Microsoft’s Customer Innovation Group is expanding the capabilities of our Innovation Studio in Houston and are looking for passionate and skilled people to lead our creative journey to transform business with emerging technologies. Our team works in tight collaboration with external customers, enterprise, and commercial partners helping to craft innovative solutions that leverage the full span of Microsoft’s services and technology. We ideate exciting never-seen-before experiences and quickly build working prototypes on top of developing tech. We transform our ideas into reality, from concept, through prototyping, to final implementation.
We are seeking a Creative Director to perform the critical role of partnering with external clients and internal teams to create innovative and impactful experiences. The right candidate juggles external and internal needs while creating robust plans for successful product development, including building and managing the right team, creating goals for them to execute against, and delivering a high quality product. This role engages with every discipline including art, design, dev, test, and business, as well as being part of the leadership team developing the overall strategy for team, client, and product success. The ability to move tactically in this competitive and ever-evolving environment, and never losing sight of the goal, is our key to finding innovative impact.
Responsibilities
Responsibilities
People Management
- Managers deliver success through empowerment and accountability by modeling, coaching, and caring.
- Model - Live our culture; Embody our values; Practice our leadership principles.
- Coach - Define team objectives and outcomes; Enable success across boundaries; Help the team adapt and learn.
- Care - Attract and retain great people; Know each individual’s capabilities and aspirations; Invest in the growth of others.
Product Design
- Creates alignment on schedules and plan definitions, including dependency tracking across the discipline. Influences the product strategy and leads others in defining needs of large and/or complex product designs based on multiple factors such as user insights and the business needs. Leads team in identifying needs that are not spoken and including them in end-to-end design plan and process. Guides others to develop a synthesis of user insights and compare with data to identify larger issues that may not be apparent for user desires. Makes the case for investments in product designs to senior leadership. Collaborates with product owners and development team members to shepherd end-to-end experiences from concept to ship for large and/or complex products.
- Directs others to generate ideation solutions for complex products (e.g., involving many constraints, needing workarounds, requiring holistic view of interconnected systems) to improve product designs. Brings diverse teams together and provides input on the strategic utilization of a variety of perspectives when ideating (e.g., business, experience, technology). Synthesizes complex and challenging ideation solutions to a concise articulation of user wants and subsequent solutions.
- Leads expansive prototyping initiatives involving design complexity (e.g., large scale, involving coordination of multiple groups, higher cost). Provides guidance to other team members about what the prototype should communicate and how to find the right prototype for a problem. Leads prototyping (e.g., large scale, involving coordination of multiple groups, higher cost) for new products as efficiently as possible. Presents to teams (e.g., Design, Engineering), senior leadership, and/or customers to receive feedback and understand user needs. Seeks to understand user needs and propose a design prototype, evaluate its usefulness, and determine next steps to ensure optimal product designs. Ensures prototypes are in accordance with company's brand and guidelines, and leads the invention/improvement of guidelines when existing guidelines are unclear. Recommends tool enablement proposals.
- Leads interactions with teams across the company for successful design implementation, and leads design question-and-answer forums (QAs) to ensure "pixel perfect" or detailed designs. Directs collaboration with developers to iterate further on designs during implementation to ensure optimal designs. Drives negotiations with Engineering and pushes design agenda forward while finding compromises and alternatives. Acts as the owner approving the ship readiness from a design perspective.
- Leads the production of visual designs from concept to delivery. Creates, evangelizes, and oversees a variety of visual design documents including mood boards, storyboards, creative briefs, three-dimensional (3D) models, product renderings/visualizations, color and materials design, motion studies, iconography, illustrations, layouts, and redlines for a set of products, tools, and services. Works closely with multiple disciplines on aligned goals. Communicates and executes strategic product/service visual design direction to leaders at all stages from intent to implementation to ensure alignment. Organizes feedback sessions with team members, ensuring appropriate feedback and coaching is given. Champions and sets expectations for brand adherence and promotion of inclusivity principles.
