Associate Director, Product Design & UX

Role Summary

Location: East Hanover, NJ. The Associate Director, Product Design & UX focuses on designing optimized, highly personalized user interfaces and interactions, with deep expertise across data visualization, digital products, platform applications, and design system environments. The role aims to deliver exceptional digital product solutions across a broad ecosystem of technology platforms, addressing the unique needs and complexities within cardiovascular, immunology, neuroscience, and oncology domains.

Responsibilities

• Understanding User Needs (SMEFocus): Support in-depth user research activities within the specialized domain to identify user needs, pain points, and workflows, ensuring the design is tailored to the specific context of each persona.
• Balancing Creativity & Functionality (UI & Product Design): Focus on aesthetics and usability of the product interface, ensuring a seamless user experience while adhering to core usability and accessibility principles.
• Dynamic User Interface Design (UI Expertise): Create meaningful UI artifacts including iconography, typography, texture, treatments, patterns, color, balance, contrast, proximity, and hierarchy. Outputs may include wireframes, storyboards, user flows, visual mockups, and prototypes.
• Information Architecture: Structure and organize content and information within the product environment to make it easy, usable, intuitive, and supported by all logical interactions.
• Design for Complex Systems: Simplify intricate workflows, accommodate various user roles, and account for the human element of a system when designing for potentially complex user scenarios.
• Collaboration & Communication: Collaborate efficiently with cross-functional teams, including product managers, developers, and stakeholders, to ensure the design aligns with business objectives and technical constraints.
• Advocacy for the User: Champion the end user throughout the product development lifecycle, ensuring their needs are met, particularly in requirements gathering and usability testing.
• Iterative Design & Continuous Improvement: Test designs, gather user feedback, and iterate to improve the product's design and functionality.
• Design System Management and Governance: Creating and refining UI components, interaction patterns, and design documentation. Core focus on creating, maintaining, and evolving the Novartis IDS suite of reusable UI components, tokens, libraries, widgets, and design guidelines, ensuring consistency across all digital products.

Qualifications

• Degree, Bachelor’s or Master's of Design, Computer Science, HCI, User experience, or related field.
• Minimum 4-6 years of experience in Product UI and Interaction Design, UX or related roles.
• Strong understanding of Human-Centered Design principles, frameworks, and best practices.
• Excellent communication, presentation, and stakeholder management skills.
• Must have in-depth Design System experience and expertise.
• Ability to influence and drive change in a complex organizational environment.
• Strong analytical skills; ability to translate all data insights into actionable solutions.
• Certifications in HCD/UX/UI design or related areas is desirable.
• Deep expertise with any of the following tools: Figma, Adobe CC, Storybook, Zeplin, Miro, Curser, Mural/Miro/Microsoft Whiteboard, Notion/Teamwork/Clickup, Confluence/Jira, Userzoom/Usertesting.