We are The Mars Agency – a full-service, global agency in a world full of agencies. The difference between us and them? We write our own rules. It’s one of the many perks of being independently owned for over forty years. We exist to nurture growth & good – in business, in people and in communities. From strategy to execution, here, it’s all about leadership and ideas that create impact. We are looking for a best-in-class UX Designer to create great Conversational Interfaces on Voice and chat-based platforms. This person will split their time between creating branded conversational experiences for our clients, and revolutionizing customer experience at brick and mortar retail through VUI Design for our proprietary retail product (SmartAisleSM) – the world’s first Voice-powered retail shopping assistant that provides expert product recommendations, education and support to shoppers at the all-important point of decision. PRIMARY RESPONSIBILITIES: • Lead the design discovery process in order to identify strategic opportunities based on consumer need finding, brand immersion and competitive audits. • Define design principles and product requirements and communicate them through compelling narratives and visualizations (e.g. personas, user stories). • Conduct iterative qualitative research in order to design humanistic conversation models. • Produce user flows/interaction models and build prototypes, leveraging readily available tools, to test and refine conversational experiences. • Collaborate with technologists to ensure technical executions reflect user-centricity/user insights. • Work closely with an interdisciplinary team of creatives and technologists to deliver products to market, including participation in QA processes, with a constant eye on the user experience. • Conduct analyses of real usage data to inform VUI/UI optimization. CHARACTERISTICS: • You are excited at the prospect of pioneering a new business for a first-of-its-kind product. •You have a point of view about the future of brick & mortar retail (and it’s not that it’s dying). • You have a passion for learning about the world, human behavior, and the motivations that lie beneath the surface to create new commerce experiences. • You are an innovator, capable of creating solutions for exciting and ambitious ideas for which no interaction paradigm currently exists. • You have the ability to synthesize research into concrete design recommendations and communicate them to both business and technical audiences. • You have the ability to work in dynamic, ambiguous conditions requiring rapid iteration cycles; and to transition between collaborative and individual work, as part of an agile, forward-thinking team. • You have a highly collaborative nature, drawing motivation from effective teamwork. • You have a proven ability to design for new & emerging channels, through a VUI or UX portfolio. QUALIFICATIONS: • Bachelor's degree in a related discipline (Digital Design, Human Computer Interaction, Psychology) • 3-5 years of experience in UX/UI/VUI design, interaction design, design research, or a related field • Experience with the full product development process from discovery, to shipping and measuring • Experience in a design or strategy role on a consumer-facing digital product team preferred • Knowledge of the software development cycle and Agile processes • Strong interest in Voice or other conversational interfaces