Title:  Strategic Designer II or Sr

*This position will be filled as a Strategic Designer II or Strategic Designer Sr, depending on expereince.*

JOB SUMMARY/PURPOSE

KeyString Labs is Entergy’s innovation hub, comprised of innovative technology experts, utility professionals, product designers, and beyond. We work collaboratively as creative problem solvers who develop innovative solutions to complex challenges.

We embrace Entergy’s unique opportunity to provide our customers with a new world of products and services by working with new disruptive technologies and resources. Some of our new products and services include energy resiliency services utilizing grid-edge resources, community solar programs, shore power solutions, demand side management technologies, and much more.

Our work touches millions across our five service regions (Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, New Orleans and Texas), including small business, residential, and a growing number of industrial and corporate business customers.

We are searching for a highly skilled, passionate, and thoughtful Strategic Designer to join in building a premier customer-focused utility.

As a Strategic Designer at KeyString Labs, you will:

• Perform industry and market research to build a deep understanding of product opportunity areas and uncover the changing attitudes, behaviors and motivations that drive users’ choices and desires
• Conduct concept and user experience testing for product prototypes, constantly evaluating the need for iteration throughout the product/service development process
• Synthesize research findings and translate into actionable insights that contribute to successful products and services, bringing research to life
• Collaborate with Agile product teams to ensure that the voice of the customer is represented at every stage of product/service development
• Utilize Design Thinking methodologies to develop, facilitate, and execute strategies that support the development of transformative products and services

JOB DUTIES/RESPONSIBILITIES

Product / Service Research

• Design and execute complex quantitative and qualitative research projects from inception to completion, gathering detailed information from a wide range of sources.

• Perform and develop industry research including identifying relevant exemplars to build a deep understanding of business opportunity areas
• Perform market research including consumer trend, demographic, and socioeconomic analysis to uncover the changing attitudes, behaviors and motivations that drive users’ choices and desires
• Use empathy as a starting point to unearth users’ experiences and frictions along a product journey
• Conduct concept and user experience testing for product prototypes, constantly evaluating the need for iteration during product development
• Adapt research strategies and methodologies to unique contexts and iterate as needed
• Work with research and tech vendors to commission projects as needed

Actionable User Insights

• Synthesize research findings and translate into actionable insights that contribute to successful products and services.
• Develop compelling research syntheses, artifacts and presentations that effectively communicate insights and influence stakeholders
• Bring research to life through personas, customer journey maps, storyboards, data visualization, and engaging storytelling
• Anticipate and identify barriers to delivering products and develop innovative solutions to overcome them
• Enable data driven decision-making through comprehensive, customer-centric research

Agile Collaboration

• Collaborate with product teams throughout the development process to ensure that the product/service appropriately addresses user frictions.
• Provide Product Managers with insight into what the “state of the art” looks like; help define the “art of the possible”
• Work with Product Designers to translate strategic insights to UX/UI designs and support usability testing
• Support Growth Experts in executing marketing-related research needs such as brand positioning and communications testing
• Utilize cutting edge design and research tools and methodologies, sharing resources and enabling team members to make great use of their own capabilities

Strategy and Culture

• Utilize Design Thinking methodologies to develop, facilitate, and execute strategies that support the development of transformative products and services.
• Facilitate and lead innovation and strategy activities that shape the product vision
• Develop detailed strategy reports which clearly outline the justification for strategic decision-making at the executive level
• Promote a culture of customer centricity throughout the team, lab, and organization.
• Anticipate changes in industry and consumer trends through future-sensing activities and uncover subsequent strategic implications
• Develop standard processes/best practices and proliferate them within the cohort, product teams, and KeyString Labs
• Develop strategic guardrails and hold teammates accountable to the strategic vision of the product

MINIMUM REQUIREMENTS

Minimum education required of the position

Bachelor's degree required

Minimum experience required of the position

II: 2+ years of experience with proven record in Market Research/Consumer Strategy/Social Sciences and/or 2+ years in Strategic Design

Sr: 5+ years of experience with proven record in Market Research/Consumer Strategy/Social Sciences and/or 3+ years in Strategic Design

A background with customer experience research, product testing, and strategy development required

Minimum knowledge, skills and abilities required of the position

Proficiency in PC Windows environment and Microsoft Office suite

OTHER ATTRIBUTES

Functional Knowledge       

• Quantitative research (IE: surveys, data visualization)
• Qualitative research (IE: ethnographies, in-depth interviews)
• Facilitation/moderation (IE: focus groups, Design Sprints)
• Divergent thinking/ideation
• Information synthesis and analysis
• Communication and storytelling

Preferred familiarity with tools below, though it is not required:

• Cloud-based research tools Validately and Survey Monkey
• Cloud-based collaboration tools Airtable, Confluence, Lucidchart, and Slack

Business Expertise

• Entrepreneurial, experience in the start-up scene and/or with innovative tech firms
• Experience with or strong eagerness to learn/adopt Agile ways of working

Leadership

• Team-oriented and flexible with proven track record in collaborating with multiple stakeholders and driving results, especially via influence management

Problem Solving

• Intellectual curiosity and creativity

Impact

• Must be self-motivated, have high integrity and credibility and be able to work independently
• Must be flexible and have ability to interface with a diverse group of individuals and cross-functional teams

Interpersonal Skills

• Ability to communicate effectively in both digital and business settings
• Attention to detail
• Excellent interpersonal skills, strong verbal and written communication skills

#LI-CM1

Primary Location: Louisiana-New Orleans
Job Function: Professional
FLSA Status: Professional
Relocation Option: No Relocation Offered
Union description/code: NON BARGAINING UNIT-NBU
Number of Openings: 1
Req ID: 101206
Travel Percentage:Up to 25%

An Equal Opportunity Employer, Minority/Female/Disability/Vets. Please click here to view the full statement.

WORKING CONDITIONS: 

As a provider of essential services, Entergy expects its employees to be available to work additional hours, to work in alternate locations, and/or to perform additional duties in connection with storms, outages, emergencies, or other situations as deemed necessary by the company. Exempt employees may not be paid overtime associated with such duties.