Manager, Creative Product Design

Job Description

The Manager, Creative Product Design exhibits expertise in the design and review of excellent, reusable, multi-modal content for online learning experiences. This role oversees a team of innovative content developers and leverages deep knowledge of both learning science and operations management to mentor our individual contributors from associate through senior and beyond. The successful candidate is an exceptional leader, designer, enjoys charting new paths, and is passionate about WGU Academy's mission.

Reporting to the Senior Manager, Design and Development, this position works closely with peer leaders in Academy's Product Design and Development team and Project Management Office (PMO). The Product Design Manager, Creative is critical to the success of our org as we achieve ambitious quarterly goals within our tightly interdependent squads.

Primary Responsibilities Include:

Leadership and Talent Management

• Leads the best team of Multimedia Designers, Content Design Writers, and Product Operations Coordinators at varied levels of skill and experience by supporting employee development and mentoring core learning design and product management competencies.
• Guide and drive team to greater science- and data- informed innovation, with an exceptionally strong bias toward action and speed to insight.
• Course correct behaviors and communication style to meet the needs of a wide range of situations; tackles obstacles appropriately; is comfortable with ambiguity.
• Innovates to ensure coverage within and between teams, enabling the department to meet organizational objectives and key results.
• Leads and promotes exceptional change management.
• Promote productivity and quality standards by motivating and inspiring others to do their best work.
• Accept accountability for success metrics as well as time, budget, and quality measures.
• Maintain accountability for content quality, relevance, and outcomes over time across a complex portfolio.
• Successfully influence organizational level decisions with team and stakeholders.
• Develops and maintains a collaborative relationship with all appropriate internal and external stakeholders.
• Collaborate with management in developing goals and objectives at the organization level.
• Act as a delegate for the Senior Manager, Design and Development when assigned.

Problem Solving and Decision Making:

• Apply effective decision-making by analyzing the situation and quickly acting on available information.
• Apply a systems-thinking approach to design decisions, identifying and communicating upstream and downstream impacts across the portfolio.
• Resolve problems that require broad-based consideration of variables at the organization level.

Product Design and User Experience:

• Design processes to facilitate ongoing efficiency gains across a lean team.
• Apply and model best practices in learning science, user experience design, and accessibility across the portfolio.
• Partner with assessment and design teams to ensure alignment between competencies, assessments, and instructional strategies, and ensure designs are implemented as envisioned and delivered in a timely manner.
• Stays current with trends, leading science and innovations, and research in learning science, instructional media, UI/UX and learner behavior.
• Design on-demand formal reports and presentations regarding products, as required for operation and quality improvement.

Project and Workflow Management:

• Serve as a member of the Scrum of Scrums (SoS) team, alongside department leaders and the PMO, to oversee multiple products and initiatives concurrently within an agile environment, balancing speed, quality, and scope
• Ensures the team's work is completed on time and within budget and meets the organization's high standard of quality.
• Identify and mitigate risks that may impact the quality or on-time delivery of learning products
• Balances sometimes competing needs of various stakeholders to recommend and negotiate a path to achieving shared goals.
• Work in concert with the PMO to ensure timely delivery of quality programs, including the deployment of efficient processes and resourcing. Other duties as assigned.