Join the diverse and dynamic team that powers Michigan's largest energy provider and one of the nation's largest gas and electric combination utilities. Consumers Energy services 6.8 million of Michigan's 10 million residents - caring for our friends and neighbors in all 68 Lower Peninsula counties. We embrace a cleaner and leaner utility vision focused on eliminating energy waste and adding renewable energy from sources such as wind and solar.

Location:

The successful candidate will be expected to work in a hybrid status of reporting to either Royal Oak, Saginaw, Livonia, Jackson, or Grand Rapids Service Center every Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday with home office flexibility on Wednesday and Friday.

We are looking for: Associate Experience Design Consultant

The Associate Experience Design Consultant is responsible for supporting a product sector/team with moderately defined product objectives and scope. The incumbent will provide support to internal Product Owner clients with design thinking processes and techniques to achieve objectives spanning the entire discovery and solution stages of the design process and established Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) processes. Utilize working knowledge and experience to work autonomously through all common needs within these processes and demonstrate ability to navigate challenges of a simple-to-mid range complexity level without detailed direction or oversight.

The knowledge and skills involved with this position include but are not limited to:

• Design Thinking / Experience Design / Human Computer Interaction

• Knowledge of Qualitative research, ethnographic techniques, interviewing, facilitation, journey mapping, personas, measurement, prototyping, usability testing, user interaction, user experience, service design, product/industrial design, data visualization

• Effective Written and Verbal Communications

• Software Proficiency (MS Office and design applications such as Figma, Adobe XD, Sketch, Mural, etc.)

• Comfort working in unstructured and undefined problem spaces

• Problem solving

• Passion for customer service and interaction/usability

• Strong desire to experiment and learn / share with others

We encourage you to apply if you have:

• Bachelor’s degree in business, design, engineering, or related field with applicable experience

• [OR] Associate’s degree in business, design, engineering, or related field with two (2) or more years of applicable experience

• [OR] High School Diploma with four (4) or more years of applicable experience

• Experience in user interaction, design thinking, and/or product ownership.

In this role, you will:

• Support ongoing tracking, storing, and accessibility of customer research data for holistic understanding and application across teams. Contribute to team standards and processes.

• Effectively communicate in a variety of formats and audience needs, including insight visualization, executive writing and presentation skills, presentation development and facilitation.

• Understand and translate client team goals, priorities, and needs into productive application of design skills and role to deliver exceptional value. Demonstrate aptitude at working at all levels of design - strategic through surface.

• Serve client teams (primarily Product Owners), cross functional stakeholders, and internal team members in a fashion that promotes open mindedness, creativity, collaboration, shared learning and customer centricity. Capture, interpret, share and learn from mixed research results. Promote a healthy team culture.

• Conduct solution design activities for projects of average complexity to identify problems and narrow focus to a single solution (e.g. How Might We exercises), work through rapid iteration, prototyping and testing to arrive at a Minimal Viable Product or clickable prototype. Demonstrate skills at user experience/interaction, prototyping, customer testing and rapid iteration.

• Apply a wide variety of design and execution "discovery-based" techniques for Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) and Design Thinking processes and problem solving for the purpose of developing and socializing user understanding/empathy across stakeholder teams. Effectively apply methods to identify and document market problems, positioning, personas, user experiences (enrollment, user, advocacy), journey mapping; facilitate cocreation workshops; design and conduct qualitative research, use ethnographic techniques, and more as necessary to create thorough understanding of market problems.

• Through Journey mapping, prototyping, and testing, identify and document requirements for development, being able to assess effort vs impact utilizing known data/insights available for analysis and demonstrating need for investment to launch.

• Other duties as assigned or may be necessary.

Why should you join our team?

At Consumers Energy, we offer more than just a place to work. We foster a culture that supports career development, growth, and stability, and we take pride in offering our co-workers excellent benefits and compensation packages. We are deliberately creating an inclusive culture that makes our diverse team of co-workers feel valued, supported, and empowered every day. We're a company made up of thousands of people, all with different stories to share and work to do, but we stand united in our company purpose: world class performance delivering hometown service.

What we offer:

• Competitive compensation packages

• Medical, Dental and Vision

• 401k with company match

• Paid parental leave

• Up to 13 paid Holidays

• Paid time off

• Educational Assistance Program

Diversity, Equity & Inclusion:

We, at CMS Energy, value Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion. It is part of our DNA. We treat our employees with respect, we treat each other fairly and we value the opinions of others. We are passionate about building and nurturing an environment where everyone feels included. We don’t discriminate. We seek to learn about each other and better understand our unique differences. Our uniqueness makes us authentic. We create safe spaces where everyone can be who they truly are. We invite difficult conversations and uncomfortable topics. We value diverse perspectives; this is what makes us great together. We harbor an inclusive environment where employees feel empowered to share their backgrounds, experiences, and ideas. Our Employee Resource Groups, Women’s Advisory Panel (WAP), Women’s in Energy (WE), Minority Advisory Panel (MAP), Pride Alliance of Consumers Energy (PACE), GENERGY, capable, Interfaith and Veterans Advisory Panel (VAP) are key enablers to living the values of our company culture: Caring, Empowered, Deliberate, Agility, and Ownership.

All qualified applicants will not be discriminated against and will receive consideration for employment without regard to protected veteran status, disability, race, color, religion, sex, age, sexual orientation, gender identity or national origin.