Director, Global Uxui Experience Design

Universal Orlando Resort believes in-person collaboration is key to our success. Many of our Team Members work in a hybrid capacity, contributing from the workplace a minimum of three days per week. There are also roles that require being on-site full time. Limited remote opportunities may be available within specific departments. You'll learn more about this during the recruitment process.
JOB SUMMARY:

The Global UXUI Experience Design team is focused on driving guest and team member experience strategies to evolve and enhance the Guest experience across Universal Destinations & Experiences (UDX). Our mission is to amplify the multi-sensory, immersive resort destination experience and connect the customer journey through compelling, consistent, and seamless experience design solutions. Experience, innovation and creativity are central to our company's core and this executive will be focused on advancing an inclusive user experience connecting the immersive physical in park experience through digital touchpoints to drive guest engagement, transactional simplicity and fan loyalty.
This executive will play a critical role, overseeing a mid-size team, identifying opportunities to enhance customer engagement of numerous global platform initiatives by leveraging and evolving our company's Global Design System to create brand distinctive experience design solutions for revenue growth. Lead and support the development of short, mid-long term strategies focused on driving business results, experience strategies through UX research, design, execution and measurement across the full customer journey for our global destinations and new venture businesses. Collaboration with key partners across UDX and NBC Universal as a subject matter expert to identify new product opportunities and innovations for the guest & team member experiences. Direct teams and lead UXUI development with a cross functional team to identify and implement key business decisions with stakeholders in the organization that align to new products, features and capabilities.
MAJOR RESPONSIBILITIES:

CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE
Develop strategies and design solutions that support the UDX Global Experience Design vision across the consumer journey with a focus on identifying customer pain points, remove friction and improve the user experience.
Design end-to-end experiences across all customer touch points and channels in partnership with the Digital Engagement, eCommerce, Global Product, TMO and Delivery teams. Projects will include new product launches, customer facing channel enhancements and capabilities that align with our Global Brand Standards and Experience Principals.
Act as the subject matter expert and business owner of new products and UXUI solutions to support the end-to-end experience.
Conduct UX Research and assess end-to-end business processes, and practices, identify and implement enhancements to improve customer satisfaction in effort to deepen loyalty and trust with our guests.
Continually challenge the status quo by understanding consumer preference and intent. Champion, communicate and reinforce the Global Experience Design Vision in order to deliver the next paradigm in the immersive customer experience.
Drive and influence solutions for key business decisions with and throughout the organization to enable alignment and collaboration as new products or enhancements roll out.
Ensure that the designed practices, annual product and consumer targets, and key performance indicators (KPIs) are met based on the experiences delivered. In addition, be responsible for profit and loss as well as operational profitability of the product as influenced by the consumer's reception and experience.
Assess end-to-end business policies, processes, and practices, which currently create friction in the guest experience and implement enhancements to improve customer satisfaction and GSAT.

DEPARTMENT LEADERSHIP & COLLABORATION:
Strong people leader focused on achieving operational excellence and superior guest experience advancements by building and upskilling a high-performing experience design team to achieve and exceed goals and objectives.
Lead teams to define and develop user-centered design experiences in partnership with Marketing & Sales, Universal Creative, Products & Experience and Digital & Technology teams across all Global platforms (web, mobile, digital signage, interactives games and immersive web3 technologies)
Lead and coach a highly collaborative and talented Global UXUI team of internal UXUI Designers, Design Technologists, UX Writers and UX Researchers. Be a vocal Champion and encourage team members to deliver innovative design solutions that improve engagement, conversion and build fan loyalty across our digital platforms.
Ensure consistent, cross-functional communication across the Global UXUI Experience Design team to include Global Product Management, TMO, IT, Business Operations, Marketing, Creative, Revenue Operations, Legal, Licence Partners and Finance relative to key business decisions and customer engagement. Continually challenge status quo by understanding the consumer preference; communicate the vision in order to deliver the next paradigm in customer experience, hence, always keeping the business's product relevant and engaging to the consumers.

VENDOR MANAGEMENT
Manage initial and ongoing relationships with vendors and outside service providers as it relates to Experience Design and UX Research implementation.
Engage and provide relationship management with Marketing & Sales, Digital & Technology, Universal Creative and Product & Experience and Destination partners as a key stakeholder, ensuring quality and timeliness of deliver, integration with other projects and overall cost management.

BUDGET & PROCESS MANAGEMENT TOOLS
Manage time tracking, financial responsibilities relative to budget allocation of direct reports.
Ensure that the designed practices, annual product and consumer targets, and KPIs are met based on the experiences delivered. In addition, be responsible for profit and loss as well as operational profitability of the product as influenced by the consumers' reception and experience.

Understands and actively participates in Environmental, Health & Safety responsibilities by following established UO policy, procedures, training and team member involvement activities.
Performs other duties as assigned.

EDUCATION:

Bachelor's degree required.
Undergraduate degree (preferred) in User Experience, Experience Design, Marketing Technology, Graphic Design, UX Research, Human Centered Interaction and/or Interaction Design.

EXPERIENCE:

10+ years of experience with demonstrated leadership in digital design as a creative, Information Architecture, UX, CD or visual designer in a progressive technology enablement, innovation, or marketing organization. Experience with immersive technologies, ecommerce sites in the travel and hospitality sector, rewards/engagement and loyalty programs is a plus. Must present a portfolio of work that illustrates strong UX, visual design and interaction design excellence or equivalent combination of education and experience.
Experience as an executive in a product industry, spearheading consumer engagement and user experience with proven and successful working experience in information architecture, consumer experience design, interaction design, or a similar role.
Experience executing and evolving product design solutions utilizing design systems as well as creating and documenting UI toolkits, style guides, and front-end frameworks for design and development teams.
Experience with defining taxonomies and content strategy for development of components to be used in design systems and Content Management Systems (CMS).
Excellent analytical, written, and oral communication skills, and be able to explain complex concepts both concisely and simply. Able to interpret data and trends, diagnose problems, and recommend effective action plans to resolve issues is critical.
Strong background in stakeholder and partner management along with cross-functional collaboration.
Experience in user experience design team leadership and large-scale program planning and implementation.
Experience with UX Research, facilitating focus groups, developing questionaries with clickable prototypes to tests hypothesis and identify design problems. Synthesize learnings and prepare reports to uncover opportunities to improve the user experience.
Experience with reviewing and applying accessibility best practices to design solutions.
Demonstrated success creating end-to-end digital product designs in the consumer technology sector.
Demonstrated ability to define and execute strategic initiatives.
Experience with Agile development methodologies.
Basic understanding of front-end development technologies (CSS, HTML, JavaScript, etc.).
Expertise in AI, machine learning and personalization.
Knowledge of current challenges in the marketing environment such as attribution of marketing touch points, understanding customer lifetime value, and the use of data science led personalization.
A desire to tackle and solve problems, from big picture strategy to granular details and be willing to do hands on work if needed.
Should have exceptional brand, visual, and interaction design skills and a depth of experience working across the user-centered design process: from conducting and leveraging research (quantitative and qualitative) to prototyping and implementation to testing and evaluation.
Experience in the gaming industry a plus.
Strong foundational design skills: Typography, layout, composition, color theory, iconography, UI/UX, motion/interaction design and branding
Budget Management
A positive attitude, open mind, and desire to collaborate and learn.
Highly proficient in Adobe Creative Suite and Figma

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:

This role will be managing a team who consist of a internal, contract and design agency talent.
We have a hybrid work week with 3 days required in the office.

Your talent, skills and experience will be rewarded with a competitive compensation package.

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