- Identifies and evangelizes for scenarios that will ultimately turn into interaction designs for hardware and/or software-based experiences. Serves as an architect over the strategy for a product design and multiple systems. Ensures alignment with other relevant disciplines and teams. Directs team to develop and enhance product user experiences via creation of interaction models and detailed designs for new and existing product features while serving as a liaison between users and products. Guides team to ensure the designs of the products allow the user to complete the desired functions in the best possible manner.
Design Components
- Owns, as a gatekeeper and reviewer, the use and adoption of the latest design system (e.g., content templates, icons, form design, user-interface [UI] controls, navigation models, design trends) updates in the industry and/or making a case for acquiring the system. Guides team to ensure products are aligned with company-wide systems. Helps others use the system and drives consistency, alignment, and standards across multiple teams.
Communication and Collaboration
- Sets context for senior leadership stakeholders. Guides communication with cross-disciplinary teams inside and across studio(s) through all stages of design and development. Cultivates communication workstreams for effective communication across groups. Demonstrates executive maturity in communication interactions. Recognized by others as an expert because of evangelizing designs through communication.
- Communicates a compelling, convincing product story to a variety of audiences in a way that inspires excitement and support of the product. Influences for impact and buy in from key stakeholders through storytelling. Coaches teams on storytelling techniques.
- Leads collaboration with creative team members, program managers, and developers (e.g., the triad/quad) across teams/divisions to define and iterate on new and existing product features, as well as to make decisions on behalf of One Microsoft. Collaborates with leadership and team members, creates, and helps the team deliver product design results while also guiding the team's newer members. Influences stakeholders across disciplines (e.g., Marketing, Sales). Ensures that voice is needed, sought out, and asked for to promote optimal product designs. Connects dots between teams to enable collaboration, identifying opportunities to build on the work of others and leverage previous work.
- Creates clarity and builds energy for stakeholders. Provides oversight and guidance to the team of product designers. Owns accountability for team and product outcomes. Ensures full understanding of the original design and vision, and links to established problem and/or goal. Mentors designers in all areas of ownership. Influences those outside of design. Espouses values as a leader. Is an expert and leader in the craft of design. Acts a steward of creative work across their team. Gathers insights on trends and provides strategic guidance across company and the industry. Interviews and screens candidates. Handles resource and budget management for a product team or studio (e.g., scoping projects, making the case for headcount, allocating resources, facilitating team members' relationships).
Qualifications
Qualifications
Required/Minimum Qualifications
- Bachelor's Degree in Industrial Design, Product Design, Human Computer Interaction, or related field AND 8+ years experience working in product or service design
- OR Master's Degree in Industrial Design, Product Design, Human Computer Interaction, or related field AND 6+ years experience working in product or service design
- OR equivalent experience (e.g., experience using design thinking to solve problems).
- 3+ years people management experience.
Additional or Preferred Qualifications
- Bachelor's Degree in Industrial Design, Product Design, Human Computer Interaction, or related field AND 12+ years experience working in product or service design
- OR Master's Degree in Industrial Design, Product Design, Human Computer Interaction, or related field AND 8+ years experience working in product or service design
- OR equivalent experience (e.g., experience using design thinking to solve problems).
- 6+ years experience shipping games or products and/or delivering to customers as a result of an end-to-end design process.
- 5+ years people management experience.
#INDSOL
The salary range for this role based in Colorado is from $145,600 to $238,200. At Microsoft certain roles are eligible for additional rewards, including annual bonus and stock. These awards are allocated based on individual performance. In addition, certain roles also have the opportunity to earn sales incentives based on revenue or utilization, depending on the terms of the plan and the employee’s role. Benefits/perks listed here may vary depending on the nature of your employment with Microsoft and the country where you work. US-based employees gain access to healthcare benefits, a 401(k) plan and company match, short-term and long-term disability coverage, basic life insurance, and fitness benefits, among others.
Microsoft is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, ancestry, color, family or medical care leave, gender identity or expression, genetic information, marital status, medical condition, national origin, physical or mental disability, political affiliation, protected veteran status, race, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, or any other characteristic protected by applicable laws, regulations and ordinances. We also consider qualified applicants regardless of criminal histories, consistent with legal requirements. If you need assistance and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application or the recruiting process, please send a request via the Accommodation request form.
Benefits/perks listed below may vary depending on the nature of your employment with Microsoft and the country where you work.
