Director, User Experience & Product Design

The Role:

Minted is looking for a Director of User Experience & Product Design to bring Minted’s brand to life in the digital medium and own the company’s online expression. This person will craft the vision for Design at Minted creating the most inspiring, delightful and innovative experience in online commerce.

Reporting into the VP, Product Management, this is a key leadership role at Minted with broad ownership of the web and mobile experience for the Minted consumer and the artist community. In this role, you will re-imagine and advocate a design-forward, consistent and intuitive user experience across all digital experiences.

This is a high-impact, high-visibility role where you will influence product strategy, charter the user experience function at Minted, build and scale the Product Design team, as well as define and tune our UX design and testing processes to ensure product execution, quality, and customer delight.

In addition to an impeccable eye for design, a customer-centric research approach and ruthless insistence on pixel-perfect execution, you are a highly collaborative and results-oriented leader capable of driving change and delivering experiences that are measurable and drive higher conversion and satisfaction for consumers and artists.

You Will:

• Define Minted’s overall UX strategy and vision for a world-class web and app experience ensuring that it is tightly aligned with Minted’s broader omni-channel brand and product strategy
• Articulate and evangelize your vision, translating into an actionable roadmap that you drive in collaboration with cross-functional partners in Brand, Product Marketing, PM, and Eng
• Design, document and evangelize a cohesive set of design principles, patterns, and guidelines that can be utilized everywhere to ensure consistency of experience
• Articulate a strong rationale for these guidelines and drive our PM and Engineering teams to ensure adoption and execution with a robust Design system and Component Library
• Define the experience roadmaps and shopper paths on our site to include: site navigation and information architecture, discovery, customization, checkout, as well as defining user experience strategy and experiences for mobile eCommerce
• Influence and mentor across the organization, focusing on coaching and developing cross-functional partners, brand marketing and product designers, product managers, engineers, and QA on UX best practices
• Know our customer and represent her needs and her voice in the product and user experience design process
• Lead and direct user experience development projects, providing concept, direction, and critical evaluation of projects, as well as designing wireframes, mock-ups, and prototypes as needed to help illustrate solutions to complex problems
• Review all UX design created by the UX team and outside vendors to ensure shoppability, achievement of business goals, minimization of user confusion, and consistency with UX and usability guidelines
• Partner with Product Management and Engineering during design and development to ensure high quality implementation and results delivery
• Develop and design an effective organizational structure reflecting ownership and responsibilities for the User Experience team that scales with Minted’s growing business
• Recruit, hire, manage and mentor top digital UX and UI designers on the team
• Develop relationships with design firms and independent contractors to have a “bench” of resources to support flexing as needed against projects
• Define UX and UI processes with key measurable metrics that achieve both quality and rapid time to market; partner with other departments to optimize and improve efficiencies across teams
• Design and lead user testing and usability research both in-lab and online, effectively managing internal and external resources to deliver insights and actionable results; facilitate communication and share out of results and provide recommendations to product and business stakeholders

You Have:

• A Bachelor’s or Graduate degree in user experience, design, or other related field
• 10+ years experience in user experience and design with expert knowledge of e-commerce and mobile design principles, information architecture and user-centered design
• Personal passion for Minted’s categories of products, particularly custom holiday cards, wedding invitations, and other stationery
• 7+ years management experience with a track record of hiring and developing strong individual contributor UX and UI designers & researchers
• Innate understanding of consumer-focused digital experiences across site, mobile, and in-store represented by direct experience in omni-channel retail e-commerce
• Strong retail insights and an understanding of how and why consumers use Minted products, informed by a personal passion for shopping or collecting design or fashion goods
• A clean, polished design aesthetic coupled with a passion for pixel perfection, consistency, and usability
• Appreciation of standards; proven methods and tools to enforce brand identity and consistency across all projects
• A portfolio showcasing a proven track record in creating consumer-focused UX that solves complex design problems providing impact to customers and the business
• An ability to prioritize in a fast paced environment and meet changing deadlines and priorities on multiple simultaneous projects
• Deep experience designing and building organizational structure, systems, and processes to scale the UX function, in a large (1000+ employees) consumer internet company

You Are:

• A strategic, consumer-centric thinker. You understand consumer segments deeply and intuitively, and you naturally gravitate to the consumer when answering questions or considering strategies.
• Results oriented. You are most comfortable in work environments which are outcome-oriented and merit-based, and are highly motivated by goal accomplishment.
• A passionate customer advocate. You are ready to put the customer first and influence others across the company to think similarly.
• Receptive to change. You are flexible, adaptable, innovative, and open in response to competitive pressure and market change.
• A collaborative thinker. You enjoy an environment that has been structured for collaboration and interdependencies.
• A systems thinker. You intuitively understand interdependencies, ask follow-up questions, and drive to solutions that balance the success of initiatives across revenue, quality, brand, and cost goals.
• A collaborative people leader. You know how to work effectively with your functional-executive peers and their organizations, advocating for your category, holding colleagues accountable and leading the entire cross-functional team to success. People follow you, even when they don’t report to you.