Job Description:

This position is Remote. Candidates will be considered based on their qualifications and the candidate's ability to work from an approved work location. Although the location is flexible, AEP does not have a presence in all states and localities. The following locations are NOT currently approved for this position: AK, CO, CT, DE, HI, IA, ID, KS, MA, ME, MS, ND, NH, NJ, NM, NV, NY, OR, RI, SD, UT, VT, WY, US Territories or international work locations. AEP will consider qualified candidates who are willing to relocate to an approved work location, at the candidate's expense, provided the relocation can be completed within a timeframe that meets AEP's staffing needs. NOTE: All remote work locations require vetting and final approval prior to offer and/or start date. Any work locations listed as preferred or unapproved relate specifically to the requirements for this position and are not necessarily applicable to other posted positions.

PRIMARY RESPONSIBILITIES:

As a User Experience Designer, you will join a Human-Centered Design and User Experience team whose mission is to provide effective, efficient, and enjoyable products, services, and processes for our 5.5 million customers and 17,000 employees across AEP's entire product offering.

As part of the Automation & Design Center of Excellence, our team plays an integral part in gathering insights about user needs, attitudes, emotions, and behaviors to inspire and inform design. We have deep empathy for our users and strive to create experiences that make their lives better. We help teams create experience visions, and we leverage our skills as human-centered designers to help determine the pathway to achieve that vision.

On a given day, our team could be helping craft a new experience on our web site aimed at improving task completion, leading a group of internal subject matter experts through an ideation exercise for a new product, or could be helping business units operate more efficiently by improving their process through design thinking and strategy.

As a UX Designer, your main roles will be varied and interesting. Ideally, you should have a broad understanding of the design and UX and development lifecycles, with knowledge of one or more of the following areas:

Design Research, Strategy, and Planning

• Assist with and grow skills in planning and facilitating of design thinking exercises at the outset of a project to explore the problem, define opportunities, and brainstorm potential solutions.
• Interact with internal stakeholders, subject matter experts, and end user employees and customers in collaborative sessions to establish empathy, understand goals, pain points, and key tasks.
• Help plan and run co-creation experiences with the project team, leadership, and end-users.
• Use digital collaboration tools like Miro to help facilitate discussion and organize research.
• Demonstrate a growing aptitude in analyzing results of user research and synthesizing into meaningful insights.
• Communicate user research insights in a clear and compelling way to help the business make decisions.
• Help facilitate the product vision by sketching and creating rapid prototypes and wireframes of experiences.
• Expand your knowledge and skills of user research deliverables, including creating personas, user empathy maps, and journey maps.
• Work with technology business analysts to develop an understanding of the breadth of our technology platforms.
• Create a UX project plan, estimating activities and hours.
• Build domain knowledge of AEP's different business unit and customer audiences.
  
  

Usability and User Research Studies

• Assist with planning, facilitating, and analyzing a variety of user research and usability testing methods. These could include user interviews, surveys, card sorting, tree testing, first-click testing, in-lab usability testing, remote usability testing, or eye tracking studies.
• Create task scripts, moderator guides, and participant screening criteria.
• Become proficient with remote research tools, although familiarity already is a plus.
• Help plan and conduct usability testing for AR/VR, web and mobile sites and apps, and chatbots.
  
  

User Interface and Interaction Design

• Create information architecture, navigation, site maps, and prioritization of information for web and mobile web sites and applications.
• Understand responsive design and articulate how a design changes across viewports.
• Design engaging user flows, wireframes, mockups, and prototypes of transactional, multi-step, and dashboard experiences using tools like Invision, Sketch, Axure, and Voiceflow.
• Understand design best practices for visualizing data in web and mobile applications, including graphs, charts, text-based information, and trends.
• Collaborate with other UX Designers to turn wireframes into final development-ready designs.
• Design and recommend interaction standards for internal web sites, dashboards, and apps, and help build out our internal design system.
• Apply visual design and typography principles and best practices to a range of simple-to-complex web sites and applications.
• Develop skills in creating chatbot and digital assistant experiences for employee- and customer-facing experiences.
• Learn and advocate for AEP brand design on project teams.
• Collaborate with interactive designers to understand our customer-facing design system and design style and standards.
  
  

In addition to the requirements of the position, our culture of communication and collaboration helps us succeed. As a UX Designer, you should have the ability to build positive, collaborative relationships across our team, the project, business units, and job functions. Ideally, you'll have experience doing the following, and you'll do these regularly on our team:

• Clearly explaining to product owners, developers, designers, and project managers how your ideas, designs, and best practices will enhance the user experience.
• Educating others on the value of user experience design.
• Writing clearly, in research findings and in everyday communication.
• Working in Agile product development teams and performing UX methods that fit into the Agile process.
• Working with developers and technical architects to understand the technical constraints that may impact how we design an experience.
• Participating in daily stand-ups and communicate effectively with product owners, scrum masters, designers, copywriters, and developers.
  
  

OTHER PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS:

Education:

• Bachelor or Master's Degree in User Experience, Industrial Design, Experience Design, Visual Design, Web Development, Psychology, Computer Science, or related field.

Experience:

• 2-5 years of experience performing human-centered design, user research, user experience design, user interface and interaction design, design strategy, or service design.
• Although it is not required, we would be happy to review your portfolio demonstrating your user experience and design thinking capabilities.
  
  

Requirements

BASIC QUALIFICATIONS

Education: Bachelor's degree in computer science, information systems, business or related field of study; Or Associate's degree in computer science or related field of study with 2 years of relevant work experience; Or High school diploma/GED with 4 years of relevant work experience.

Experience: In addition to any experience required above, 2 years of relevant work experience is required.

OTHER REQUIREMENTS

• Strong Communication Skills