Summary
Job Description: A Design Lead role at PeopleGrove, a remote-first startup in the B2B SAAS industry for higher education institutions. The role involves leading a team of designers, driving platform enhancements, and creative new feature development.
Responsibilities
- Take on and execute design projects alongside your team, working with writers, engineers, and product managers to test, iterate, and bring amazing designs to life
- Identify and implement strategic design projects. Be proactive in identifying projects, getting buy in, and driving those projects forward, both on your own and with your team
- Get your hands dirty and pick up slack on your team’s design projects when needed. Do the work so the project can move forward
- Model how to do the work when someone is struggling (first me, then we, then you)
- Implement a simple and transparent design process that is consistently utilized to produce high-quality results in collaboration with the broader product and engineering teams
- Help the design team with project prioritization and planning
- Communicate design work to product management, other teams, and product leads
- Outsource: Encourage and train individual team members to manage their own time
- Ensure team members are working on high impact tasks and delivering quality work on time
- Help team members function independently while still being accountable for deliverables
- Foster a collaborative, supportive team culture with reasonable work/life balance, where people are able to work on projects that excite them and help them develop their skills
- Support the team’s growth. Provide feedback and guide team members toward achieving their professional goals and producing world-class product designs
- Craft a vision and roadmap for the design team. Where do we want design at PeopleGrove to be in 6 months? In a year? What larger goals are we working toward?
- Monitor new trends and research in design / UX, and assess how we might utilize them
- Identify gaps in our current design practices and propose solutions
- Ensure you are familiar with other functions at PeopleGrove. Talk to other leaders and team members across the company. Understand how their work impacts yours, and vice versa
- Spend time understanding our users and clients, their pain-points and goals. Become an expert on how people use our tool, what’s working, and what’s not
- Dig into data, watch recorded user sessions, and conduct user surveys and interviews
- Share out what you’ve learned and guide the design team in their own research
- Be the voice of design. Share design perspectives and advocate for design
- Showcase your team’s work. Get the product team excited about what design is working on, and give the designers a chance to show off
- Open the door for designers to actively participate and share their opinions in team and client meetings. Model how to participate and encourage the team to join the conversation
