What are the responsibilities and job description for the Design Strategist position at Ovyl?
About Us
Ovyl is a product development firm working on an exciting range of consumer electronics, lifestyle products, and medical devices. We're currently expanding our team in Nashville, Tennessee and are looking for our next Design Strategist.
About You
You love understanding people, and can uncover hidden needs and pain points that they might not even realize they have. You know how to translate these insights into tactical opportunities and guardrails that help teams design great solutions. You are compulsive about learning new things, even if you’re not sure when you will use the knowledge. You pride yourself on being a good question-asker which allows you to refine vague instructions until you have a clear direction. You are comfortable with a variety of research methods, and know when to use the right tool at the right time. You probably even keep up with User Research and Product Strategy trends in your spare time. To you, making things that solve real problems is the most fun you could have at work, and that’s why you are reading this now.
In this role, you will
- Work directly with clients to understand their priorities and success criteria to ensure Ovyl designs products that serve their business needs.
- Gather, unpack, and prioritize questions and assumptions, and then design a research plan that systematically answers the riskiest unknowns.
- Conduct primary and secondary research using a variety of methods, including interviews, diary studies, surveys, prototype testing, industry trend analysis, and good old-fashioned Googling.
- Translate research findings into product requirements that guide the product development process.
- Facilitate collaborative workshops and working sessions that bring the team along in the research, rather than execute your work in a vacuum.
- Create compelling presentations that articulate insights and recommendations.
- Work closely with the Head of Strategy to help Ovyl evolve and grow the Product Strategy practice.
Requirements
- Demonstrable expertise in more than one of the following research methods, and familiarity with all: usability testing, contextual inquiry, survey design, focus groups, card sorting, diary studies, etc.
- Experience with Product Design and Development where the solutions evolved through iterative prototype testing.
- Experience writing design principles and product requirements.
- Comfortable in a highly technical environment where you will be working directly with Mechanical Engineers, Electrical Engineers, Software Developers, etc.
- Excellent presentation and communication skills, with the ability to advocate for the value of research when speaking to a skeptical audience.
- Experience with physical product design (vs. software) preferred but not required
- Current or previous titles likely include Design Strategist, Product Strategist, Innovation Strategist, UX Researcher, Product Designer, Service Designer, or similar
- Must live in Nashville, TN or be willing to relocate.
Compensation, benefits, and perks.
- Work-Life Balance: Ovyl pays competitively, gives top of the line perks, and above all, respects work-life balance. You can work from home as often as you want, be home for dinner, take a meaningful vacation off the grid, and work to live instead of living to work.
- Health Insurance: Ovyl covers 100% of your health insurance premium. You pay the difference for a spouse and/or dependents.
- Dental, Vision, HSA: Ovyl offers these plans but does not contribute to their premiums.
- 401k matching: Ovyl contributes 3% no matter what, by default you contribute an additional 6% (you may change this).
- Flexible schedules & WFH: Ovyl supplies a new laptop (Mac or PC) to use for your work and you’ll get to enjoy the flexibility that we love so much about being self-employed. Want to work from home 2 days a week? Do it. Is it too perfect to be inside on a Tuesday? Work Saturday instead.
- Unlimited paid time off: We’re not counting vacation days and sick days, we’re just looking at your work. We strongly encourage a minimum of two weeks vacation plus sick and personal days but if you’re meeting deadlines, keeping projects on track, and making clients happy, we’re flexible on everything else.
- Company events: We take a day off work a few times a year to have fun, hang out, and get to know each other. You're part of the Ovyl Fam.
- Maker Stipend: We want to employ people who freaking love to make stuff, so we’ll reimburse up to $600/year of any personal project spending. Put it toward building a new headboard for your bed, or buying a really nice hot-glue gun, or getting an Arduino kit and figuring out how to automate your herb garden.
- Learning Stipend: We also want to employ people who love learning, so we also reimburse up to $200/year for any educational resources. You can put it towards audiobooks, online courses, workshops, or events, to name a few.
- Access to 3D printers for personal use: If the printers aren’t needed for a project, have at ‘em. If it’s something small, it's probably ok to just print it. If it’s something big or a mini production run, we may ask that you bring your own material.
- Stocked fridge and snacks: We’ll stay stocked up on healthy snacks, carbonated water, coffee, tea, and beer.
- Join Nashville’s best product dev consultancy: You’ll get to learn new skills working alongside a great team on a wide variety of products, from medical devices that save lives to consumer products that light up a Kickstarter campaign.