latest methods and tools to be competitive.
- Help develop the culture and mindset of the team to ensure they are healthy, happy, inventive, curious, and open.
- Mentor the careers of your direct reports.
Prerequisites
§ Bachelor’s degree in design or equivalent area
§ Minimum of 7-10 years’ experience working with software developers
§ Strong command of English language (both verbal and written)
§ Willingness to travel to up to 50% to client sites
Design experience
§ Experience with designing consumer quality products, enabling business capability and objectives through technology
§ Interaction and Visual design skills, including use of a diverse set of software such as Adobe CS, OmniGraffle, Balsamiq, Azure, or other design tools.
§ Experience conducting user research, usability testing, A/B testing
§ Rapid prototyping
§ Knowledge of Agile software development process
Non-design competencies
§ Strong analytical and problem solving skills paired with the ability to develop creative and efficient solutions
§ Enjoys and gets energized by complex problem solving and ability to push the innovation on solutions
§ Excellent communication skills with the ability to influence senior client business and design/marketing executives on design decisions
§ Excellent leadership skills and enjoys teaching / mentoring others
§ Ability to work under pressure, manage client expectations effectively and not get overwhelmed by client pressures on team
§ Distinct customer focus and quality mindset
§ Ability to manage own learning and contribute to functional knowledge building
§ Ability to work both independently and in various team settings
Our Offer
Our office culture is casual, fun and social, with an emphasis on education and innovation. We have the freedom to try new ideas, experiment and are expected to be constantly learning and growing. There is also a strong emphasis on mentoring others in the group, enabling them to grow and learn.
You will have exciting career prospects within an international company that is still considered a start-up, yet was created by a trusted advisor of some of the most influential organizations in the world. You will work on challenging tasks in an innovative state-of-the-art technological environment in small teams of highly motivated colleagues with various cultural backgrounds.
For more information on this role contact Jennifer_Speciale@mckinsey.
Design exercise
Design lead:
A major healthcare provider has approached us to help them reimagine how they deliver healthcare services to patients. They are interested in transforming their business model from being treatment focused (expensive to provide) to being health and wellness focused (better for patients). This includes digitally enabling existing services such as finding a doctor, appointment scheduling, prescription management, etc. They have also asked us to imagine how digital could enable new services that they couldn’t previously offer to patients.
Your mission: Assume the reimagined and new services will all be delivered via a smartphone app. Outline your ideal approach for this type of engagement. What activities would you propose? If you could only do one activity to come up with a quick answer what would it be and why? If you could only produce one artifact to showcase your initial ideas to the client, what would it be and why? Feel free to share rough examples to support your answers.
Spend no more than 2 hours on this assignment.