Design Director

About iomer nForm

iomer nForm is a leading provider of digital transformation and workplace technology solutions. Focused on providing people-centered systems with everyday impact, we help digitally enable our customers and ensure that the technology investments they are making are supported by the proper digital processes and technologies. Based in Edmonton Alberta, we focus on changing how organizations connect and collaborate with their customers in a rapidly-changing digital world.

Position Summary

As Design Director, you will focus on constantly improving our research, ideation, and design process, and exploring new ways to deliver exceptional work. You’ll partner with our Digital Workplace and Cloud and Business Applications Practice Leaders to ensure cross-functional collaboration, cross training, and knowledge sharing between areas of expertise. Your ability to attract, manage, mentor, and nurture design talent will ensure we’re continually growing a team of leaders. As a member of our leadership team, you’ll help to increase our firm’s reputation as a leading design and digital consultancy, through a clear perspective supported by thought leadership.

Scope

Working with a dedicated team of skilled design practitioners, you are responsible for ensuring the highest quality of work that our design team is charged with producing. Checking the progress of various projects throughout the day, you offer expert advice on how improvements can be made and maintain open lines of communication with other team members. You create new and high-impact ways of digitally delivering on our vision. You also suggest alterations to all artefacts or even subtle design changes that may ultimately improve the look and the way that a product works.

The Design Director also works with our sales team to develop new client relationships and cultivate existing ones. You propose innovative project ideas and concepts, leading our client’s through sales to delivery. You come up with solutions very quickly, and as a visionary, can discern what the client is hoping to achieve and generate excitement about a project. You eloquently present your vision with words, visuals and digital design.

The ideal candidate will have experience leading a design team within an agency or consultancy environment, supporting enterprise clients in the areas of digital strategy, digital service design, user experience and interaction design for our products and platforms. You will build and maintain relationships with senior business executives, engineers and subject matter experts. Using your innovative ideas and imagination, you create concepts and visualizations for software applications, service design, and intranet and web properties. You also guide staff members and other creative professionals to bring collaborative visions to fruition.

The work we do can be demanding, but as a person with deep experience, you find the work to be incredibly rewarding.

Responsibilities & Activities

• Lead and manage the Design practice group, setting benchmarks for exceptional work,
• Manage, mentor, and empower a team of makers and innovators
• Foster strong C-level and 2 IC relationships with new and existing clients
• Help define project goals and objectives for our customers
• Ensure all outputs and deliverables are of the highest level of quality and execution
• Guide the team towards creativity and empathy in solving our clients’ business challenges
• Play a lead role in workshop facilitation, presentations, reviews, and pitches
• Lead and support cross-functional teams in creating concepts, ideas, and project scoping
• Foster an environment that balances high performance with happiness and healthiness
• Support resourcing, capacity building, and sourcing partners where needed
• Support new business development by evaluating, preparing, negotiating and pitching to new clients
• Help to further establish our brand, perspectives, and reputation as a lead design firm at events, conferences, and through our own channels
• Demonstrate passion for their discipline
• Facilitate workshops, client meetings, and conduct other group work with confidence
• Estimate and oversee effort for work within their discipline accurately and consistently
• Demonstrate mastery of skills, and deep knowledge of trends within your discipline
• Demonstrate awareness of the User Experience field, including the relationship between other disciplines
• Mentor junior and senior staff
• Project leadership: leading projects profitably and effectively, negotiate project budgets and deadlines
• Provide strategic advice to clients
• Provide guidance on the firm’s thought leadership activities
• Recruit and evaluate new staff and subcontractors within your discipline

Required Skills & Experience

• 10+ years’ experience in a digital agency or consultancy
• Post-secondary education in a design-related discipline or equivalent will be considered.
• Experience and success in leading, mentoring, and growing a design group
• A strong book of work that demonstrates skills, craft, thinking, and expertise
• An innate familiarity of design for web, mobile, digital platforms, products, services, and brand
• Extensive experience with tools including Axure RP, Adobe CS, InVision, and Office 365
• Focused, organized, and strategic in how you manage your time
• Ability to communicate, present, and sell ideas internally and to clients
• A desire to play a leadership role, yet still open to getting your hands dirty
• A personal perspective and principles about design and its role in shaping experiences
• An entrepreneurial aptitude and interest in joining at the leadership level

Desirable

• Demonstrated experience with design thinking, rapid prototyping, user research methodologies
• Strong critical thinking, evaluation and assessment skills
• Keen ability to identify and achieve desired outcomes under challenging conditions
• Ability to generate enthusiasm and be a change agent at executive and staff levels
• Excellent interpersonal and communications skills toward fostering collaborative relationships with clients and stakeholders, including strong facilitation and mediation skills

If this sounds like your kind of opportunity, we’d love to chat! In your application please include your

• Resume
• Portfolio – include examples of the artifacts you created while working toward a finished product (e.g. sketches, wireframes, mock-ups, prototypes). Be prepared to discuss your process and rationale.
• Cover letter – detailing why you are the best candidate for this role and why nForm is the ideal company for you. If your background doesn’t quite match up with this list, but you know you’ll be a perfect fit – tell us why.

Email your resume, portfolio, and cover letter to better@nform.com. No calls, please. This position will remain open until a suitable candidate is found.