Design Strategist

Design Strategist

• 12 months contract role

Our Client

• A multinational insurance company

The Opportunity
This job is as much about discovering, understanding and synthesizing as it is about devising an overarching design strategy for learning content. If you are unafraid to roll up your sleeves, dig into piles and piles of technical content and make sense of it so that it can be articulated visually, then we are looking for you to join our client as they revamp their Learning & Development program at a regional level, impacting more than 9 countries.
As a Design Strategist, you will:

• Devise a perfectly crafted design direction across the learning content. Starting with why learners need to master a certain concept, this design strategy must be a considered, coordinated and cross-cutting multimedia/omnichannel approach that's brought to life by designers, writers, content creators and subject matter experts. There's a need to know what to focus on and why to focus on it. In order to create a strong and lasting impression, a great design demonstrates the ability to deliver needed solutions and delight through unexpected details.
• Design a common design language for learning materials. The materials must tell great stories - ones that are clear, concise, cogent and coherent. Further, they must build memorable mental models that learners can readily access and apply to real-world situations. This requires both the design strategy as well as someone who's driven to make it happen as our client seeks to standardise visual language across nine (9) business units.
• Develop novel learning programmes. The disciplines of Design Thinking, Lean Start-Up, and Agile Development get a lot of attention in Silicon Valley and elsewhere. These disciplines taken together represent new ways of working that can help transform agency business, helping agents and leaders build the right skills, mindsets and behaviours. This requires keen communications design to position these innovative approaches in a way that resonates with our client.
• Work with and manage vendors. While the team will design and develop content in-house, it must also seek to leverage crowdsourcing platforms, remote teams and local vendors to achieve additional capacity and capability. This means you can tap other comms design talent on demand to help with your requirements.

Your Background
We are looking for experience or otherwise demonstrable competence with human-centered design or design thinking, brand and content strategy, visual design, data visualization, and/or storytelling. If you have experience as a design practitioner for technical subjects, even better.

Experience with Design Thinking, Lean Start-Up, and/or Agile Development is preferred. This includes designing programmes (e.g., courses and materials), delivering those programmes (i.e., teaching and coaching), and advising senior stakeholders on the competitive advantage that arises from the considered application of these new ways of working.

We are considering candidates from all backgrounds with a mix of these talents:

• Thinker. You adopt a "people first" approach to imagine solutions, producing desirable designs to meet the needs of your audience. You notice things that the untrained eye cannot. You observe the world in minute detail, igniting intimate insights to inspire innovation.
• Empathizer. You are a great listener who truly cares about what others are going through. You are able to easily identify and understand others' thoughts and emotions. You are rooted towards the needs of people. You solve challenges through human-centered design and translate information into brilliant design directions that deliver tangible impact.
• Systemizer. You have a higher level of creativity and innovation otherwise known as "out of the box thinking" than average. You often see the solution to challenges and issues before the others do. You are able to analyze different variables and infer the underlying rules that govern a certain behaviour. You look for patterns and connections and have a sense of how something new or existing could be seen.
• Designer. You emphasize on bringing ideas to life based on how real users think, feel and behave. You have good taste. You know your way around Illustrator, InDesign, Photoshop, PPT, or whatever works best for you.
• Collaborator. You can work with a range of stakeholders. You can build on the ideas of others and always adopt a can-do attitude. Your involvement is actively sought after.
• Sketcher. You have no qualms sketching or doodling, and are quick to pick up a pen, pencil, or whiteboard marker to communicate visually. You know the act of building out an idea into a concrete form is the best way to 'think out loud'.